Pretty Cheeky

I've blogged before about my love for the natural cheek stains from tarte. The chubby, push-up packaging is cute and portable, and the cream/gel formulas blend easily and look natural. Plus, they're full of good stuff—antioxidants, mineral pigments, and natural fragrance—and free of bad ingredients like parabens, phthalates, and preservatives.

My favorite shade is the plummy/rose "blushing bride." But the shimmery coral "eco-cheek," tarte's newest shade and part of its Summer 2009 line, is a close second and a great alternative. I blended a dab on each cheekbone and the result was a warm flush of color. And the shimmer looks natural, not disco-ball.

Herbal Relief

Just in time for a celebratory birthday dinner this weekend, a huge, unpoppable zit has erupted on my face. If I smile a reeeaalllly wide smile, I can hide it. (But really, who can walk around smiling like that all day and not appear dangerously crazy?)

My regular, non-natural zit cream hasn't proved up to the task, so today I ran out to CVS and bought Burt's Bees Herbal Blemish Stick. It's a medicinal smelling roll-on potion that uses tea tree oil and willowbark (a natural source of zit-fighting salicylic acid) to treat pimples.

I'm tempted to walk around with this thing glued to my face. Please, zit, go away!

Super Skinny

Happy Earth Day! On the holiday intended to create awareness for the environment, I thought I'd give a shout-out to a super cool, eco-friendly-in-more-ways-than-one skincare company: Brooklyn's own skinnyskinny. 

skinnyskinny's product line, which includes soaps, body oils, bath salts, and lip balms, contains certified organic ingredients and is packaged with materials that are all recycled, reclaimed, sustainable, or biodegradable. And the company itself is 100% carbon-neutral.

But here's another thing I love about skinnyskinny: It makes these lovely organic bath salts that come packaged in pretty, cork-stopped glass bottles. At $34, they're not cheap. But they also sell "refill" packages that come in plain brown biodegradable coffee bags and start at $29 for a one-pound sack. The skinnyskinny folks actually encourage you to buy in bulk, find your own container, and reduce waste (not to mention shipping costs, if you're buying online.) I think that's pretty cool. 

Earth Day Beauty

This Earth Day, April 22nd, green-living guru Danny Seo is launching a line of eco-friendly bath and skincare products called wholearth beauty + bath.  

Reasons why I'm excited about this line: 

• Several of the products, including the perfume spray and the body wash, are USDA certified organic.
  
• The packaging is made from sustainable and/or renewable sources; cartons are made from recycled paper and jars and bottles from 100% Post Consumer Recycled  materials.
  
• The entire line promises to be free of ingredients like parabens, petrochemicals, phthalates, SLS and SLES, mineral oil, and synthetic dyes.
  
• All that earth-friendly packaging is pretty enough to display on your bathroom counter. Which is great if your bathroom, like mine, has just one teeny, tiny, stocked-to-the-brim cabinet.
  

The 12-product line will be available at select Anthropologie stores (another plus—I love Anthropologie!) and I plan to try it as soon as I can get there.  

Pretty Natural Baby: Nasty Ingredients Notice

Your baby's bath may not be the squeaky-clean experience you think it is: Last month the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics released a report called "No More Toxic Tub," which found that "dozens of leading body care products for babies and children contain the toxic chemicals formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane." These chemicals are linked to cancer and skin allergies, and are banned from personal-care products in many other countries.

An independent lab tested 48 popular products and found that 61 percent contained both chemicals. But don't bother looking for these ingredients on your own kid's shampoo bottle — they're not actual ingredients at all; rather, they're contaminants, and therefore not listed on the label.

Here's what you can do:

• Check to see if your favorite baby brand contains these contaminants.
• Look for common culprit ingredients like PEG-100 stearate, polyethylne, ceteareth-20 and sodium laureth sulfate, which are likely to be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane.
• Ask Congress to take action.
• Look for natural alternatives. (Skin Deep, the Environmental Working Group's Cosmetic Safety Database, is a great resource.)

I use the California Baby Super Sensitive line for my toddler almost exclusively, but on occasion I've bought other brands — brands that it turns out tested positive for 1,4-dioxane. The CSC report doesn't cover natural products like California Baby, but you can get the dirt, so to speak, on their ingredients at Skin Deep.

Happily, the California Baby Super Sensitive Shampoo & Bodywash tested well. Of course, as the CSC notes, the exposure to these chemicals from a squirt of bubble bath or a dollop of shampoo is teensy. But if you can find alternatives, why not use them?

Return to Origins

I've long been a fan of Origins, thanks to its "powered by nature" philosophy and, more recently, its line of organic skin care products. Now there's another reason to love the company: its Return to Origins Recycling Program.

Beginning this Sunday, March 29th, you can bring any empty cosmetics container, regardless of brand, to an Origins store or counter and the company will recycle it for you. (The returned packaging, according to the company's web site, "will be sent back to a central location where products will be recycled or used for energy recovery.")

And as a bonus for your eco-minded effort, you'll get a free sample of an Origins skin care product. Which might just lead to another cosmetics jar to recycle...

Skip the Sulfates

I love lather. Whether I'm washing my hair or my face, a good, sudsy scrubbing makes me feel like I'm getting really clean. But after reading two recent magazine articles —one in the February issue of Organic Beauty, the other in the March issue of Allure — on sulfate-free shampoos, I decided to make the switch.

As both articles state, sulfates, commonly listed as sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES), have been linked to skin irritation. (That's why they're ingredients that I've avoided when buying shampoo and body wash for my son.)

But apparently sulfates can be bad for your hair, too, drying it out and stripping away added color. And while Allure quotes a cosmetic chemist who says that any cleansing agent can strip hair of oils, the fact is it's easier than ever to find products that use alternatives. (Even mainstream brand L'Oreal Paris has introduced a sulfate-free shampoo, called EverPure.) I decided it was time to swap my chemical-ladden brand for something that was more natural and quite possibly gentler on my hair.

My choice: Burt's Bees More Moisture Raspberry & Brazil Nut Shampoo.
It contains 98.12% natural ingredients, and uses ingredients like coconut oil and corn starch. It's also paraben- and phthalate-free.

It's true that sulfate-free formulas can be a bit less sudsy, but I've found that pouring the shampoo into my hands and rubbing my palms together before applying it to my hair helped make it suds up more. And even after one use, my hair felt softer and more bouncy than usual. I just might start washing my hair more often.