Just ask my partner and she’ll tell you that finding green beauty products in a retail store can be an incredibly frustrating experience and even when you do find them the store staff usually have no information about the products other than what might be found on the packaging.

My partner will also tell you that a lot of beauty products that are labeled as being green contain things that you really wouldn’t want to put on your skin and after reading a list of some of the things that can be used in these products … including things like toxins and sulfates … and discovering that there’s not much in the way of regulation for these products I’m not sure that I’d even want them in my house.

But simply because genuine green beauty products are hard to find doesn’t mean that you should give up looking for them and settle for second best. They are out there and you will find them if you search for them online.

And now there are specialty retail stores specializing in green beauty products that are beginning to open around the country that will stock these items. Look for them in your city and if you find one tell your friends about it and encourage them to buy their beauty products from them.

If you’re in Los Angeles look for Green Line down on Melrose for a store that stocks only the purest ingredients.

More and more of these stores will begin to appear when people begin to realize that there is a demand for genuinely green beauty products. You can help generate that demand by telling your friends, neighbors and the people you work with about the store and the benefits of using environmentally friendly beauty products.

And if you want to find out more about environmentally friendly beauty products then this site and this site will be able to tell you more.

Over on the blog you may have noticed that I’ve become more than a little interested in eco-friendly sustainable clothing.

For people of my era and even my children’s era whether or not the material that went into clothing was eco-friendly or not was of absolutely no importance at all. The only things that we cared about were whether it was comfortable to wear, was it easy to wash, did we have to iron it and perhaps … for some of us … was it stain resistant or not. If it ticked all the right boxes then what the item of clothing that we were buying was made from really didn’t matter much.

Of course these days things are becoming very different and, while a lot of people still don’t give much thought to what the fabric is made from, there are a growing number of people who are taking notice of what materials their clothing is made from. More and more people are becoming environmentally aware and they’re thinking about choosing clothing that comes from sustainable resources and is eco-friendly.

That’s certainly where my partner and I are up to and we’re beginning to look at clothes and consider the sustainability of the fabrics that are going into those clothes. And that’s why I’ve become very interested in clothes made out of bamboo.

If you haven’t seen them before you’re probably wondering what on earth I’m talking about … clothes made out of bamboo? Nobody could make clothes out of bamboo! Don’t worry, I used to think that too but now I know better … you really can buy clothes made from bamboo and by all reports bamboo clothing is among the softest available.

So how do they turn those great big clumps of long sticks that live in the tropics and can be quite invasive if you try and plant them into fabric that’s as soft as the softest fabric you now wear?

Well you have to look beyond the hard outer exterior of the bamboo canes and look at the soft material on the inside of those canes and the bamboo leaves too. That’s where the bamboo that goes into clothing comes from.

The first step in turning bamboo into clothing involves pulping the leaves and those soft inner fibers. The thick pulp is then put through a process of crushing and mixing until what’s left is a much finer pulp than what was present at the beginning.

The fine pulp is then spun into an incredibly fine fiber and that is turned into yarn and the yarn is used to make the clothing. Most clothing that is marketed as being made from bamboo is not 100% bamboo but includes perhaps as much as 30% cotton and, in some cases, a small amount of Lycra as well.

Why bamboo clothing is good for you?
It’s interesting to note that there are some added benefits of wearing bamboo clothing that go beyond the environmentally-friendly benefits. Bamboo clothing absorbs perspiration far quicker than any other fabrics and it’s a very good insulator as well. In warm weather it breathes so it helps to keep you cool while in cold weather it helps to keep you warm.
Bamboo clothing is also very anti-static so it doesn’t cling to you and you’re not going to build up a lot of static electricity on a cool and windy day.

Why bamboo clothing is good for the environment?
Unlike cotton bamboo doesn’t need pesticides to keep it free of insects and disease and it doesn’t need any encouragement from fertilizers to help it grow either. The growing time of bamboo is much less too and unlike other organic plants that produce material bamboo is cut and not uprooted so there’s no loss of soil quality and the plant will regrow.

The amount of water needed to grow cotton on the current commercial scale is HUGE but bamboo requires very little water in comparison. The amount of labor that goes into growing bamboo is far less than what is required to grow cotton and the yield from bamboo is much much greater than the yield from an equivalent area of cotton.

At the moment you can’t just head down to your local department store and pick up a couple of shirts and a sweater or maybe a blanket made from bamboo but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of bamboo products on the market for there certainly are even though they may not be stocked in your local stores.

