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Best and Worst Sustainable Products 2024
As an environmentalist, I’m always looking for ways I can reduce my impact either through behavioral changes, lifestyle changes, or even product swaps. If you’re looking to make sustainable swaps in 2024 to help reduce your impact, here are my best and worst product recommendations. Best TruEarth Laundry Strips and Wool Dryer Balls After moving into a cargo trailer full time in 2022, I needed a space saving and sensitive skin friendly option for my laundry. I didn’t love the plastic coating in pods, so I decided to give laundry strips a try and these are now my favorite go-to laundry detergent. Space saving, and better yet, no plastic jug…
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What You Need To Know About “Natural” Products
What Are “Natural” Products To get right to the point, no one really knows. And that’s because there’s no regulatory definition for what “natural” is, which also means there’s no certification process or standardization for products claiming to be natural. Compare this with organic products, which must meet a certain set of criteria in order to receive USDA certification. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the agency responsible for “ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.” And while there are still tens of…
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What I Wear For Field Work
Last post I talked about how to get an environmental job, now I’m going to give my top clothing recommendations for field work! As a woman in a male dominated industry, it can be hard to find clothing for field work that is actually durable and functional. Nothing in this post is sponsored or commissioned, just tried and trusted items I’ve used for my own field work. Shirts/Tops To be fair, I haven’t purchased a field work top in a few years, so I don’t have a link for this first item. I found my favorite dry fit, long sleeve, neon quarter zip at Walmart and haven’t seen another like…
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10 Small Sustainable Swaps for 2021
I’m not big on new year’s resolutions. Don’t get me wrong, I love goal setting, and have vision boards and lists galore. But I prefer to tackle things in smaller increments whether that be scale or time frame for what I’m trying to accomplish. So I’ve decided to share my top 10 small yet attainable, sustainable swaps I’ll be continuing or adding in 2021. Reusable produce bags (continued) I started using reusable produce bags in 2019 after buying some on amazon. They worked pretty well but I had misplaced most of them and recently rediscovered my bags last month. It’s so fun to whip out my reusable produce bags at…
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Let’s Talk About: Feminine Hygiene
The Tipping Point Ladies, we’ve all been there. Digging through our usual emergency stash locations for a tampon because the regular stock is out. Well, recently on a chilly December morning, I was in this exact predicament. I checked my purse, car, field work backpack, camping backpack, under the bathroom sink, and could not find a tampon to spare. At 6:45 in the morning, I couldn’t even run to the store to grab a small box. I had to wait until 8am for Walgreens to open. I thought, this isn’t the first time this has happened, so while I’m completely out of tampons then today is the day. Today is…
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Is Sun-kissed Skin Safe and Sustainable?
We are all subject to external and internal pressures to meet certain beauty standards. While much of this pressure comes from societal expectations, sometimes our own desires align with those standards. For me, I’ve been pale my whole life. In the summer I might get the slightest bit of color, but I usually just burn and fade back to pale. Now, there is nothing wrong with being pale, and furthermore there are historic and systemic benefits of being light skinned (aka white privilege) which I acknowledge but isn’t the topic of this post. Because I never had success just tanning in the sun, I learned to accept my pale skin.…
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The Basics of Beauty and Cosmetics: Why I Choose Eco-Friendly Products
Looking back, I can recall some of my favorite childhood shower products. Like the L’oreal for kids shampoo that smelled like watermelon and had an eye on the side of the bottle that looked like a flounder or some other kind of fish. I’ve had sensitive skin since I was a kid so I always used Suave hypoallergenic liquid body wash, which still came in a variety of scents from fruity floral to rich vanilla. Then in high school when we all go through that glorious phase we call puberty and pimples emerge, I started using face washes with the little exfoliating beads to help “bust up clogged pores” or…
