The Eco Diva

The Eco Diva is addresses major beauty and style questions. She closely follows trends and products, and her aim is to collect useful and handy information on beauty within the parameters of 'good health'.

Some of the questions she's asking are - is a particular product good, is it healthy, could I do without the product? Are there safer and more viable alternatives? At the end of it all she, like many others, wants to live her life being more about the impact of her choices on the planet.

Making Kohl in the kitchen is easy. The commonest grandmother’s recipe in India is as follows – take a tiny piece of camphor or an almond. Set it alight. Hold a clean teaspoon over the flame to collect the soot. Your Kohl or Kajal is ready for single-time use!

Hair colour is a fashion necessity for many women, but it has many side effects. So what the Eco Diva does is to make her own hair colours in the kitchen, just like grandma used to! Here are some ideas --

A few really potent herbs such as henna and walnut hulls can be used to color hair naturally. But most herbal dyes are slow acting and have to be used often to reach the required shade. Some plant-based colorants darken, highlight or cover the grey.

You can make hair dyes from many ingredients which are normally in your pantry. Choice of ingredients will depend on what color you want your hair to be. Temporary coloring can be done by using food coloring or powdered drink mix. With these you can achieve various colors from yellow, red to blue. For grey hairs try the following recipe.

*Mix rosemary and sage in water.

*Allow it to simmer for 30 minutes.

*After removing from fire allow the mixture to steep for 2 to 3 hours.

*Apply on your hair with brush.

*Wash with normal shampoo.

With walnut husks and water too homemade dye can be prepared. After boiling walnut husks in water for 15 minutes, strain the mixture and apply on your hair.

Other natural hair coloring ingredients include cranberry juice, tea and henna. These are gentler on you hair than chemical preparations but they will typically create a temporary hair tint and do not last as long.

Early hair dyes -- Early hair dyes were made from plants, metallic compounds, or a mixture of the two. Bark, leaves, or nutshells of many trees. Some of these plant-derived dyes were mixed with metals such as copper and iron, to produce more lasting or richer shades.

In Europe and Asia Henna and Indigo combination was used to give hair light brown to black shade. Chamomile flower extracts were used to lighten hair. These ingredients are still used in herbal hair dyes and also as home recipes.

Source:http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Hair_Dye?utm_source=geetanjali _krishna&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=invite

Also see http://www.hairboutique.com/

The concept of Eco Fibres is not new -- Henry Ford of The Ford Motor Car Company wore a suit made of soy fabric in the 1940s. He even considered a car made of soy plastic.

The subsequent rise of man-made fabrics and plastics put the development of these fabrics on the back burner. As a result of this, not much has been heard of these natural fibres until recently. Recognition of the environmental damage caused by man-made fibres has resulted in the emergence of a large number of alternate yarns, and increasing numbers of producers and consumers are eager to explore these options.

