Did you know that you could lower your carbon footprint by investing some time in your kitchen making your own personal care products?
The beauty about making your personal care products is, firstly, you lessen your environmental waste from throwing out single use plastic, and secondly, you have the luxury to customize your own ingredients that you know work for you.
As previously mentioned in our first article, Waste-Free DIY Body Care Recipes, it’s best to buy your raw ingredients from a package-free store. Simply bring your own recycled containers to take the raw ingredients home. If you don’t have access to a package-free store, an all-natural products store will do just fine as well. To still help reduce waste, buy your raw ingredients in bulk. This is more economical and will lower your waste as opposed to if you bought your raw ingredients in smaller quantities.
Mouthwash
Making your own mouthwash is surprisingly easy and only takes a few ingredients. Additionally, you get to avoid all the questionable ingredients known to be found in commercial and store-bought mouthwash such as artificial coloring, alcohol, parabens, formaldehyde and even sugar!
You can get away with just 3 basic ingredients to create this mouthwash, but we like to sweeten things up and mellow out the mint with some sweetness from xylitol, which is an all-natural ingredient prized for its oral health benefits such as promoting remineralization in the tooth as well as preventing tooth decay. The main ingredients, baking soda alkalizes an acidic mouth protecting your tooth enamel while the essential oil gives your mouth that fresh feeling!
Ingredients:
- 2 cups distilled water
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 10-15 drops spearmint/clove/peppermint essential oil. You can mix and match too!
- Optional: 1 tablespoon xylitol
Method:
1. Place all the ingredients in a recycled glass bottle with a lid and shake until all the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated.
2. Use as you would conventional mouth wash; swish and spit!
Morning and Evening Body Scrubs
Body scrubs are a luxury in a bathing ritual and leave skin feeling fabulous thanks to the exfoliating and moisturizing benefits. Save yourself some cash and save the environment from empty plastic body scrub containers by making your own at home. It’s ridiculously easy, and if you jazz it up with a fancy recycled glass container, your homemade concoction can even feel more luxurious than store-bought versions.
Since body scrubs are incredibly easy to make, we have here two recipes that utilize the benefits of aromatherapy. We have a morning invigorating salt scrub to help perk up your senses to get your day going and an evening tropical body scrub to soothe your senses to help you unwind and destress after a long day.
Lime Morning Salt Scrub
Ingredients:
- 1 cup sea salt
- ½ cup Jojoba Oil
- 5-10 drops lime essential oil
- 2 tablespoons vegetable glycerin
Tropical Evening Body Scrub
Ingredients:
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ cup coconut oil
- 5-10 drops Vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons vegetable glycerin
Method:
1. In a mixing bowl, mix together all the ingredients
2. Transfer the scrub to a wide brimmed container and keep it in the bathroom
3. Simply scoop out the salt scrub anytime you want to use it
Muscle Soothing Calming Bath Soak
Another luxury in the bath, we frequently find bath salts as one of the higher priced items in the personal care aisle to achieve that soothing and muscle relaxing feeling. Bath salts tend to come in beautiful containers as well, which sadly get thrown away. For a more eco-friendly option, keep those containers and refill it with your own custom made salt soaks instead.
This salt soak is a remineralizing and detoxifying experience with the added benefit of aromatherapy. We double up on the detoxifying and soothing properties by combining Epsom salt with sea salt and lavender essential oil with chamomile.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup Epsom salt
- ¼ cup sea salt
- 2 tablespoons chamomile tea leaves, emptied from the tea bag.
- 10 drops lavender essential oil
Method:
1. Mix all the ingredients together until well incorporated
2. Transfer to airtight containers
3. When it’s time to relax, scoop out 1-2 large handfuls into your tub before soaking
Do you recycle containers and create your own personal care products? Help protect the environment more by sharing your personal care product recipes and tips on how to reuse empty containers in the comments below.
