divine green: Sustainable Home, Beauty, & Lifestyle

Davines’ NouNou hair care may not contain 100 percent organic ingredients. Nor is it easy to pronounce. But more product makers should follow the cue of this hair care line, which comes packaged in thinner plastic. Davines, based in Parma, Italy, sells NouNou in malleable tubs and bottles made of 30 percent less plastic than the average bottle of conditioner, according to company spokesman Jorge Blanco. Squeeze the soft tubs and you can imagine they take less recycling time.

NouNou is also Davines first “zero-impact” product in the company’s 25-year history, Blanco said. That means that Davines has bought carbon offsets through the Italian green-living conglomerate Lifegate, which plants trees in Costa Rica to balance the emissions created by the NouNou hair care line. It’s a nebulous claim for many companies, but Blanco said: “We planted 85,000 square meters of new forest in Costa Rica last year.”

As for its efficacy? NouNou’s “nourishing illuminating” shampoo with Chestnut milk doesn’t inspire an extra finger-twirl in your hair. But the line’s “nourishing illuminating” conditioner with tomato extract and vitamin F softens dry hair and smells like sweet almond butter. Highly recommended.

People are often more concerned by what they eat than by what they put on their body. But the skin is our largest organ and absorbs all those lotions, deodorants and perfumes directly into the blood stream, without the natural toxin catchers of the digestive system. That’s why it’s good to be choosy about what you slather on the skin.

Last year, fashion designer Stella McCartney unveiled a line of certified organic skincare–which after three years of development was considered the first luxury brand in an industry with a largely crunchy image. Few skincare lines carry a certified organic seal because the bar is set so high to obtain the moniker from standard bearers like the USDA, yet Stella’s 100 percent-organic-ingredients line, called “Care,” was approved by eco-regulators like Ecocert in Europe, where it’s made. (Yes, you’ll have to buy carbon offsets to buy these creams guilt-free in the United States.)

I’ve been testing Care’s 5 Benefits Moisturizing Cream and its companion Radiance and Youth Elixir for the last two months and my skin has never been softer or more generally healthy. 

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