Cleaning Out the Bathroom

Reading the back of your shampoo bottle these days can be a rather unsettling practice for many eco-friendly individuals. Tongue twisters such as “Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride” abound. In fact, there are 24 just as foreign ingredients in my own bottle of Suave, and having taken enough chemistry in my life to know a manufactured chemical when I see it, I wonder, what did people clean their hair with before these novel inventions?

Alongside the origin of this dubious compound, the entire sight of the bathroom is beginning to make me think a little more about what I can do to reduce the amount of manufactured chemicals I allow around my body, and down my drain.

There are some obvious solutions for more eco-friendly shower, including handmade soaps, and even using household ingredients to create your own cleansing agents. This not only allows you to know exactly what substances are keeping you clean, but also helps cut down on the amount of foreign chemicals that end up your home’s drainage system. Certain websites, such as Soap Natuarally.org also provide different soap recipes using the same ingredients you can find in the supermarket.

Some companies, like the European-based LUSH cosmetics, have also been jumping on the bandwagon and marketing to the eco-friendly niche. Many of their soaps have been labled as vegetarian and vegan for years. But even here the discerning customer must be careful, for while the ingredient list on the sweet-smelling “Happy Hippie” shampoo and body wash is confined to 13, some manufactured ingredients such as “Lauryl Betaine” still crop up.

But the rest of the bathroom still finds itself in the grip of prescriptions and antibiotics, which can be harder to let go of. At About My Planet.com one article provides four simple rules for keeping prescriptions out of the drain and some of the more dangerous compounds out of your body. Following these rules also includes disillusion with the merits of antibacterial soaps and cleaners. By destroying relatively harmless strains of bacteria most antibacterial soaps are actually promoting the growth of virulent, antibiotic resistant strains, which unlike their tamer counterparts, can cause severe heath problems.

Some of the best ideas for changing your cleansing routine are common-sense. Be aware of the compounds used in the cleansing and healing of your body. Like food, these products are ingested and absorbed into the body, making their understanding a part of overall health.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr.

AceFisch | My Bio & Articles

I am an junior English major/ Philosophy minor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Currently I am spending the spring of 2009 studying at the University College Cork in Cork, Ireland.