Here are some interesting varieties of Natural Origin Eco-Fibres --

• A lot has been written about organic cotton. Cotton is arguably the world’s most comfortable and versatile fabric. Its present production technique however is extremely environmentally damaging. The growing of cotton uses 25% of the world’s annual pesticides employed. It is not only ecologically damaging, but also puts the lives of farmers and livestock at risk.
• Pakucho or Colour Grown Cotton is amazing precoloured Organic cotton that comes from a traditional Andean source. The cotton plant produces precoloured cotton that grows in the natural shades of white, tan, green, yellow, red, and brown. This cotton was unsuited to modern cotton spinning and weaving machinery and was not used as a result. It is only in the 1990s that this was employed to provide low impact, exceptionally lovely fibre. The most amazing thing about this is that colour grown cotton is actually colour fast! For more, go to Eco Fibres and Textiles and Colour Grown Cotton.
• Organic silk is silk that is cruelty, chemical and dye free. For the complete story of silk see Organic Raw Silk.
• Silk Noil is silk fibre reconstituted from waste silk and broken silk yarn. This is un-bleached and un-dyed and is available is various natural shades ranging from off-white to deep gold. For more, see Green Fibres and Textiles - from Denise Bird Woven Textiles.
• Ahimsa Silk, also referred to as Vegetarian Peace Silk.
• Alpaca Wool is a highly prized woollen fibre because of its natural hollow core. This provides superior insulation and warmth. The produce of Alpaca herds reared only for their wool (not their meat), in areas that are close to weaving and spinning centres would classify as Eco-Fibres. For more, visit Green Fibres and Textiles - from Denise Bird Woven Textiles.
• Organic Wool, according to the USDA or the United States Department of Agriculture, is wool that is sheared off sheep raised without hormones, grazed on land that has not seen pesticide usage and has not been overgrazed. Additionally, the sheep feed is required to be organic, and the rearing must be “under continuous organic management from the last third of gestation forward.” For more, visit Organic Wool Network.
• Bamboo is one of those amazing plants that needs very little water, fertilizers, is naturally regenerative and grows very fast… up to one foot per day. It is also naturally pest resistant. It can produce one of the world’s most exquisite fibres, silky, with a linen-like drape. It is therefore not surprising that it is extremely popular with the producers of green fabrics and clothing. Designers like Los Angeles based Kate O’Connor use it as a green alternative to silk. For more, see Designers Go Green With Sustainable Fabrics and How Green Are Bamboo Clothes?
• Qoperfina Copper is either high quality certified Organic Cotton or sometimes organic cotton mixed with organic Alpaca wool. This is in turn blended with 2% Angelina Copper Metal Fibres. The cotton has a SKAL or EKO certification as does the wool. Products with an EKO certification preclude chemical ingredients on either the land or in association with the animals raised thereon. The fabric is un-dyed, hypoallergenic and lightweight. The hollow fibre core affords great warmth and therapeutic qualities. Qoperfina is from a registered fair trade source. See Designers Go Green With Sustainable Fabrics.
• Hemp is one of the most versatile Eco-Fibres that there are. Uses of hemp range from fibres for textile products, animal bedding, plastics, paper pulp, clothing and building products. While the idea of hemp does evoke images of rope and dull home-spun clothes, nothing could be further from its modern day avatar! Hemp products include automotive accessories, cosmetics, animal bedding products, fabrics and textiles, papers, oil flavourings, lighter and stronger biodegradable polycomposites and many other products. Industrial Hemp is also very versatile. Almost all parts of the plant including the bast fibre, the hurd (inner stem fibres), the seed, the seed oil and other plant extracts are used in industry. See Fibre Products - Overview.
• Kenaf/ Mesta/ Hibiscus/ Rosella is a hemp-like member of the hibiscus family. The cellulose of Kenaf which is extracted for the production of green fibres. It is known to be one of the greenest alternatives to papermaking and has large commercial applicability. There is evidence that Kenaf was domesticated as far back as 5000 B.C. in Egypt. For the history of Kenaf see Kenaf. For more information about commercial Kenaf cultivation, see K.E.F.I..

• Sisal is a variety of hemp and is usually used to make floor coverings. It can be blended with cotton and wool and used in several applications including clothing. See The Sisal Rug Rated "Best Buy" in the Wall Street Journal.
• Jute is traditionally used to make rope and has a naturally coarse texture. The finer threads of jute are sometimes used to create imitation silk and it is being increasingly viewed as an alternative to wood-pulp paper. For more, see What is Jute?
• Sasawashi is a blend of Japanese paper and the Japanese kumazasa herb. It is a fabric that was introduced onto the fashion scene by the clothes designer Linda Loudermilk and is now made into many consumer products including towels. The drape of Sasawashi is very similar to Linen. See Designers Go Green With Sustainable Fabrics and Apartment Therapy.
• Nettle fishing drag-nets were used in Britain up to post-medieval times (see Fibres From The Earth. The fibre was used in the First World War as a substitute for cotton, to weave soldier’s uniforms. In recent times the nettle has made a come back and village communities in Nepal and India are weaving exquisite fashion accessories like bags and scarves for international markets.
• Ramie is a relative of Nettle and has been similarly used throughout history. A native of China, it is essentially a cloth fibre used as a substitute for cotton. It is also said to have anti-bacterial properties. For more information on Ramie, see New Crops.
• Coconut Fibre or coirhas any number of uses. It is used to make rope and yarn, aquarium filters, car seat covers, flower pots, used as a soundproofing material, as mulch for plant growing, to provide heat insulation, to make brushes, bristles, mattresses, door mats, matting, rugs and carpets. For more, see The Many Uses of the Coconut.
• Banana Fibre is made from waste banana trees, and is a completely natural, extremely strong fibre. An Australian technology enabling this also ensures that the final product uses no chemicals, bleaches or glues. The product uses banana sap as glue. Since the product does not work on a pulping technique, it uses very little or no (compared to 55,000 litres of water for every tonne of pulp paper). In addition, the machinery uses very little horsepower so the production can easily utilise solar and wind energy. The product is primarily directed at creating a packaging product. It is grease-proof, water and fire resistant, and totally bio-degradable, meaning it can be fed to livestock or fish after use.