Eco-friendly Shopping

I wanted to share three websites that are like the amazon.com of the green fashion world.

The Find Green (see my search for skinny leggings)
The Green Loop
Embodies

There's also the boutique Beklina, which is kinda pricey and hipster, but I still like.

Today I went to Target and managed to only buy contact solution, eye drops, honey mustard pretzels, and organic cotton sheets, so I am feeling pretty good about my sustainable purchasing resolution. I did my research on the sheets first though.

I totally wanted these:or these:
both from Pottery Barn, but they seemed kinda pricey and I doubt Zeb would have gone for the floral or outrageous patterns. There are incredibly mixed reviews for the Target sheets that I got but they seemed fairly reasonably priced, and feel nice and smooth. We will have to see if they pill or otherwise crap out on me after being washed.

Oh, and bonus, I biked to Target with a friend and it was a lovely day. We sat by the lake and ate ice cream and talked for a long time, and our dresses did the Marilyn Monroe thing.

Warning: Post Includes Talk about Tampons

The other day my friend loaned me an organic tampon and said that she'd heard that normal tampons have fiberglass in them to increase bleeding. (!!!) You know, so that the company sells more tampons?

Anyway, since that sounded totally absurd, I decided to sleuth a bit and according to a reputable looking source, (and the back of my box of tampons) there is no fiberglass in tampons but there can potentially be dioxins, which could potentially cause cancer, eventually. The dioxins can come from the bleaching process or from a rayon-cotton blend, or even from pesticides used on the cotton when it is growing. This is either dangerous because you are putting them on a very absorbent part of your body for quite awhile, repeatedly, or not something to worry about because there are dioxins & pesticides & harmful chemicals everywhere so the tiny amount in tampons are chump change. The latter view is the official FDA line, and I think I'll go with that, since I'd rather not worry about it.

Myth-Busting!

I frequently get into discussions with friends during which it becomes clear that someone is Totally Wrong about some fact, but no one knows enough to truly disprove them.

For example, canker sores are nasty little sores on the inside of your mouth or on your gums or the inside of your cheeks. They are NOT in fact "cold sores" which are caused by a variation of the Herpes simplex virus and are recurring and on the outside of your lips. Canker sores are caused by a variety of random things, like food allergies/sensitivities, rough toothbrushing, stress, and lack of sleep. The Mayo Clinic (the ultimate source) also recommends switching to toothpaste with no sodium lauryl sulfate, which actually works, I think. Tom's of Maine makes some, but they were pricey so we got Weleda's Salt Toothpaste which is good but makes you thirsty, and Peelu toothpaste which Zeb hates because it has weird fibrous bits in it but I think is not that bad.

Maldives & Afghanistan, Tourist Destinations of Choice

So I read that the Maldives are the lowest-lying nation in the world. Climate-change experts are debating whether or not rising ocean levels will sink the Maldives under the sea, and the ruler of the Maldives has had a lot of ideas to save his country: building up sea walls to buying land from another country to relocate when it becomes unlivable. This proclamation that the Maldives will be gone in 100 years (or decades, or something) has been great for tourism, and I can see why!

I checked out couchsurfing.com and it looks like there are several young-ish males ready to welcome travellers into their homes for free! I've never tried using an internet site to facilitate my couch surfing, but my former roommate Willy says he allowed couch-surfing strangers to stay in our former apartment after I left, and that they were cool and it all turned out fine. No stolen candlesticks, no harrassed roommates. So I'd give it a try, especially if it meant I could go to the Maldives for free.

I started feeling this tourist-dollars-friendly sense of urgency to travel when I saw an amazing book of photography at Powell's about Afghan refugees returning home to their destroyed country. There were photos of people standing in front of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas. They used to look like this:Now they look like this:(I got these pictures from Wikipedia). It's a spooky picture, and a terrible loss. I mean, the pictures of people standing in the rubble of thier homes is even more sad, but it makes you think. My immediate reaction is: I need to see these places before they disappear! But then, where is next? And how can you know? Surely the people on the coasts of the Indian Ocean in 2004 didn't suspect that they would be next.

I'm sorry. This is all getting rather dark. I meant just to put pretty pictures of the Maldives!

Mucha

As you should know, I love Art Nouveau. Alfons Mucha, Toulouse-Latrec, Gaudi, Klimt, Victor Horta, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Jules Cheret, Privat Livemont. This amazing poster is by Mucha and exemplifies the style I like pretty well. In addition it's about bikes, so you can't really go wrong.