Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 07:40 PM EST [General]
With all the GREEN BUZZ these days its no wonder that affordable, eco-friendly makeup is being worn by celebrities like Uma Thurman, Heidi Klum, Alicia Silverstone, and Gwyneth Paltrow!
Uma uses Origins Smileage Plus liptint. It's 95% organic and 100% chemical free.
Heidi is a huge fan of the Boots Mediterranean Wonderbalm. This great little product is an all over moisturizer.
Gwyneth supports Pangea Organics Facial Cream. Aside from the cream itself being earth friendly, all packaging is made using a zero waste process. Best of all, you can soak the box in water, and then plant it to grow medicinal herbs.
Alicia Silverstone loves Kiss My Face Obsessively Natural Color 3way tint. It can be used on cheeks, lips and eyes.
Mariska Hargitay helped create PlantLove lipstick. Same deal as with the Pangea packaging, if you plant the PlantLove box, it will grow. Only this time instead of medicinal herbs you'll get wild flowers!
Apivita Aromatherapy revitalizing face mask is a big favorite of Maria's. She loves this product that has been popular in Greece for years because it contains lots of Vitamin C, amongst other natural ingredients, to help prevent premature aging.
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BUUUUT... not all of these celeb's have stayed legit. Check out these stories that I found on Green daily:
Gwyneth Paltrow's stellar eco-friendly record has taken a beating in these past couple of days. First, she was a diva at an event to prevent horse slaughter, and now the beautiful blond actress is being taken to task for wearing fur in an ad for Tods.
The ads feature Gwynnie wearing fur lined booties and "draped in fox fur." Stella McCartney, eco-friendly, animal rights-friendly fashion designer and close pal of Gwyneth is sure to be upset about this. In fact, their entire friendship may even be in jeopardy.
Oh, and in case you're wondering why PETA isn't all over this, they are. A spokesperson for the organization said, "Apparently her beauty really is only skin deep. Gwyneth Paltrow won't be the apple of her daughter's eye if she continues to flaunt fur. It's a terrible example to set for a young child."
Kate Hudson's line of hair products, David Babaii for Wildaid, may be squeaky clean and eco-green, but the idea behind it all was not organic. She's being sued for misappropriation of trade secrets and fraud amongst other things after a company claims she stole their ingredient list.
The company, named 220 Laboratories, says they had entered into a spoke agreement with Kate and her stylist, David Babaii. She was going to do the eco-friendly hair products line for them.
So, they showed her the list of ingredients they planned on using, and supposedly Kate and her stylist took it an ran with it -- to another company.
The hair products in Kate's line have a main ingredient -- volcanic ash -- and 220 Laboratories claims that before Miss Hudson stole their idea they were the sole provider of volcanic ash in the U.S.
Who could say "no" to Natalie Portman's new VEGAN shoe line!?
Well... eco-minded folks might wanna re-think it. Why?
The shows still contain PVC (Polyvinyl chloride). Around the world, over 50% of PVC manufactured is used in construction, sex toys, children's toys, and numerous other every-day objects.
Why is this a problem? The environmentalist group Greenpeace has advocated the global phase-out of PVC because they claim dioxin is produced, "as a byproduct of vinyl chloride manufacture and from incineration of waste PVC in domestic garbage."
Other than that, Dioxins are a proven global health threat, as they persist in the environment and can travel long distances. At very low levels, near those to which the general population is exposed, dioxins have been linked to immune system suppression, reproductive disorders, a variety of cancers, endometriosis in women, cancer in rats, allergies in children, and other health problems for those who work in close contact with it.
Cool, Natalie. Reeeeeal cool. Save the animals, and screw the people.
Some alternative options for animal- AND ECO-FRIENDLY Footwear:
Take our shocking new Smart Cart Quiz now; you'll be surprised at the facts you'll learn!
http://www.smartcartquiz.com
This True/False quiz illustrates how we, collectively and as individuals, have the power to VOTE WITH OUR DOLLAR, every time we shop! So next time you open your wallet, are you a part of the problem-- or part of the solution?
