The great thing about these germ-fighters is that they kill bacteria without killing everyone else. Common household cleaners are made from toxic chemicals that threaten our eco-systems and bioaccumulate in our bodies causing a range of health issues. Essential oils are actually good for our bodies and our minds. When you inhale the oils, you will feel your mood adjust. You can have a happy aromachemically-induced cleaning experience!

Here are some essential oils I recommend based on their germ-killing abilities, scent, availability and price:

• cinnamon
• eucalyptus
• ginger
• grapefruit
• lavender
• lemon
• lemongrass
• lime
• orange
• peppermint
• rosemary
• tea tree

Another thing to keep in mind is the use of a good quality microfiber and good old elbow grease goes a long way. Happy cleaning:)

Here is a list of the top chemicals to avoid:

Chemical sunscreens – The WTO estimates that 6000 tons of chemical sunscreen ends up in the coral reefs “bleaching” it of life-sustaining algae. The most common one used is oxybenzone. Look for for physical (mineral) sunscreens such as zinc and titanium. To find this information on the label, look for ‘active ingredients’ where it will list the sunscreen.

Nanoparticles – When choosing a physical sunscreen, look for ‘non-nano’ zinc and titanium. There are many concerns about nanoparticles’ effect on algae and aquatic life.

Synthetic musk – A carcinogenic ingredient that is contained in many perfumes and is toxic to aquatic life. Not good for humans either so avoid it! If you want to smell beautiful, look for natural perfumes and products scented with pure essential oils.

Triclosan – An anti-bacterial agent that is very toxic to algae and bio-accumulates in fish. Soap is all you need on your hands. For extra antibacterial properties, choose one with tea tree or lavender essential oils.

1. Choose bar soap rather than body wash. No need for a plastic bottle! It requires minimal packaging and does not require detergents or foaming agents. I recommend buying from a local artisan soap maker or go on Etsy and stock up.  Make sure that they use essential oils rather than synthetic fragrance.
2. Avoid plastic packaging. So much of it ends up in the landfill and it comes from petroleum, an industry riddled with environmental offenses. Sometimes you can find a company that uses corn or post-consumer plastic which is better but not ideal. Look for glass, aluminum, and post-consumer paper packaging.
3. Buy certified organic or look for certified ingredients on the label. This will mean that the plant extracts contained in the bottle were grown without the use of pesticides. Also, organic ingredients contain up to 30% higher levels of antioxidants – great for your skin!
4.  Avoid petrochemicals. Not sure what that is? Hint: most of the major companies use them. Buy from smaller companies at stores that you trust for providing healthy products – health food stores and eco boutiques are the best choice.
5. Tone down on the products. What’s better than buying eco-friendly packaging and ingredients? Buying no product at all. You probably don’t need 30 different nail polishes. Keep it simple.
6. Avoid botanical ingredients that come from endangered trees such as rosewood and sandalwood or from unethical harvesting practices such as palm oil.
7. Get rid of the chemical, industrial-strength cleaners. You are not meant to have these toxins in your lives. Use vinegar, baking soda  and antiseptic essential oils and high quality cleaning tools. The Ecoholic, Adria Vasil just wrote a great article on the anti-bacterial properties of vinegar if you’re not convinced.

The government of China has very strict standards for allowing cosmetics to be sold, probably the most stringent in the world. One of the requirements is for each ingredient and formula to be tested on animals by one of their authorized institutions. The testing is performed on the animals’ eyes and skin. Bottom line, if a cosmetic is sold in China, it has likely been tested on animals. I say ‘likely’ because they do seem to be creating a database of test results in order to not have to duplicate testing on certain ingredients. It’s unclear as to whether some products wouldn’t have to be tested on animals at all based on previous tests completed. 

The companies mentioned above previously had 100% cruelty-free policies but are now making   statements on their websites such as this one (taken from Estée Lauder’s FAQ page):

DOES YOUR COMPANY TEST ON ANIMALS? 
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is committed to the elimination of animal testing. We are equally committed to consumer health and safety, and bringing to market products that comply with applicable regulations in every country in which our products are sold. We do not conduct animal testing on our products or ingredients, nor ask others to test on our behalf, except when required by law. We evaluate our finished products in clinical tests on volunteer panels. 

Note the “except when required by law”. All the Estée Lauder companies seem to use this verbiage even though they may not be sold in China. These companies include Aveda, Bobbi Brown, Bumble and Bumble, Clinique, Darphin, Jo Malone, La Mer, Origins, and Smashbox (very sad since they used to use the PETA symbol for cruelty-free). 

