“A woman should wear fragrance wherever she expects to be kissed”-Coco Chanel
Laura Reynolds looks at some of the cheapest beauty products available
A quick survey of my housemates - obviously a highly scientific process - revealed that when we’re talking about the top five things you wouldn’t want to buy second hand, underwear and toilet roll were both up there. Also, for some reason I can’t quite fathom, bed posts scored pretty highly.
Of course, why you’d buy bed posts on their own is anyone’s guess, whether they were second hand or not. That’s probably a reflection on my housemates as much as it’s a reflection on second-hand goods.
So what can you do when there’s something you need that you wouldn’t buy second-hand, but still want to be eco-friendly about it? Well, you don’t necessarily have to buy something brand new, with all new materials and chemicals involved.
Take companies like Remarkable where you can buy stationery, clothes, badges, and various other bits and bobs, all sporting labels like ‘I used to be a plastic box’ and ‘I used to be a juice carton’. I have to say I find the phrase ‘I used to be a plastic bottle’ a bit disconcerting when it’s printed on the front of a t-shirt.
It’s either a difficult thing to understand – where’s the similarity between a plastic bottle and a cotton shirt? – or it’s a somewhat bizarre statement on your personal life; when did you decide that the plastic bottle life wasn’t for you anymore?
Anyway, flippant comments aside, buying recycled products has great effects for the environment. I can’t really comment on whether or not bed posts are better when they’re made from recycled car tyres – I suspect that’s probably a no – but things like notepads made from old plastic boxes are a brilliant invention. At the moment, there’s 46000 pieces of plastic floating around per square mile of the world’s oceans. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d prefer that old plastic boxes were getting covered in my mid-lecture doodles and note passing sessions than bobbing threateningly around some poor unsuspecting fish in the middle of the Pacific.
OK, so my little pictures of people tearing their hair out trying to understand basic economics are pretty poor in terms of artistic merit, but at least they’re not environmentally dangerous.
Obviously, there’s an unexpectedly high demand for decorative tin cars.
More often than not, buying recycled products can also be a chance to support small farmers and entrepreneurs in developing countries. The stock in Shared Earth on Minstergate for example, is most commonly both recycled and fair-trade. They sell a wide range of products, from necklaces and CD storage boxes, to miniature Volkswagen Beetles made from cans of Indian Tonic Water.
Those, incidentally, are made by groups of artisans in Madagascar, who’ve been able to buy rice fields and start farms with their earnings. Obviously, there’s an unexpectedly high demand for decorative tin cars.
On a subject close to my own heart this week, you can also buy recycled wrapping paper made by a cooperative called Get Paper Industry in Nepal, which helps provide employment, education and AIDS awareness to its members, while it also uses waste cotton and recycled paper to make its produce.
So, if you happen to be thinking about buying your lovely Eco-Warrior a birthday present this week and just don’t know what to wrap it in, that’s always an idea. Look at it this way: you’d be doing something good for the world. Not that I’m trying to subliminally play on your emotions or anything. Not at all.
Not even a tiny little bit.
I do have to wonder though if there are some ways where the recycled products might be taking things a little too far. I think this train of thought is probably down to what I uncovered when I was researching recycling on a cheery Friday night.
One of my housemates later pointed out that it was actually a good idea, and had its environmental merits, but personally I don’t think I’ll ever get over the initial shock of discovering ‘ecopods’. For the unenlightened, that’s what we call coffins in the recycled goods industry, apparently. They’re made from 100% recycled paper and are completely biodegradable, so there’s a plus for the environment. I have no intention though of telling you to go out and buy one just yet though.
Frankly, I don’t think any of us are quite ready for Eco-Warrior to get that morbid – me least of all.
That said, I will be quite upset if I turn 20 and no-one’s bought me that miniature Harley Davidson made of soup tins that I had my heart set on. I’m just not sure I’ll be able to cope with the heart-break, really.
Fetch me my ‘ecopod’.
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