Green
Cosmetics

PREFACE

GREEN COSMETICS – BIO CARE FROM NATURE

Welcome to the world of Green Cosmetics! If you’re looking for 100% natural care without preservatives or additives then this is for you. As the name promises, Green Cosmetics are really green: natural, fresh, and wholesome. Green Cosmetics are life in harmony with nature, with no animal experiments or added chemicals, less consumption, more self-sufficiency, and a clean environment. Green biocare with a clear conscience!

What are cosmetics? We dont want to boast but the term cosmetics derives from the whole cosmos. The ancient Greek expression kósmos means order and stands for the harmonic structure of the universe. From that kosmitiké tekhné, the art of decorating, evolved. In this book – as with the ancient Greeks – beauty and order come to form a unity. Here cosmetics mean beauty in tune with nature. For pure care. For healthy nutrition for the skin. For easy recipes. For gentle products as pure as nature herself.

All good reasons, therefore, to produce your own Green Cosmetics! This book contains 130 natural alternatives to commercial products, all of them nourishing, biological, and homemade. The benefits are obvious: you know exactly what you’re putting on your skin and you invigorate yourself with healthy, natural care. Enjoy discovering Green Cosmetics and enjoy naturally nourished skin!

 

Gabriela Nedoma

GREEN COSMETICS: FOOD FOR THE SKIN

OUR SKIN EATS, TOO

Healthy, organic and fresh foods are a normal part of people’s lives nowadays, making natural skin care a meaningful next step for anyone preferring fresh over processed, as both nutrition and cosmetics are absorbed into the body. Our skin consumes also; its food is the cosmetic products we apply. It is common sense to choose one’s cosmetics with the same care as one’s food.

Since time immemorial and with good reason the ingredients of innumerable cosmetic products have been garnered from kitchens and gardens, food that’s well tolerated and effective on your skin. Strawberries tighten the skin; parsley clears the skin’s pores, and cucumber moisturizes it. Flour exfoliates; whey cleans; salt deodorizes, and medicinal clay increases the skin’s suppleness. The active ingredients of age-old and well-tried remedies come from kitchen and garden.

Even today, poultices of cabbage leaves are used to treat inflammations; fermented curd cheese is used for sore throats, and socks soaked in vinegar can be used to lower a high temperature. They all heal through their valuable substances, are inexpensive, and easily available, making it only natural to apply the same quality criteria we use in nutrition to our cosmetic products. Fresh nutrition is good for our skin, too

NUTRITIOUS SUBSTANCES FROM NATURE

Looking for complex, active cosmetics, one quickly discovers plenty in nature. Many uses of modern cosmetics have long since been developed by nature in foods. Dairy products with their regenerating properties are the original formula of any moisturizing cream. Flours clean, detoxify, and supply the skin with soothing substances. Honey regenerates the skin with enzymes and supplies healing agents.

Their versatility makes foods very suitable for cosmetics. They’re skin care, medicine, and nutrition in one. An ordinary quince tastes delicious and supplies the body with vitamins, enzymes, and minerals from within. Used cosmetically, it acts as a moisturizer, improves the look of the skin, and increases skin elasticity. Finally, in naturopathy quince stimulates skin regeneration and is used to treat wounds, burns, or hemorrhoids. What other product can be said to be delicious as well as care for and heal the skin, except those from the apothecaries’ nutritious store cupboard that is nature?

We owe our easy access to this effective biotechnological skin care to Mother Nature. She’s had a lot of time to develop complex agents and bring them together in the smallest of spaces. Take fresh marigold flowers as an example. Boiled in fat they quickly turn into soothing ointment. This ointment consists of these two ingredients only, because nature has already concentrated numerous active ingredients in the marigold. Mother Nature makes it easy for us humans. We only have to help ourselves to the perfectly balanced mixture. And nature makes the most complicated processes seem very simple. Clever Mother Nature makes her sophisticated accomplishments look easy.

SKIN CARE WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE

Bio cosmetics are economic, versatile, and effective. They save time, money, and additional steps in skin care. When time is of the essence, a teaspoon of yoghurt is sufficient to clean your face, and a single pot cares for your face for many days. This simple spoonful of yoghurt is make-up remover, cleanser, tonic, toner, and skin cream in one. Yoghurt provides the skin with useful nutrients and stimulates dermal regeneration. If the skin is supplied with adequate natural nutrition, it needs little to be well nourished.

These days especially, a lot of foods which are still usable are thrown away due to their expiry date. What a pity as skin and wallet would be happy to have them. Kitchen and fridge provide our skin with nurturing substances at almost no cost. A few dashes of milk replenish natural oils; a small amount of curd cheese tightens facial contours, and a dash of double cream in your bath saves you moisturizing afterwards. Kitchen waste also cares excellently for your skin. Squeezed lemons make a high-speed fruit deodorant; rhubarb peel cleans and refreshes the skin; left-over potatoes take care of chapped hands, and apple peel provides natural moisture. Helping yourself to natural ingredients from your kitchen and fridge is no-cost luxury and creates the feel-good factor. You avoid waste and food usage is optimized. In many cultures food is holy and revered as the spiritual means of life. Edibles are gifts from our Earth used worldwide with appreciation and gratitude for nature and her creatures.

Gathering the active ingredients for Green Cosmetics from nature doesn’t require any financial outlay. Simply collect skin-caring plants such as chickweed, oak, plantain, birch, or stinging nettle. A basket and a thorough look round the woods, meadows, or the garden is sufficient to quickly gather raw materials for cosmetics. The personal search for medical plants, the picking, and the processing all connect you with nature. It grounds you, makes you more self-sufficient, and brings about more independence from commercial and financial structures. In addition, do-it-yourself instead of buy-it-yourself is fun!

Living from nature is a human birthright. Even though we now live in a privileged age where our needs can be fulfilled by money, this could quickly change, making it necessary to be more self-sufficient for our own and our families’ sakes. Therefore, it’s a good feeling to know this is possible and we don’t have to depend on consumerism. Moreover, working in nature frees the spirit and psyche of stress and has a beneficial effect on body and soul. Our connection with the earth and its plants is an important means of balancing the soul, used in therapies such as Silvo Therapy or Garden Therapy. Gathering in nature is soul therapy, relaxing, delighting, and healing.

Many of the ingredients in this book are regionally produced basic foodstuffs. This lessens the ecological footprint and supports regional production. Buying Fair trade, biologically grown and GM-free foods supports environmentally friendly businesses and production chains. With foodstuff-based cosmetics, we can be 100% certain that no ingredients have been tested on animals and not one of our animal friends had to suffer for our beauty. Artificial agents in cosmetics, such as aluminum, PEGs, phthalates, and silicones, among others, can accumulate in the body and pollute water and the environment. This is not the case with natural ingredients. They nourish skin and body, are metabolized, are completely absorbed by the body, and therefore do not pollute the environmental cycles. Green Cosmetics are clean, make you feel good, and act in harmony with nature.