Cocoon Apothecary‘s policy is that we will never ever ever test on animals even in China, never.

Processing shea butter.

The beauty industry has always been an area where women could make money – from making potions, perfumes and soaps out of their homes to the becoming business moguls like Elizabeth Arden, Anita Roddick and Estee Lauder. Women are still dominating this industry with thousands of indie beauty businesses thriving around the world. Producing the final product and selling it is only a portion of this industry.  As you delve into the supply chain, it becomes clear that women are also responsible for the growing and harvesting of many of the ingredients that go into these products. It is a female industry through and through. On this International Women’s Day, I want to honor the unseen women around that world that provide Cocoon Apothecary with all of the amazing botanicals that we enjoy daily.

A few examples:

• Shea Butter from Burkina Faso – Rural women organize cooperatives where they gather and process the shea nuts and are paid fairly for them. They use the money earned to pay for their children to go to school and for basic needs such as food and medicine.

• Argan Oil from Morocco – Argan oil is processed exclusively by women within cooperatives where they work half days in order to be able to tend to their families and are paid fairly.

• Rose essential oil and water from Bulgaria – Women get up before the break of dawn to harvest the roses as the sun rises. They women pluck the flowers by hand and collect them in their aprons. It is traditionally a women’s job and not much has changed since the 16th century.

Buying natural beauty products that use organic, natural, fair-trade ingredients is a great way to support women around the world but you can also give money directly to female entrepreneurs in the form micro-lending. I’ve listed a few organizations below.

www.kiva.org

www.meda.org

www.accion.org

This International Women’s Day, I urge you to give something to a woman that might make her life a little easier.

Imagine a world with only a few artists that work for big corporations that mass produce their work and sell them at Walmart. If you want something for your wall, it must be a cheap print. No art shows, no local galleries – just the same prints on everyone’s wall. This is what has happened to the perfume industry. There are only a handful of perfume houses and all of the synthetic fragrances out there are manufactured by five different chemical companies. We have been denied an art form that is as much a part of our history as the oil on canvas.

This insanity began in the late 1800′s with the discovery of aldehyde, a synthetic substance that creates the fake scents that we are so accustomed to. They were initially added to natural fragrances to help boost the scent but as perfumers realized that these chemicals had better staying power and were immensely cheaper, they started taking over the industry. The first completely synthetic perfume was Chanel No 5 introduced in 1919 and coined as a ‘modern perfume’. That was basically the end of natural perfume in the 20th century.

The art of blending scents is an ancient craft that certain people are born to do – as much as some people are born to create amazing food. Unfortunately, the tools and knowledge and empowerment to take on perfumery have been unavailable for many years. Fortunately, it is now seeing a resurgence thanks to a few factors, namely the growing popularity of aromatherapy, the indie craft movement and the awareness of environmental toxins. I met a true perfumer at a craft show this past Christmas who had beautiful scents – I fell in love with one that contained frangipani (plumeria). She told me that it came naturally to her and it was an intense passion of hers. She sounded like a true artist and I felt so happy that she not only found her creative outlet but was in a time and place where she could actually access the tools to create what she was clearly born to do. Check out this amazing article about another perfumer, Jill McKeever of For Strange Women that was the inspiration behind this post (thanks Meredith for linking!) and <DROOL>.

So before you purchase that cheap chemical crap that gives many of us headaches and fills a room (obnoxious), consider the artists out there who are expressing their true passions and using expensive, exotic natural ingredients that come from farms rather than labs.

The problem is that it is in basically everything – from household cleaners to hair mousse – but what  I find particularly offensive is when ‘natural’ companies put it in their products and give their customers the misleading idea that they are using something non-toxic. You have to be a smart shopper. If there is a label to read, look for ingredients listed as parfum, perfume or fragrance. If it is an essential oil, it will be listed as the Latin botanical name with it’s common name in parenthesis i.e. Lavendula angustifolia (lavender).

Here is a list of scents that are likely synthetic because there is no common way of extracting it from nature:

Non-citrus fruits: apple, banana, coconut, mango, papaya, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, cranberry, grape, pineapple, pumpkin, watermelon, peach, pomegranate, fig, cherry, melon.

Desserts & Sweets: Caramel, butter cream, coffee cake, creme brûlée, maple sugar, cake, coconut cream, candy, amaretto, bubblegum.

