Posted by Snow in The Eco-Chick Guide to Life, or How to be fabulously Green, by Starre Vartan promises to be a fun read. There are valuable snippets to grab hold of, and lots of bits to copy and hand round the office or pin on the refrigerator. Hints like recapturing use from shoes, cutting down on processed foods, and researching bottled water regulation is good to know.
Fashionistas will get some bleak advice regarding clothing manufacture and processed clothing purchases, and being wary of over bleached tampons and soaps and grooming products that aren’t very useful compared the ecological footprint they leave behind.
This from the hip attempt to get the ‘cool kids” to learn about recycling delivers a lot of information in a smallish size book. The ecological aspect comes through with information about cleansers and cleaners made from less harmful materials.
The cautions against phosphates in laundry detergent and a warning against dry cleaning agents is also warranted. Dry cleaners and dry clean only clothing is an ownership step taken against green living. The chapters on eco-friendly food promise less useful revelations.
This book urges focus on cutting back in areas we have all learned to look the other way around. The visual image of every disposable razor laid end to end in a landfill stretching to oblivion is a stark one indeed. The hazards of commercial toothpaste make the household box of baking soda extremely attractive. The chemicals inside everyday makeup are no longer necessarily tolerable with ecologically sound brand choices available.
Important points have been made elsewhere in the sustainable living literature canon, yet the fresh appeal of the page design keeps you reading. This is a good little book with sections and details to read through for explanations and detail you might have missed or forgotten. Warnings about toxic elements in hair color and the wasteful packaging of today’s grooming products is food for thought.
Some of the writing really seems motivated to inspire the reader to cut down on nonrenewable resources. The Navy shower chapter details how many people might simply suds up after a brief spurt of water and then rinse off, after shaving, hair conditioning, or what-have-you takes place. The savings and freshwater burden might indeed be significant.
This chapter left this reader wondering what would happen if an entire town took Navy showers for a month to see what the usage drop might be. But every tip is not so readily absorbed. Catching menstrual flow in reusable cups that last over ten years seems absurdly unrealistic.
The information in the Eco-Chick’s book is very handy to have, and the listdown of essential oils was informative. I had heard of bergamot many times, and now I know it is that spicy orange smell. This book makes an excellent gift for that young women or teenage girl who need to have her eyes opened to the environmental results of grooming fashion and pursuit of beauty with commercial products.
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