My worst, non-green beauty habit is probably nail polish.
As a kid I used to bite my nails. I don’t bite them now, but I do mess around with them when I’m stressed. Nail polish stops me for some reason – maybe I think, “Hey I took the time to paint them, why mess them up” you know? Plus, I sort of adore the look of pretty polishes and sparkles on my nails.
That said, nail polish and nail polish removers, as a rule, suck for the environment. It’s not a very green beauty habit to have. Most commercial brands of nail products have all sorts of harsh chemicals; not good for your body or the earth. Production and disposal of said toxic chemicals pollutes our water, soil, air, and most have been shown to be harmful when inhaled (and none of us casual nail painters wear masks). To top it off, because the containers are glass, you’d think you could recycle them, but the layers of stuck on chemicals makes this difficult to impossible. Lastly, many nail polish companies test on animals.
So as far as bad green habits go, I nailed a pretty big one (pun not intended).
What to do….
You basically have two choices.
- Go natural.
- Find a green option.
Since going natural is not my style when it comes to nails, I’m usually on the lookout for cool green nail products. It used to be really hard to find any decent polishes in good eco-form, but it’s gotten better.
One polish I just heard of is Nail Paint by PeaceKeeper. PeaceKeeper nail paint has a lot going for it, such as…
- Rated 3 (low moderate hazard) out of 10 (hazardous) by Skin Deep. That makes their polish the current best rated paint based non-FD&C nail polish.
- Full ingredient disclosure on their website.
- Most of the colors are vegan friendly.
- “PeaceKeeper has given one half of one percent of its gross revenues to urgent human rights issues each year since it has launched“ The also give all proceeds from their million kisses campaign to charity. By now, they’ve given “Over $55,000 in cash donations and $30,000 in products to women-focused non-profits for their silent auctions.“
- Pretty colors… I want to try Paint Me Luminous and Paint Me Grateful (I starred them below).
They also offer a natural, biodegradable, vegan, Eco-Easy Nail Polish Remover. Too bad they don’t have a blue polish (I have a thing for lavender and blue polishes). Still, the product looks great. I’ll have to give these paints a whirl at some point soon, and get back to you with a review. Have you tried PeaceKeeper? Let me know what you think.
OH, and it might also be cool if you share your worst, non-green beauty habit… Then I won’t be so alone in my guilt.
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