In some ways that just means that buying bamboo clothing is even more environmentally friendly for instead of driving to the department store and using fossil fuel in your car and generating all those emissions you can just shop online for whatever you want and cut your emissions.

Bamboo clothing seems like a win/win situation for us and for the environment so the next time you need some new clothes do a search online for the environmentally friendly bamboo clothing and discover all the benefits for yourself.

As a grandparent … I won’t tell you how many grandkids my partner and I have because … well I hardly believe it myself … but just think in terms of a lot … I’m becoming more and more interested in sustainable clothing for kids and babies.

Of course I’d been thinking in terms of clothing made out of cotton and couldn’t really picture much else as being sustainable and suitable for kids till I found this site and that led me on to Baby Bambu. You might think that’s a strange name but it’s actually rather appropriate because they produce baby clothes made out of bamboo.

Yes, bamboo … that stuff that grows in big clumps in the tropics and looks like a bunch of sticks is actually the same material that is used to produce environmentally friendly baby clothing. Frankly I’m astounded that clothes can be made out of bamboo but somebody has discovered a way of doing it and the bamboo clothing I’ve seen so far looks great.

The items that really caught my eye for our latest granddaughter … she’s just six weeks old … were some one-piece romper suits. They’re described as light-weight, softer than cotton and they can be worn as a pajama or as a play suit.

The manufacturer does warn that some shrinkage may occur after washing but if that does happen all you have to do is dampen the romper suit and gently pull it out to its original length. It sounds ideal for babies whose moms want to be environmentally friendly and give their kids some real comfort in their clothing.

Baby Bambu has quite a range of environmentally friendly baby clothes made from bamboo including a sleeping gown, baby pants, a hooded blanket, fleece blanket, hats and socks so they’re definitely worth looking at.

Whoa!! Did you notice how cold it was when you went outside this morning? Even down here where I live where it’s usually quite pleasant at this time of the year but this morning is was very cool so it must have been pretty cold for you guys up north.

If it’s this cold now then what’s it going to be like come winter and that got my wife thinking about the grandkids and what to buy them in the way of clothing … as she does every couple of months. We’ve got a bunch of little ones and they all live in places where it does get cold in winter so she went looking for organic baby clothes to keep them warm this winter and here first stop was here.

From there she went on to Snug Organics … they’re a business that makes baby clothes from organic materials and this winter they’ve got just what our grandkids need. Snug Organics says that their philosophy is “to provide a pure and healthy product for pristine babies and toddlers and to produce it in an environmentally and socially responsible way”.

They go on to say that they’re mission is “to reduce consumption and encourage reuse by creating unisex designs that are multifunctional and can be passed on.” Well that sure did resonate with my wife because our kids already have the ‘pass-it-on’ thing going and warm organic clothing that we buy now will still be going the rounds in a couple of years time.

So what are you doing for baby clothes this winter? Are you going to be environmentally friendly and buy clothes from makers who care about the environment and produce clothes that will last? Of course you’ll probably pay a little more but isn’t that better than buying something that won’t last the winter?

I was wandering around the environmentally friendly blog world the other day when I cam across a mention of eco-friendly swimsuits on another blog that you will find here.

Now I have to admit that the thought of a swimsuit as being even vaguely environmentally friendly was a bit of a stretch of the imagination for me. After all today’s fashion statements in swimsuits and bikinis are made from materials such as Lycra and spandex and you could hardly call those environmentally friendly or produced from sustainable materials.

However that doesn’t mean that you have to compromise your green principles if you want to look good by the pool or on the beach. It seems that my imagination is a little limited for there really are environmentally friendly swimsuits out there that come from some very talented designers and they really are the height of fashion.

So what can we classify as an environmentally friendly swimsuit? Well it seems that the inclusion of repurposed and recycled materials is enough to qualify a swimsuit as being environmentally friendly and some of those recycled materials may astound you.

How about a polyester bikini made from recycled soda bottles? Yes one of the leading eco-friendly swimwear designers produces a stunning line of bikinis using recycled soda bottles.

Bamboo is another unusual material that you might not expect to find in a swimsuit but is a very popular material with eco-friendly swimwear designers. Soy is another medium used by at least one of the leading designers and recycled fabric … or vintage fabric as it seems to be known … is also a popular medium for swimsuit designers.