What's your score? Post it on our MySpace page as a comment OR on our Facebook fan page, at:
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Check out these screen shots of some of the questions....
Will you host a "Lightbulbs to Leadership" house party?
The parties are July 17 -- you choose the time. The 15-minute teleconference call with Carl Pope, Christine Gregoire, and Van Jones will begin at 7:30 p.m. EST, with an encore at 7:30 p.m. PST. Start your party at least half an hour before the call.
Hosting is easy -- all you need is a space to gather folks, a speakphone or computer with speakers to play the conference call, and a way to print materials. Once you sign up, you'll find a very helpful House Party Guide in your host center. Sign up by the evening of July 9 and you can take part in our special call for hosts at 9 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. PST. On the call we'll walk through the flow of the party, tips for recruitment, and take questions. You'll get the call-in number in an email after you sign up.
Demand for public transit is rising everywhere -- but can we really make transit a viable mode when our cities and suburbs have been completely built around the private car? Daniel Lerch responds to a reader's comment about the realities of quickly upscaling transit, and whether or not next-generation electric vehicles are the answer.
Responding to a recent blog post of mine, a reader made this comment:
"anybody who thinks that public transport is scalable in the context of the physical infrastructure of the US within the time frame set by the coincidence of global climate change and peak oil is dreaming."
This raises an essential point about retrofitting our cities and suburbs for low-energy transportation. I've often thought that trying to make American / Canadian cities and suburbs less car-dependent simply by adding more buses, streetcars and light rail is like trying to make a bowl of chicken soup vegan simply by picking the chicken out. Dependence on private vehicles powered by gasoline is ingrained in nearly everything we've built over the last sixty years -- like the chicken broth in my chicken soup, car dependence is an inherent property of our settlements.
That said, it's not necessarily impossible to quickly scale up public transport across the US and Canada. Cities and, yes, suburbs throughout Western Europe have proven for decades that many people will opt for a mix of walking, bicycling and public transit over personal cars if the price is right and, especially, if the trip quality is superior. For local buses and rail, that means headways well under fifteen minutes, and a whole experience that is safe, reliable, fast, and clean. For bicycling that means extensive networks of dedicated, wide, uninterrupted paths with minimal stops, and secure, covered parking at destinations.
So high and medium-density urban areas can boost their transit and bike systems in just a few years. But what about the countless low-density urban and suburban areas where low densities and sprawled layout make even buses infeasible? Rather than the usual approach of building a light rail station surrounded by a lot of parking, these areas could benefit rather quickly from a combination of improved bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure, hybrid transit services like the 'Smart Jitney', and modern car-sharing, all with an eye to serving a nascent but steadily growing bus network, and absolutely with densification (or perhaps re-ruralization) in the long-term plan.
Back to the original comment: The reader went on to suggest that mass production of a new generation of electric vehicles would be the best solution to our transportation conundrum.
On this I disagree. We face rapidly rising costs and looming scarcity of petroleum products, natural gas, steel, and many other essential industrial resources. It just doesn't seem economically feasible to manufacture, sell, maintain and service hundreds of millions of units of a whole new generation of personal vehicles plus the required supporting infrastructure.
To be sure, there are some suburban and rural areas of the US and Canada that will have no choice but to shift to private electric vehicles -- and they're going to have serious economic and social equity issues if they're not careful in how to go about making that shift. For the rest of society, personal electric vehicles will indeed have a role, but they'll likely be most feasible in, again, car-sharing, which is growing and proving successful all over the western world.
We have limited time and resources to make an incredibly large shift in our land use and transportation patterns. We have roughly eight years to get our carbon emissions under control, and every month the 'peak' year of global oil production as discussed in even mainstream media shifts ever closer to 2010 (which is what we at Post Carbon Institute are projecting for the likely start of permanent decline). We need solutions that use existing technology and proven practices, that don't exclude middle- and low-income households already dealing with their own challenges with regard to rising costs.
Scaling up public transport in our sprawling cities and suburbs may well be a dream, but given the time we have, it may also be our only option.
