Think Dirty, Shop Clean: 20 Days of Sustainable Living Tips

20 Days of Sustainable Living Tips

This series is designed to showcase small, actionable steps that anyone can take in order to make your lifestyle more sustainable.  It doesn’t matter what level of sustainable living you are already on.  These tips are intended to help you more easily navigate this new “trend” of being kind to our earth.  Let’s work hard to make it more than a trend.  We can make it our lifestyle.  Learn daily tips here and on Facebook every week day in February 2017 during a live chat about the Sustainable Living Tip of the day.  Everything can be done in a sustainable way.  Let’s tackle a new sustainable living issue today!

Quick Facts:

• cosmetic companies don’t have to disclose ingredients and harmful chemicals that they use in your favorite products
• 3rd party ratings serve to inform us, the consumers, of what is inside the products we use.  Different 3rd party companies have different priorities and, thus, have different rating systems along with different products that they rate.
• your skin is your largest organ.  Things that you put on it can affect your entire body and your health.  Using products that have chemicals in them (even trace chemicals) can be dangerous and even cause cancer in some cases.

Think Dirty App – Sustainable Ratings at your fingertips

Think Dirty.  Shop Clean.  I use this app 9/10 times when I shop for products that could possibly contain toxic ingredients.  I even use it at trusted health and eco-friendly stores because greenwashing can be an issue.  Besides just being a rating system, the app allows you to instantly access the ratings while you’re out shopping.  You simply scan the bar code of the items you are considering purchasing, and a rating and explanation for the rating pops up.  If it doesn’t have a rating, you can help advance the app by simply taking 2 pictures and adding information about the product.  They will add it to the roster asap and share ratings for it once they’ve reviewed it.

Think Dirty Rating System

Think dirty specifically measures only the chemical content of each product.  According to their website, they “assess the overall risk of a given product based on the potential health impacts of its published ingredients. Each ingredient listed on the product label or manufacturer’s website is evaluated for documented evidence of Carcinogenicity, Developmental & Reproductive Toxicity and/or Allergenicity & Immunotoxicity…”  Here is a table of their Dirty Meter rating system:

The goal is to have products with a lower rating in the green range of 0-3.  These products have been found to be safer and contain little to no harmful chemicals.  Challenge: Download the app and scan all of the products you use to get an overall rating of your chemical intake today!

My overall bathroom shelf rating is a 3.

One of the products that I use that is marketed as a natural soap is actually given a 9 on the Think Dirty scale.  I was very shocked to discover that.  Overall, though, my products combine to give me a rating of a 3, which is on the low end of their Dirty Mete scale and still in the green.

Other Sustainable 3rd Party Rating Companies

• The Environmental Working group (ewg.org)
  • EWG focuses on six major areas: toxics, food, agriculture, children’s health, energy and water.
  • They advocate, activate (call to action) and advance green living
  • Use their Consumer Guides to learn about the best foods on a tight budget, top 12 toxic chemicals that alter hormones and how to avoid them in your products, and even a guide to safe sunscreen!
• B Corporation (bcorporation.net)
  • “B Corps meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability, and aspire to use the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems.”
  • Nearly any type of business can become a B Corp, if they meet the requirements.  This means that there are some hygiene and beauty companies that are B Corps, but it also encompasses a wider spectrum of businesses.  You can find sustainability consultants, IT companies, hotels and so much more!  Always remember, anything can be done sustainably!  B Corps verifies that with their system and shares so many different fields of professionals and products that meet their stands with us.

Think Dirty, Shop Clean – A sustainable challenge for you

1. Download the Think Dirty app (apple or android)
2. Go shopping as you normally do
3. Before you place one of your regular items in your shopping cart, scan the barcode on it.  Compare it to a few different products that have the same purpose (i.e. shampoo to shampoo, deodorant to deodorant)
4. Replace one of your favorite products with one that has a lesser toxicity rating than the one that you usually use.

If your normal products have great ratings, kudos to you!  If they don’t and you switch at least one product out for a new one, even better!  Use your purchasing power to tell businesses that create the products we need that we want them to be more green.  Green packaging, green practices, green products.  Make it all green!

Once you download the app, rate your everyday products and share your overall Dirty Meter rating with me in the comments below!

xoxo, dolls & dudes

Addie