So as you can see, eco-friendly swimsuits certainly do exist so if you want to look good at the beach next summer without compromising your green principles then check out what’s available … the extensive range will definitely surprise you.

When I was a kid out on the farm you used old car tires or tractor tires as swings. Tie a rope through the tire, loop it up over a strong branch and you had a swing that could keep kids amused for hours.

Of course, even though I’m not that old, back then there weren’t nearly as many old tractor and car tires as there are today so disposing of old tires wasn’t as big a problem as it is now. Back then most tires went into landfill because we didn’t understand the need to be environmentally friendly. Sadly today many old tires still get dumped although that is beginning to change.

In some countries old tires are being dropped into coastal waters to form artificial reefs. These artificial reefs encourage growth in marine life and fish stocks and not far from where I live an artificial reef made up of tires and a number of old ships that have been scuttled form a reef that provides some of the best fishing on the coast.

While there are limits to the number of artificial reefs that you can have off a coastline there doesn’t seem to be any limit to the number of used car and tractor tires you can have. That means that the hunt is on to discover other environmentally friendly ways to recycle old tires.

One very forward thinking fashion designer has come up with a stunning collection of handbags and shoulder bags made from old tractor tires. When you see them it’s hard to believe that the materials used in these bags were once part of a huge tractor tire but that’s exactly where they came from.

Tires aren’t the only things from old tractors and cars that can be recycled into fashion items. A small jewelry company … Sword and Fern … produce some exquisite earrings made from recycled … or as they call it, ‘repurposed’ … car parts and you can see them here.

There are a growing number of fashion designers out there who are looking at ways of recycling so if you’re genuinely environmentally friendly you should be looking for the products these people are producing and encouraging others to buy their products.

Reusing, recycling and being environmentally friendly is very serious business. Let’s face it, the future of our planet depends on us being environmentally friendly in everything we because what we do now will affect our kids and their kids.

It’s so serious that some people are beginning to wonder if people without children should even be allowed to vote. Their thinking is that every person who has children should get one vote for each child they have because they’re going to be thinking about the future for their kids while people who have no children have no interest in the long-term future of the planet.

I make no comment on that idea but it’s interesting that some people are beginning to think so seriously about the long-term future on Earth.

There are others who are thinking about the long-term future of our planet and doing some very whacky things to encourage people to recycle … even their underwear.

Recently a bra maker in Japan distributed plastic bags to their customers in the hope that they would bring them back full of old bras … and many of them did. In fact they got around 3.5 tons of old bras back in those bags. The bras were to be turned into solid fuel and you can read more about it here.

Bras were also in the news in Queensland Australia where one man started collecting old bras in the hope of stringing them all together to form the world’s longest chain of bras and use it to help raise funds for breast cancer.

It took more than three years to collect over 166,000 bras that measured over 100 miles in length when they were all hooked together and that was more than enough to give him the record. All those bras will be recycled too with the ones that are still in good condition being donated to third-world countries.

Recycling is serious business but you can have some fun with it too.

If you do a search on Google for “eco friendly fashions” some of the first listings that you will come across refer to cotton clothing but is all cotton really eco-friendly?

Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries cotton plantations were relatively small and quite labor intense. Cotton plants are not naturally sturdy and require a lot of care and nurturing if they’re to produce a crop and labor wasn’t expensive back then so those small cotton farmers could survive.

However, as the cost of manpower increased the viability of those small farms suffered and these days modern cotton farms bear little resemblance to those early plantations. These days cotton is grown on broad acreage, machinery has replaced manpower and the care and nurturing is done with chemicals that definitely do harm the soil.

So much harm is done to the soil by those chemicals that it may take years for any other crop to grow if the farmer should decide that he wants to move out of cotton production. And then there’s cotton’s need for water … it needs lots of water right throughout it’s growing cycle and that means that cotton farms need a steady supply of water.

In Australia that need for water has led to cotton farms building dams on some of the biggest rivers in the country and once the flow of water down the rivers is reduced by those dams the rivers die. In Australia just one huge cotton farm has taken so much water from a major river system that wetlands, wildlife breeding areas and ecosystems have been damaged almost beyond repair.

So don’t be fooled by claims that cotton is eco-friendly. It’s definitely not as eco-friendly as some would have you believe and in some parts of the world it’s downright eco-vandalism. If you really want your clothing to be eco-friendly products then do some research before you go out to buy because not all cotton clothing really is environmentally friendly.