Face Off, Naturally

(Part of my Green This House program.)
My dear friend Juanita kvetched to me about the cost of natural skin-care products—the kind that’s free of known and suspected carcinogenic, reproductive, and developmental toxins. “I’m not willing to sell my kidney just yet,” she muttered. Well I hear you and raise you a liver, girlfriend, because lordy, peace of mind doesn’t come without some serious kaching. But, being the smart alecky kid that I am, I told her she could save a tidy sum simply by raiding her kitchen cabinet and refrigerator, which works brilliantly for inexpensive and au naturale cleaning liquids, as well. Free yourself from the shackles of the capitalist consumerist machine, I whooped, only partly in jest.
When I found out that a tiny 8 oz. bottle of facial cleaner (with a very low hazard score of 0.3) ran for $15.48, I blanched. Instead, I made my bar of soap pull double duty in the shower for a while. (If it was good enough for our forebears, it’s good enough for me.) Then I came across a recipe for an exfoliating sugar scrub that was simply one-quarter cup brown sugar, one tablespoon of honey, and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. I’m not one to gush over skin care, but I did feel inordinately radiant and fresh after I gave it a shot one day.
Apple cider vinegar mixed with some water also works amazingly well as a skin toner. (You just have to get over the smell and tell your spouse to zip it.) It also conditions your tresses beautifully while ridding you of shampoo buildup.
Besides saving you money, homemade skin- and hair-care formulas also dispense with petroleum-based plastic packaging, which does add up, even for the most diligent of tree-huggers. (You might want to invest in a spray bottle or two in the beginning, however. Don’t reuse any containers that were filled with toxic chemicals before. In other words, chuck that used Windex bottle with the recyclables.) You also know exactly what you’re spreading across your skin without having to worry about synthetic additives or shelf-life-prolonging preservatives. And look, Ma, no extra food miles!
Peruse the cornucopia of skin-care recipes here and here. Or just Google “skin care recipes” or similar. Help save the planet, your health, and your pocketbook, while looking BEE-YOO-TI-FUL throughout.















Confused about whether to choose to buy local or organic? Well the best-case scenario, of course, is spending your hard-earned clams on produce that is local and organic, but if the lines are clearly drawn and you’re caught in between, say, locally grown but non-organic oranges and organic clementines from Morocco, we usually favor the local option. Not only would the oranges be cheaper and fresher, having traveled only a fraction of the distance their Moroccan brethren have, they’d also have expended a great deal less fossil fuel, which also means they polluted less while getting to your produce aisle. You’re also supporting your small, local farmers who are probably already using sustainable agricultural practices, but just haven’t had the time or money to get certified. “If it’s a small farm, and the farmer lives there, he’s not going to apply thick pesticides; he wants to be a caretaker for his land,” 













