Picture from flickr user kuuipo1207

The living’s green and pretty in Vancouver, again named “the most liveable city in the world.” Just about every cosmetic product comes in a greenwashed or health-friendly option: there’s paraben-free lotion, deodorant without aluminum, and nail polish sans formaldehyde! I’ve spent a year trying to pick safe, personal care products that work, and I’m still confused about which ones I should avoid.

Sarah Dickson, the body care buyer at Capers Whole Foods Market in Kitsilano, puts it to me simply, “I’d like to be able to eat all my make-up if I had to.” Our bodies absorb most of what we put on our skin, and we can’t always break down that material she explains. If it’s not safe to eat, don’t put it on you is the idea.

The problem is many people don’t understand the meaning of the often hard to pronounce substances found on long ingredients lists, let alone their potentially harmful effects.

Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

Writers and aspiring playwrights take note: NOW!, the by-youth for-youth sustainability organization, is hosting a national playwriting competition for youth. From the NOW! newsletter:

Are you an innovator passionate about the environment? Do you want a challenge? Do you love writing? Enter the Act NOW! National Playwriting Competition!

Who? Dreamers and change-makers (Ages 14-26, divided into junior and senior categories)
What? The Act NOW! Playwriting Competition! Write a short play on sustainability.
When? Deadline: March 31st 2010 (At the end of this month!)
Where? All across Canada.
Why? Make a difference and push your creative boundaries.

Plus, cash prizes ($500 for each winner), and the opportunity for your play to be performed all over Canada and filmed and aired by Sustainability TV, to an estimated audience of 10,000 people! Quality plays will be published in a free online sustainability play database for change-makers to ripple sustainability innovations.

Check out the NOW! website for more information and to enter.

* image courtesy of The Muppets.

Kermit the Frog may be famous for singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, but in this fun little video from back in the ‘80s, Kermit explains how simple it is to be ‘green’… in the eco-friendly sense.

Check out Kermit and Fozzie chillin’ and talkin’ about the importance of respecting our world’s water. There is no embed code to add the video into this post, so click here to watch it on the GreenTV website.

And how could I possibly write a post about The Muppets and not include anything about Miss Piggy? Click here for some eco tips from the divine diva swine.

Julia Schopick from The Keeper, Inc. was awesome enough to leave us a comment in a recent Shameless Women post to let us know that they’ve put together a page on their site to show the average environmental and financial cost of using tampons.

“It gives a terrific visual representation of the amount of WASTE that is created by ONE WOMAN’S disposable menstrual products in one month, one year, 10 years, and 40 years (the menstruating lifetime of the average woman)!

Please take a look. I think you’ll agree that these photos are real eye-openers. If only more women would realize how much waste they are foisting on the environment when they use disposable tampons and pads.”

Check out how much waste is produced in just one year:

courtesy of The Keeper, Inc.

Think that’s a lot? You won’t believe how much waste is produced in 10 years … OR 40! Make sure to check out the comparison pics (with info) here.

For an alternative to tampons, you can find out more about the awesome products that The Keeper, Inc. has to offer that are “economical, efficient, comfortable, and environment-friendly”.

Thanks for the tip, Julia!

It looks like someone’s cycles are in sync!

First (thanks for the alert Cate!) gURL.com posts an historical overview of menstrual products. Then Grist posts about our contemporary options from an environmental perspective.

The two-part series contains irreverent product reviews from staffers. They test both outerwear and innerwear.

I appreciate that they report on the bunching factor. Um, and Anna? You’ll be glad to see they assess each product’s odor as well.

It’s awesome how 300 years later, homemade cloth pads are back in style. Oh, who am I kidding? As if they ever left!

Debate is brewing about whether or not coffee cups, plastic bags and water bottles should be banned. The coffee cup purveyors don’t think you could handle it.

“…the possibility of a ban or restrictions raises questions about whether consumers can break their reliance on non-recyclable coffee cups and disposable takeout containers.”
- from the Globe and Mail

Dirty Little Spoons à la Toronto’s Guerrilla Gourmet

The optimistic viewpoint would say that yes, humans of all stripes, even the spoiled ones, can waste less and survive. In fact — and try to stay with me — if we continue to waste as much as we do, we might not survive.

What’s your take? Do you always BYOmug? Are you motivated by discounts, like getting a Grande for the price of a Tall? (Or a Liatorp for the price of a Flarke?)

(more inside…)

Let’s face it – water is so dull. But vitaminwater, with its kaleidoscopic pinks, peaches and violets, is like Vegas in a bottle!

- NYU’s science line on “Is vitaminwater good for you?”

I’m in over my head here. I saw someone drinking a bottle of smartwater, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. So I Googled the company’s website.

Now I’m just thirsty.

(more inside…)

I just came across a rather alarming discovery, in Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us. We all know that plastics break down slowly in the environment and are hazardous for sea animals, who swallow undigestible chunks of our garbage and either choke to death or die slowly of intestinal obstructions. Well, as it turns out, one source of nearly-microscopic plastic is coming from, you guessed it, women’s beauty products.

You know those facial scrubs that contain “micro-scrubbers”, exfoliants which are supposed to scrub your pores clean and leave your face soft and blemish-free? Clean & Clear Daily Pore Scrubber uses them. So does Proactiv Solution, which I’ve been using for about a year now due to two of life’s cruellest words: adult acne. Those “micro-scrubbers” are, I found out, made up of tiny spheres of polyethylene. Plastic. Tiny plastic balls which are sold to be washed directly down the drain, into our water system. And they’re so tiny that they are basically impossible to filter out.

Now, in the interest of avoiding lawsuits, I should say that so far no one has really raised the alarm about this, and there’s not a lot of hard proof out there that micro-scrubbers are killing off ocean life. I did find this article, which mentions that it may pose a “minor threat”. Thing is, plastic has been around for so short a time that we don’t really know its long term effects at all (though more and more evidence is cropping up lately). But it seems to me that millions of people inserting unmeasurable amounts of microscopic plastic into the oceans is probably not going to be okay.

(more inside…)

Yesterday I was at The Hillside Music Festival, “a celebration of music and community” that happens annually at Guelph Lake conservation area on an “island” connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. Hillside is a not-for-profit corporation, administered by a board of directors, a small year-round staff, and more than 1,000 volunteers, and it is unlike other music festivals because it doesn’t focus on corporate advertising in order to sustain itself. And speaking of sustainability, Hillside focuses heavily on reducing the impact of the event on the environment by doing things like reusing cups and plates, and incorporating solar power.

Did I mention that the music is fantastic? This year’s headliners included my teenage crush Hayden, The Cowboy Junkies, Hawksley Workman, The Sadies, and Broken Social Scene (I thought this song was an appropriate one to post):

Anyone who has ever attended the festival will attest to the fact that it is a haven far from commercialism, consumerism, waste, and, well, jerks. The entire event is a real testament to the fact that something can be (easily) done to protect and preserve and enjoy the world around us. We may have gotten rained on, but it was the good time I look forward to every year. I just wanted to shout out to any Shameless readers in attendance. See you again next year!

The upside to rain at Hillside.