Hi, I'm Wouter, 22 years old and I study at TU Delft. I've been working for Grace is Green for a while now and I really enjoy writing blogs and other texts for the website. Yet, my lifestyle can't exactly be called green. As a student, you obviously tend to go for the cheap and easy options. Over the coming weeks, I'm going to find out how I can start living a bit greener. I'll do this by testing various products from the Grace is Green webshop. Today part 1: Personal care.
Yes, which products am I actually going to test if the webshop consists largely of women's and baby products? Luckily, there are plenty of things for men who don't have a baby on the agenda just yet. Personal care is, of course, important for everyone, and there are many ways to do it in an ecological way.
For soap, I chose to test the Banbu soap bar. This is available in 2 variants and, since I don't have oily skin as far as I know, I tested the normal variant. As you can see in the photos, the packaging of the soap bar is already nicer than any other soap I have ever used. Because the packaging is recyclable, the product is completely zero-waste, so my first step towards a green lifestyle has officially been taken.
Before showering, I looked into how best to use such a soap bar, and it turned out that a sisal bag was a good addition. I didn't know what sisal was, but thanks to Wikipedia I found out that it is a natural fiber from the agave plant, which is also used for ropes, brushes, and dartboards. Apparently, they are also used to make a kind of washcloth, and those are therefore ideal for putting a soap bar in. When washing with the sisal bag containing the soap bar, the skin is cleaned by the soap's lather, and dead skin cells are removed by the rough structure of the sisal bag. Sounds good, in theory!
In practice, it took some getting used to. The bag was a bit rougher than I had expected, which made me feel like I was removing not only dead skin cells but also all my living ones. Fortunately, that wasn't as bad as I thought, and once I got the hang of it, I actually liked that it scrubbed a little. After showering, my skin really felt nice and clean, and you could feel that it was a bit healthier due to the scrubbing.
I dried off with the bamboo fiber towel from Pandoo, which is just a genuinely nice, good-quality towel that you can also very easily take with you on holiday, for example. This is because it dries super fast and is also very light, making it easy to take anywhere with you.
Conclusion: If green living is this easy, then it's all going to work out! Nice, high-quality soap, a lovely sisal bag, and a great drying towel. I am definitely going to use these products more often in my daily life, and I don't really even have to change my normal routine for that. I'm curious if it will be just as easy for the next products!
See you later!