McLinkey Blog Hop
August 14, 2009 by Tania
Filed under Worth Sharing
What my family thinks of PND!
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Pure Natural Diva is a place to come for information on Whole Living with Style!
About Me:
I’m a wife and mother living in Los Angeles. I spent hours researching product reviews, informational sites and labels trying to make green and organic decisions for my family’s health. Frustrated by the volume of online information and no central green resource, I created PureNaturalDiva.com. PND is my place to share what’s working for me, what’s not.
CHECK OUT DIVA GIVEAWAYS.
- Eco Friendly Back to School Kit – $40 Value!
OUR MOST POPULAR POSTS:
o Diva Guide – Use less plastic in your home
o More Vegetables Please? Getting your kids to eat Vegetables
o Diva Guide: Suncreen
o Diva Guide: The safest way to use plastics
o Shopping Bags – Get in the Habit of Bringing Your Own Reusable Bags!
o Organic Wine & Wine Making – The basics
o Diva Solution – Paperless Paper Towels
Click here to enter your link in the blog hop and view the entire list of entered links…
Family planning: A major environmental emphasis
August 12, 2009 by Tania
Filed under In the News
Did someone get a grant for this research? I don’t know why, but this report frustrates me. I feel like it sets environmentalists back when reports like this are done.
I can see the average American now “so now I have to give up my children – are you kidding me!”
Let’s focus our efforts on getting families to change their habits not their families size.
Clearly having no children would be better and we could all adopt to limit our environmental impact.
I’m rambling because I feel like reports like this are counterproductive. I’m open to being wrong… What do you think?
Family planning: A major environmental emphasis
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large long-term benefit – have one less child.
A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.
The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries. The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.
How to Make Foaming Soap
August 12, 2009 by Tania
Filed under Home, Recipes, Simple Solutions
How To Make Foaming Soap
Making your own foaming soap is so easy and inexpensive – Use our “how to many foaming soap recipe” as a guide! Anyone can do this! You’ll never wonder what is in your soap, plus an average family using one bottle of foaming hand soap a week will save an average of $180 a year.
How To make Foaming Soap: Supplies
The first thing you need is an aerating dispenser bottle.
Ours came from re-using a container from another brand. Method makes one, and I reused a bottle from Clean Well for a year. After a year or so you will notice the bottle begins to have a “skunky” smell, that is when I know it is time to replace the bottle with a new one. If there are effective ways to sanitize and remove the smell from the bottle that you know – please share because I’ve yet to figure it out!
Once you have your aerating dispenser bottle – you can make a variety of foaming soaps. The recipe we’re sharing is a Vanilla Orange Foaming Handsoap, but don’t be shy, select your favorite essential oils for fragrance and adding small amounts of your favorite oil for moisturizing.
How to Make Foaming Soap
Vanilla Orange Foaming Hand Soap Recipe
1 1/4 cup of water
2 TBS of Castille Soap – I used the Citrus. To create your own scent use unscented.
1/4 TSP of Olive Oil
3-5 drops of Vanilla Essential Oil
4-6 drops of Citrus Essential Oil
How to make foaming soap: Instructions
Combine the ingredients and in a measuring cup and use a funnel to pour into the dispenser. Soap will will dispense in an nice foaming lather… and if you kids use the whole bottle in 3 days, you won’t be furious!
Please let me know if you have any questions about How to Make Foaming Soap!
Climate Community – Rewarding Students, Teachers & Others for Eco Citizenship
August 10, 2009 by DanM
Filed under Green Living, Worth Sharing
The Climate Community – is a website/blog designed to do two things.
First – it is designed to provide parents, teachers and students a place to discuss Climate Change. Blog posts are written by the site founders, teachers, students, and others experts. The goal of Climate Community is to look at the big picture – without the noise that we see/hear so often in much of the press/media.
Secondly, the site is intended to provide a very grass roots level of recognition to people – again students, teachers, and others – who are trying to help. These awards – The Climate Community Citizen of the Week Award – is a $25 cash award that is given every Thursday. We look for interesting young people who have a passion for this topic and are trying in their local community to do the right thing. The awards are easy – there is no paperwork – we simply learn about an individual – chat with them – learn about what they have done or are doing – and within a few weeks they can be one of our winners.
As the school year gets started we are looking to reach out to schools, teachers and parents – if you are interested in what we are doing, may have a person in mind who could be one of our winners – please let us know. Simply send an email to dan@theclimatecommunity.com – be sure to let us know that you saw this on Pure Natural Diva – and make your suggestion or comment.
A special thanks to Tania for giving us this opportunity so “speak” with her friends and followers.
Castille Soap
August 7, 2009 by Tania
Filed under Musings, Savvy Living Guide
By Tania Reuben
What is Castille Soap anyway? Sounds strange. Sounds like something I don’t use.
