How I Celebrated Earth Day

How I Celebrated Earth Day with Baking Soda 

by Peter

A few months ago, I reviewed a book called All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity by Madeleine Somerville. It's a good book that offers ideas for greening every aspect of your life, from personal care products to cat litter to cleaning solutions. At the time, I tried some of the tips. Some worked for me, while others didn't.

I put the book away after finishing the review, but frequently thought about some of the ideas. Finally, in honor of Earth Day this year, I decided to try another idea from the book that I hadn't used before. It was time to go wild and try baking soda and apple cider vinegar to wash my hair. The fear of having a head that smells like vinaigrette dressing had been a turnoff before. However, if we're not willing to smell like a salad bar in order to help out the earth, then what kind of people are we?

So I mixed up the concoction of baking soda in water and rubbed it into my scalp for a few minutes before rinsing. Then I combined more water with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and poured it over my head. And promptly screeched when some of it ran into my eyes. The recipe should have carried a warning label. After my hair dried, it was nice and silky and tangle-free. It didn't even smell like vinegar, just as the book promised. Under normal circumstances, this recipe would have made it into my regular shower regime since it's cheap and worked great. But fear of pouring vinegar in my eyes changed my mind. Use at your own risk. Maybe wear swim goggles.

Then I decided to branch out in the deodorant realm. Some natural health gurus, like Dr. Mercola for instance, claim that commercial antiperspirants are bad for us because they contain lots of potentially harmful chemicals, including aluminum, that might contribute to breast cancer risk. They're also often tested on animals.

I bought a stick of natural deodorant (not antiperspirant) that doesn't have aluminum in it. The natural stuff smells good and it's not tested on animals (bonus!) but nothing in it prevents wetness. So I combined equal parts of corn starch, which absorbs moisture, with baking soda, which prevents odor, and put them into one of those shakers that they use for parmesan cheese at Italian restaurants. The holes were too big, though, and powder spilled everywhere. Feeling like MacGyver, I stuck a piece of packing tape over the top and poked small holes in it with a needle. That offered far better control when shaking the powder under my arms.

This combo, together with the natural deodorant seems to be working well. People don't tell me I smell – and I ask them. I've told friends and family about this experiment to get away from antiperspirants and instructed them to tell me if I start to stink. The other day, I went to my chiropractor – who's a natural deodorant hippie herself – and she asked how my antiperspirant experiment was going. I said, "You tell me. Do I smell?" She assured me I didn't. I'm not sweating through my shirts, either, but it's not July in the heart of Georgia yet, either. That will be the true test.

The next experiment will be natural cleaning products. This weekend I plan to scrub my shower with baking soda and vinegar. There might be some castile soap in my future. Maybe I'll work up a sweat while cleaning and it will also be a test of the natural deodorant. 

Review: All You Need Is Less by Madeline Somerville

All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity by Madeleine Somerville

Link to buy All You Need Is Less: The Eco-friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity

Rating: 4 out of 5

At the beginning of Madeleine Somerville's All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity, the author says that there should be more emphasis on the "reduce" segment of the environmentalists' "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" war cry. To that end, she focuses on strategies designed to help people acquire and use less stuff. Some of those strategies are more realistic and practical than others.

Everything lands on Somerville's chopping block, from personal care items, to home cleaning supplies, to clothes driers. The idea is that all the everyday products we purchase at the grocery store can be replaced with less expensive, more environmentally friendly alternatives. For instance, you can shampoo your hair with baking soda, shave with coconut oil, clean your home with vinegar, and hang your laundry on a clothesline outside to dry.

It almost goes without saying that Somerville is an advocate for rain barrels, backyard gardening with heirloom seeds, and cloth diapers, but she goes a step further with a chapter about how to improve your relationships and "green" your pets. It's all written in a friendly, easy-to-read style that usually tries to avoid inflicting crushing guilt trips on readers. 

A few things particularly stood out about this book:

1) The author is deeply infatuated with vinegar. She uses it for everything from first aid to housecleaning to hair conditioner. She admits that after using apple cider vinegar as conditioner, her hair might smell a little vinegary if it gets wet and you stick your nose in it, but she believes it's a small price to pay for not having to buy actual hair conditioner that's full of chemicals.

2) Some of the author's ideas are excellent and entirely possible for some people. Drying clothes on a line outside, for example, would work fine during dry, warm weather for people who have backyards with clotheslines. People living in apartments and/or in Minnesota in January are still going to need a drier. Plus there are plenty that are beyond the realm of how much trouble the average person will go to. For instance, traditional leg waxing is out. Instead, you're supposed to mix up a concoction of hot, sticky sugar and reusable cloth strips. Uh, no.

3) This book isn't just about using less stuff – it offers a new lifestyle. A reader can pick and choose which specific techniques work for him/her, but an environmental zealot can use the book to transform every aspect of his/her life.

As thorough and interesting and potentially useful as this book it, it did have a fundamental flaw. Many of the tips and techniques don't actually result in using less stuff; they just change which stuff you're using. For instance, let's say you want to use a skin moisturizer. Somerville says that instead of buying moisturizer which is specifically for that purpose, you should use coconut oil. And if you've got a cat, you shouldn't buy regular cat litter, but instead either buy the more expensive natural kind or make your own using shredded newspaper that you wet then mush together then dry in a process that takes 1-2 days.

Basically, you're not reducing anything. You're still buying and using stuff. You're just using stuff that's not as good as the stuff that you used to use. It's not necessarily even cheaper. Take coconut oil, for example. It's expensive and it comes in jars that you have to throw away, just like the skin lotion that it's supposed to be replacing. So why bother? I've tried to use coconut oil as a skin moisturizer. It's greasy and it gets oily spots on my clothes. The author advises readers to avoid that problem by toweling themselves off after using it, but that adds another step to my post-shower routine. And I smell like coconut, which isn't bad exactly, but it's not as nice as the fragrance in my skin lotion. So, to recap, people are supposed to stop buying expensive skin lotion which moisturizes their skin and smells nice. Instead they should buy expensive coconut oil, which moisturizes skin but leaves a greasy residue that needs to be removed and smells like coconuts. What exactly is being saved here? Especially if the skin lotion you already use is a natural kind that doesn't contain parabens or test on animals.

Overall, All You Need Is Less contains a lot of excellent tips. It's helpful to keep it in perspective, though, and remember that every little bit you do will help the planet. You don't have to follow all these guidelines to make your life a little greener. Realistically, there are a finite number of hours in the day to grow your own food, make your own baby wipes, and give your partner deep tissue massages instead of buying him/her anniversary gifts. And as for me, life's too short to have hair that smells like vinegar.

Reviewed by Peter