Environmental Diva

I spent quite a bit of time in the cosmetics aisle at Whole Foods today.  I was looking for a natural shampoo that doesn’t smell horrible, but was quite unsuccessful.  It wasn’t a complete loss because I found a new nailpolish alternative!  (Their claim, not mine.)

The No-Miss “Healthy Alternative Product” nailpolish is brought to you by No-Miss, Ltd. (They look scary, don’t they? I mean, what’s up with that makeup and what on earth possessed them to use a photo where the guy is holding his cell phone to his ear?  If this picture had been on the brochure, I probably would have skipped the product. Hmm, this site reeks of oddness - notice the URL?)

Product Review:

Price: $6.99 at Whole Foods

Color: Bunnell Blush (the picture looks nothing like the actual, which is a light silvery pink)

Packaging: It’s in a regular looking nailpolish bottle.  The nice thing about it is that there isn’t any extra packaging - just the bottle and the sticker on the bottom.

Animal Testing: Another miss on the does and doesn’t test on animals list.  VeganEssentials claims it neither has animal ingredients nor does animal testing.

Product Quality: I’m about to put on a third layer of polish.  Maybe it’s the wrong color for me, or maybe it’s not as good as regular nailpolish.  I can’t tell.  It does dry very quickly, in fact, it’s probably the quickest drying nailpolish I’ve ever used.  The application is smoother and thinner than regular nailpolish - not thick and goopey.  Other than feeling the need to put on three coats, there is no visible difference between it and a regular nailpolish.  Some things to note:  it does NOT have the overwhelming stench of other nailpolish brands.  I guess that’s because it doesn’t have formaldehyde, toluene, dibutyl pthalate, or camphor.

Colors: Tons and tons, you have to see them for yourself.

Durability:  Hard to tell, but I’ll get back to you on that one.

Comments from others: Here’s a great review from Pragmatic Woman, who also notes that it’s sold on lots of vegan websites, which I can verify is quite true!

Conclusion:  Don’t look at the No-Miss website, and you’ll love the product.

I’ve never been a Spice Girls fan, but I’ve developed a fascination for Posh Spice after the hype from her move to Cali.  It’s not that I care whether America likes her, it’s that she’s consciously trying to win us over.  Of course, divas don’t like competition, so I secretly hope she fails. 

It’s a morbid interest, I know.  I blame it on too much free time.

I have no reason to consider any of the Spice Girls as particularly environmental, so imagine my surprise on seeing them on Treehugger.  Further imagine my glee at their spectacular failure - at least in the environmental department. 

Just a brief synopsis: Virgin Records is donating a Lear jet to each of the Spice Girls for their tour.  That’s 47,500 tons of carbon dioxide between the five of them.

I’d say they’re living up to the diva hype.  What a waste - in all ways.

Some of you kindly (note the sarcasm) mentioned the problem with CFLs is the mercury content and that I didn’t discuss that in my last blog entry.  So, I’ve taken the criticism to heart and the result is the Environmental Smack Down Challenge.

Environmental Smack Down Diva (ESDD): *in best announcer voice* Welcome to the Environmental Smack Down Challenge. I’m your host, Environmental Smack Down Diva.  Before we begin, let me introduce you to our contenders.

(ESDD gestures to one corner.)

ESDD: In this corner we have CFLs and huge amounts of energy savings!

(ESDD gestures to another corner.)

ESDD: And in this corner we have the big bad and brawny Mercury myth!  They’ve skirmished.  Fought. Passed out. And resurfaced, and today they meet again for the final smackdown.  CFLs, Mercury myth, take your places.

(CFLs and Mercury myth meet in the middle of the ring, shake hands, square off.)

ESDD: Just to go over a few rules - no hanky panky, no shattering glass, and no spilled mercury.  We want a clean fight here.  You know the rest!

Bell:  DING!

ESDD: Mercury myth pulls a newspaper out of his glove, The Ellsworth American, and tosses it to CFLs.

Mercury myth: Take that!  Mercury levels in that broken bulb were over 6 times the normal level.

ESDD: Mercury myth references an article about a woman who received a $2k estimate for cleaning up a broken CFL.