Some Flowers: Lilac, lily of the valley, orchid, plumeria, freesia, peach blossom, cherry blossom, sweet pea.

Other misc. scents: Rain, ocean, fresh laundry, amber, musk, cucumber.

My 3 year old daughter sprayed some perfume into her eye the other day and screamed in pain for at least 5 minutes. This reminded me of all the animals that have to endure this pain x100 in the name of beauty.

I’ve seen the photos of cosmetic animal testing. Rabbits lined up in contraptions that hold their necks so they can’t break away while they have harmful chemicals dropped into their eyes. They scream in pain and writhe so strongly that some of them break their neck or backs trying to flee. Rabbits are a favorite for eye testing because they don’t have the physiology to flush out the chemicals.

Another very common form of cosmetic testing is called the LD₅₀ (abbreviation for “Lethal Dose, 50%”) where a group of animals (100+) are exposed to a substance until 50% die.

L’Oreal is the worst offender because not only do they still test on animals prolifically but they also fought legislation to ban animal testing in Europe. They lost. The European Union has banned animal testing as of 2009.

If you’re against this frivolous use of animals, please vote with your dollar and refrain buying products from the companies that test. See full list here.

Case in point, parabens, the cosmetic preservative that is used rampantly by many of the large cosmetic companies.  On January 12 of this year, a report was published by the Journal of Applied Toxicology that measured the amount of parabens in different sections of the breast by testing tissue samples from the mastectomies of 40 different patients. Of the 160 tissue samples tested, 158 had parabens in them. That’s 99%. Also, the levels of parabens were found to be significantly higher in the region closest to the armpit which contributes to the suspicion that they are originating from antiperspirants (although 7 of the 40 patients had never used underarm products). This propelled a slew of media about the subject including an article by The Sun in the UK.  In response to this article, three breast cancer charities have published a letter rebutting this article and the study behind it. As they put it, “This research has serious flaws and provides no proof to suggest that women should be concerned about parabens”. I was puzzled by this letter. Why would the people that are paid to find the causes of breast cancer make statements of this nature … who are they protecting? I really got suspicious when I read this line, “Despite the fact that Professor Sharpe comments, ‘The study does not address whether parabens contribute to risk of breast cancer’, we feel by the nature of the rest of the article the damage to concerned women will already have been done.”  What damage? The only damage I can think of would be to the companies that still formulate with parabens. This got me digging and lo and behold I found what I suspected – a corporate sponsorship by Avon, the maker of cosmetics with parabens galore. See what I mean by politics?

I know that I’ve said this before, but until we get some answers about what is causing people to develop this life-threatening disease, everything is suspect – especially a chemical that is found in the breast tissue of mastectomy patients! These are people’s lives we are talking about and they are a lot more important than the profits of companies that don’t have the ethics to formulate responsibly.

If you are concerned about this chemical, look for the following on your cosmetic and skin care labels – butylparaben, isobutylparaben, isopropylparaben; methylparaben and propylparaben.

Now…

I’ve noticed some talk on the net that I find very offensive from cosmetic chemists. I’ve run into it several times and I have even had a heated argument on Linked In (I know, lame). Some chemists feel that natural products are a joke and that small artisans have no right to exist. They paint us as snake oil salespeople with dirty dungeons filled with cauldrons and cobwebs (double double  toil and trouble).

Listen nerds, if you didn’t make crappy petroleum laden products and test on billions of animals, I suppose you wouldn’t be feeling so threatened right now.

The truth is that skin care, body care, cosmetics and perfume have always been made by artisans – for thousands of years. It was only in the last century that industrial age of petrochemicals took over and everything became about patents and profits (while poisoning everyone and everything). Fortunately, just like the food industry is veering away from processed junk in favor of whole foods, the beauty industry is becoming reacquainted with ingredients we have always used…and big beauty is not part of this. It would be impossible to swap their ultra cheap petroleum byproducts that they buy from BF Goodrich for botanicals from farms around the world. It would be a financial disaster so they keep pumping out new science (with animal testing), old generic formulas and HUGE marketing campaigns.

You have break it down to this – your skin is a living, breathing organ that can be nourished into looking great for a very long time. How do you nourish the rest of your body? By eating mineral oil tinkered with by scientists. Do you get your food from a lab? It’s the same thing. If you are serious about having beautiful, healthy skin, you’ll feed it what it craves – botanical oils, extracts, butters and waters.