I have always prided myself on being a frugal and thoughtful consumer, concerned about the ecological and ethical impacts of the products I buy. I pay that extra $10 a month to support green energy, use CFLs where I can, have low flow shower heads, bricks in the toilet tanks, buy earth and animal friendly cleaning products or make my own, wear my clothes until they're dead, line dry most often, use my dish and pasta water to water landscaping, shower every other day, have no ac, rarely use my gas in wall heater, bike or take public transport almost all of the time, drink tap water, buy local and organic foods to supplement those I grow in my garden, have reusable shopping bags, a reusable coffee cup, a reusable water bottle, save lidded plastic food packaging to store left overs of future meals and compost 100% of my food scraps.

....so what's with all this waste?

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Day 18: Oh Vanity

Just when I think I've finally gotten past the worst of it, I take a moment to peek under my bathroom sink to discover---dun dun dun!---enough personal hygiene products to cleanse, deodorize, supplement, wax and make up a small nation.

Shit! How am I supposed to get rid of this stuff?

I start sorting and I quickly realize that I have a lot of 1/2 used bottles of basically the same thing. Sunscreen, deodorant, lotion, face powder, shampoo etc. I sort these by category and start to look at what I can safely consolidate and realize that 1/2 of these products are expired and need to be tossed.

Ok. Not so bad considering that I have been buying only organic and natural ingredient products for quite some time. I take a chance and dump the expired herbal supplements into the compost, a bit of expired lotion in the trash and the containers in the recycle bin.

The rest of the stuff I am putting in a box that will be my personal, in house drugstore until it's all gone. I don't know what else to do.

One cool thing did come out of this! Upcycle project #3. Check it out.


Peanut can be reborn as my make up and brush organizer!
(eyeshadow and lipstick inside)
Posted by

1 comment:

  1. Kristy BApril 13, 2012 at 11:35 AM

    Still rocking this container in spring 2012. It has turned out to be the best makeup organizer ever. Make up goes inside, brushes in the top. Easy.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)