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My plan up until recently to do my bit for the environment and Climate Change, was to buy an electric car. When I had enough money. Oh, and when they were available to be bought. That was the plan. But recently, I’ve had the feeling that this probably wasn’t going to be enough and that I was probably going to have to rethink this plan, even though it was brilliant and foolproof (right?)

So what could I do? Get a worm farm? Make a compost bin? Live in a teepee? Probably. But it’s not really my style. I’m more of an electric car kind of gal. So what if I could take a small, little baby step towards doing something for the planet AND have this little step make me look lov-ver-ly. TELL. ME. MORE.

Enter the growing market of ‘green’ beauty products. Organic ingredients, recycled plastics all that jazz. Now, I’m not going to pretend like this area of the market is new, not by any stretch, but it is an area of the market that I have avoided up until recently. The idea of organic beauty products had me thinking of sandalwood and hemp and facemasks made out of porridge and dreadlocks and hippies and Fremantle (sorry!) I guess you could say I was a little biased and a lot not interested. So when I first started using Dr Bronner’s line of beauty products these poor, poor items were really starting on the back foot. I’m not saying I didn’t want them to work, I just didn’t expect them to. For the purposes of this review I road tested Dr Bronner’s Liquid Soap, Dr Bronner’s Shaving Gel, Dr Bronner’s Organic Lotion and Dr Bronner’s Organic Lip Balm.

Shaving Gel.

Let’s start with the shaving gel because this had the biggest hurdle to jump- if any of you reading this are related to/the friend of a beauty therapist (in my case my sister) you would have probably had it drummed into you that shaving your legs is EVIL and should be stopped at once. Now, if my sister is reading this I’M SORRY, but sometimes you are in a rush and you just need to shave your legs so you just do it and ok you feel bad about it 3 days after but those first two days the rush you get from that smoothness wow is there anything like it? So even though I am a waxer, I totally shaved my legs for this review. PUTTING MY BODY ON THE LINE. And this product- totally great. Smells amazing (not like shaving cream which I think doesn’t smell so great), is nice and thick so it creates a good barrier that wont make you cut the hell out of your legs, leaves them feeling great afterwards (and the next day) and seriously if you do shave your legs all the time, you have to have something like this. Don’t just think shower gel or shampoo/conditioner will do. It won’t. It doesn’t. Stop doing it. Get this stuff. The lemon lime smell was really nice. I highly recommend.

Peppermint Lotion

Now, the lotion. The plus was that it was quite light so you didn’t feel all sticky afterwards and rubs in really well (and those are two really big ticks in my book) the minus was that the peppermint fragrance got a bit too sickly for me (the good news though is that it comes in Lavender Coconut, Orange Lavender and Patchouli Lime something for every nose.)

Castille Soap

However, I also tried the Liquid Soap in Peppermint and that was just perfect. The peppermint gives your skin a real zing after you use it to wash your face so that’s one product where I think I would definitely prefer the peppermint preference. Now, while we are speaking of this soap- allow me to spend a second on it. This soap has EIGHTEEN uses. 1-8. I couldn’t even get through them all, and I tried. The face cleaning properties were enough for me (I’m not green enough yet to use it to wash my house or clothes), but knowing it has eighteen different uses makes me kind of impressed while I am using it.

Orange Ginger Lip Balm

And last, but certainly not least, the lip balm. Ah…lip balm. How I love thee. I don’t think I am lying when I say that I have tried nearly every single lip balm on the market. I just love them so. The Dr Bronner’s version I tried was the Orange Ginger flavour and it smelt really nice (not too sweet) so nice in fact it kind of made me feel like I was eating carrot cake every time I put it on. This was another bonus and surprise, surprise it did the job. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it is just as good as Lucas papaw ointment. It doesn’t make your lips irritated and itchy afterwards like Carmex does to me or Lip Smackers (yeah ok I own ONE alright so don’t tease me it’s just one and I’m 90% sure it was a gift) and it doesn’t smell medical like Blistex. Tick tick and tick.

The last thing I need to bring up about all these products is the PRICE. The lip balm $2,99, Liquid soap $2.49, Lotion $9.99 and shaving gel $7.99!!! You guys, it’s so cheap!

I seriously am wondering how Dr Bronner even makes any money.

Ok so it doesn’t have the fanciest, sexiest packaging (although there’s something serious about it which I like) but does it matter when you can have these basic products for dirt-cheap and you can know exactly what is in them AND you can know you are helping the environment out a little?

Get yourselves to this website stat because you can get everything online (the company is American): I seriously can’t recommend the lip balm and the shaving gel enough. Don’t wait around for the electric car.

http://www.drbronner.com

NOTE: All these prices are in US dollars, but the exchange rate is so good at the moment, 0.911 as of today 03/08/2010 so you’re still getting a way good deal.

By Adriane, dream babe extraordinaire