CFLs: You’ll have to do better than that to take me down. I have this!

ESDD: CFLs throws down the gauntlet!  It’s an official-looking report!

CFLs: The analysis numbers from Maine!  The mercury levels were only high where the bulb shattered, and even that dissipated to normal levels over a short amount of time. I’d say that trumps your lousy and outdated article!

ESDD: CFLs brandishes the report in Mercury myth’s face.  It’s a report from the government of Maine that lists the mercury levels found at the woman’s house after she broke a CFL.  The results were within normal limits except for the area where the bulb shattered.  But further tests showed mercury levels returned to normal levels before a second test was completed.  Mercury myth can’t take the proof and falls to his knees!

Mercury myth: B-but Energy Star says you have to recycle CFLs.  It’s so much work and people are so lazy! Plus, you have to take special precautions if you break one!

ESDD: CFLs is hovering over Mercury myth.  It looks like…, yes…, CFLs is delivering his famous knockout punch! 

CFLs: [swings] You’re done for Mercury myth!  Energy benefits far outweigh your measly mercury levels, so says Australia, Ontario, and treehuggers everywhere!

ESDD: You heard it here folks, the energy savings for CFLs is higher than the risk of mercury.  Just remember to dispose of your CFLs properly and be careful if you break one.  CFLs have a long life, so when it comes time for you to replace your bulbs in the next few years, use Energy Star’s guidelines.   This is Environmental Smack Down Diva saying Good night and good recycling.

Special thanks to the most famous debunker of all, Snopes, and especially their Light Fingered page.

By now you’ve seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” and if you haven’t - shame on you. After turning the DVD player off, did you run out to buy CFLs to replace your lightbulbs?   

I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” with a group of like-minded environmental types.  After the movie finished, we turned on the lights, and people started chatting.  Here are some snippets:

Guy 8*: After my wife saw the movie, she ran out and bought CFLs to replace all the light bulbs in our house.

Gal 4*: I’m going to stop at the store on my way home to get them for my house.

CFLs became the “get rich quick” scheme of less energy usage.  First of all, CFLs have been around for years.  Second of all, what about this:

Do you see how much packaging was put into these babies?  I love going environmental, but these lightbulbs are a physical manifestation of an oxymoron.  They may save on energy, but look at the packaging. It’s like a riddle of the chicken and the egg variety, only this one goes something like this:

Which is worse, CFL packaging or an incandescent bulb?

Sure, the savings over the lifetime of the bulb are probably greater, but shouldn’t they extend the environmentalism one step further and include the packaging? 

With that thought in mind, I scoured the internet and found this idea for reusing the packaging to store burned out bulbs.  It’s a great idea, but I’d have to hold on to the packaging for years before one of my CFLs burns out.  I’m trying to reduce clutter, not add to it. 

No, the real solution is to package CFLs like other lightbulbs - sans the plastic.  Lucky for me, I found some CFLs at lowes with this kind of packaging:

Hurray for lucky divas everywhere! 

And lucky for the rest of you, CFLs really do reduce energy usage, as this guy says in his summary of what we want to know about CFLs. 

They also save you money.  I’m all for that.

Diva on out, yo

*These numbers have no meaning.

You found me! I’ll admire your typing skills as we ponder your environmental diva edification (e-diva-cation, get it?). Let’s start simple with the black-screen/white-text-reduced-energy phenomenon.

The idea behind this phenomenon is that black backgrounds and white text use less energy to load on a page. Hence, environmentaldiva’s black background (although black and white was too undiva-ish and I had to have pink somewhere, right?).

Moving on.

The black-background/white-text phenomenon has been blogged about quite a bit, including this entry by prissycook (a delightful read, I suspect she’s a bit of a diva). And treehugger.com (probably anti-diva), of course, covers it. However, skeptics abound, as demonstrated here with this Google post that debunks the energy-saving notion. It includes links to the sites that do the real debunking, but beware the poor grammar if you click some of the other links.

Where does this leave me with my black background and pink text? It’s not quite diva enough for me, but I’m keeping it as a visual indicator that I support energy reduction (for now, but a diva can change her mind).

Signing off,

Go, go, Diva, go!