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.