My mom came for a visit a few years ago and wanted to be sure we had time to go to Trader Joe’s to buy some Castille Soap. I was not supportive. I have since become a fan.
What Is Castille Soap?
Castille Soap is a simple and pure vegetable based soap. Don’t let the name scare you. It originates centuries ago when soap was made in the Castille region of Spain from olive oil. By the early 1900′s the name Castille Soap had come to refer to vegetable based soaps.
This soap is pure enough that when you pick up the bottle the ingredients are simple and straight forward. Water, Saponified Coconut, Olive and Palm Oil, Hemp Oil, Jojoba Oil, Citric Acid, and Vitamin E.
The best known Brand of Castille Soap is Dr. Bronners. Dr. Bronner’s products score from 0-3 on the EWG list. And the Castille Soaps are typically a 2. Dr. Bronner’s is also Organic, fair trade and packaged in 100% post consumer recycled plastic. They are my brand of choice.
What do we do with this “Magic” (as Dr. Bronner calls it) soap?
- It’s a key ingredient in my All Purpose Green Cleaner. More cleaning formulas are coming! Check back often.
- I use it to clean my fruits and vegetables – add a few drops to a bowl, soak for a few minutes, rinse and enjoy.
- It can be used undiluted as a body wash and is gentle enough to use on your babies skin – my sister uses the unscented to clean her year old. Just be sure to use a few drops on a cloth, it’s very concentrated so you don’t need much.
- It can be used for laundry soap with a tsp of baking soda.
- I use it to make a foaming hand soap – I’m working on the exact formula – when I have it right I’ll let you know. In the meantime safe your foaming pump bottles when they are empty, you’ll need them for the foaming hand wash.
So there you have it. It’s not nearly as mysterious as it originally sounded. Now if my mom could have said “It’s a vegetable based soap named after the Castille region of spain” I might have converted years ago. A soap named after a region, sound very sophisticated. That sounds like something I have to try!
For the best selection, buy Dr. Bronner’s from Amazon.com
. You can also find it at local organic markets and even at Target.
For an interesting take on “Real Soap vs Fake Soap”, check this out:
Why does PND use EWG’s Cosmetics Database?
By Tania Reuben
A few of you may have noticed that I rely heavily on the EWG’s Cosmetics Database as a tool for analyzing products on PND.
You will notice that brand X has an average product rating of 6 or that a specific product has an EWG score of 4.
Many of you may wonder why?
Who has the educational background or the time to analyze all the products they bring into their home. Reading labels, especially personal care product labels in an effort to avoid the less desirable ingredients takes forever! Even if you focus on the top ten worst ingredients, it’s mind boggling. I personally leave the store feeling beat up every time.
When I finally found the Cosmetics Database I was thrilled. I could just input the name of a Shampoo and it would tell if it would be good for my family. Simple, if you don’t minding sifting through over 1800 Shampoos to find one you want to buy.
The Cosmetics Database uses information from a myriad of sources to determine the toxicity of a product. Ranging from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), CIR (Cosmetic Ingredient Review), FDA (Food and Drug Administration), IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) and so many others!
They take all the information on all the ingredients, cross reference it with all the information from global agencies and respected research groups, weight the information and have come up with a formula to analyze the ingredients and give each product a hazard score.
Basically, The Cosmetics Database does more detailed analysis than I could ever do!
You really don’t need me, wander over to their database and have at it. Analyze your own products and come up with solutions that work for your family.
The truth is, even with this fantastic tool that the EWG has provided, it’s extremely time consuming to go through and come up with answers. It’s too much information for the average person to wade through… thankfully I’m a little OCD and sadly I enjoy sifting through all the results.
Hopefully you and your family appreciate and benefit from the efforts.
Same blue dye in M&Ms linked to reducing spine injury – CNN.com
August 1, 2009 by Tania
Filed under In the News
My husband pointed this article out to me, hoping it would relax my position on the high fructose corn syrup laden Gatorade that comes into our home with an increased frequency during certain times of the year.
This looks like promising news for spinal cord injuries. They are saying that when the initial injury occurs, the body rushes ATP (described as the currency of life) to the area of injury, this surge of ATP kills the remaining healthy cells at the site of the injury, worsening the injury. For some reason, the blue dye inhibits the bodies release of ADP. Good news.
Of course – I can’t help but wonder if the blue dye is inhibiting the flow of ATP in a sick patient with a positive result – what is it doing to healthy cells in healthy people? My best guess is that it can’t be good.
Same blue dye in M&Ms linked to reducing spine injury – CNN.com.
New ‘Study’ Fails to Analyze Key Health Benefits of Organic Food – EWG
August 1, 2009 by Tania
Filed under In the News
You may have seen a recent study publicizing that Organic foods are not really better for us.
The EWG released this article in response:
New ‘Study’ Fails to Analyze Key Health Benefits of Organic Food | Environmental Working Group.
