Pangea Organics Body Care

The Product:

Pangea Organics body care products (prices vary from $8 for bar soap to $40 for facial mask)

The Promise:

• No petrochemicals, sulfates, detergents, synthetic preservatives, artificial colors/fragrances or GMOs.

• Organic, fair trade (whenever possible), cruelty-free

• Molded fiber packaging made from 100% post-consumer newsprint without glues or dyes. Packaging has been impregnated with seeds from the same plants found in Pangea Organics products.

• A 100% wind-powered facility where the carpets are made from recycled soda bottles, the paint is non-VOC and the workers are paid a living wage.
  

The Reality:

We believe that the USDA only provides organic certification for food ingredients, so it would be nice if Pangea provided some information on how it knows its ingredients are organic. We've seen other cosmetics brands - particularly European ones - that contain the logo of one or more organic certification authorities, but Pangea seems to have foregone this step.

Other than that, the product and packaging seem to match the descriptions on the website and press materials.

The Experience:

The organic essential oils (sage and geranium in massage oil; blood orange, lavender and and Egyptian calendula) in Pangea products give them a truly heavenly scent.

We thoroughly liked all the Pangea cleansing products that we tried. The facial cleanser seemed to do an especially nice job on our 'problem' skin ($28), which perhaps explains why the cleanser won a Redbook MVP Beauty Award.

And cinnamon-lovers will be over the moon about the Malagasy Cinnamon Cassia with Cloves bar soap ($8). Incidentally, the soap not only smells great, but it looks like a work of art.

Inside the seeded boxes, Pangea packages all its products either in glass or #2 HDPE plastic, both of which are very recyclable. The caps on the shower gels and lotions are apparently also recyclable.

As for the seeded boxes, they all contain sweet basil seeds except for the bar soap, which has the seed of a spruce tree.

We love the idea of 100% post-consumer recycled packaging, especially when it comes with a bonus of free plant seeds! Not only does Pangea packaging reduce trash, it actually promotes plant life!

The packaging is so innovative that we almost feel silly complaining, but as advocate for eco-minded consumers everywhere, we wish that Pangea had put different types of seeds with different product boxes. If you buy six different Pangea products, you get six boxes impregnated with basil seeds. How about some oregano? Maybe a little rosemary?

(Also, it's not immediately clear from the boxes that you need to remove the label - which does appear to be held onto the box with a bit of glue - in order to access the full planting instructions.)

These are small quibbles. On the whole, Pangea seems to have a large number of laudable eco-friendly practices in place and to be producing some very nice skin and bodyare products.

Where to buy:

Shop online at Pangea's own website or through other e-tailers like Amazon.com.

Prefer to try before you buy? Use the Pangea Store Locator to find a retailer near you.

Review of New Cleaning Products at Eco Child's Play

Happy Summer Solstice!

Looking for the dirty secrets on the latest eco-friendly cleaning products to hit the market?

Scurry over to Eco Child's Play to get the goods.

(Despite the name, the site apparently has no relation to the 1988 horror movie Child's Play about a killer doll named Chucky. Although maybe a 2010 remake could have a Chucky doll made out of sustainably-harvested wood? Or a flexible bamboo Chucky? Got to go call my agent...)

Eco-Travel - Nashville (Hutton Hotel, aloft Nashville-Cool Springs)

View of Tennessee State Capitol from Nashville's Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park

Last month, I had the pleasure of taking a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. What a fun place! From its beautiful countryside and charming residents to the thriving music scene, Nashville makes an excellent, affordable vacation destination.

But how about from an eco-travel perspective? Well, I didn't have time to bike around Nashville, but I did see quite a few bike lanes and they were getting some use by the locals.

My initial assessment is that the existing bike paths will need to be expanded and connected to give Nashville a true alternative to car commuting, but the city is compact enough that a better bike infrastructure could make Nashville a wonderful biking city. Nashville does have a Strategic Plan to create an integrated bikeway network, so hopefully the system will become more comprehensive in the years ahead.

I didn't have a chance to ride public transit either, but the uncrowded buses seemed to run pretty frequently.

There is no light rail within Nashville, but a rail line (the Music City Star) recently started service from Nashville to points east. The downtown Nashville station looked spiffy and new.

(For what it's worth, I don't think it would make financial or logistical sense for a city the size of Nashville to put in light rail, but a trolley system of the sort prevalent in Vienna or Prague could work quite well here.)

Bamboo-filled lobby at Hutton Hotel (photo via hotel website)

Eco-travelers have a couple of exciting options in terms of lodging when visiting Nashville. Right near Vanderbilt University and convenient to Downtown is the Hutton Hotel, which just opened earlier this year. The Hutton has some serious eco credentials having just hosted the North American Summit of former Vice President Al Gore's Climate Project.

Built inside the completely gutted and renovated shell of a former office building, the Hutton is chock full of eco-friendly amenities. For instance, the lobby and guestrooms use bamboo flooring and furniture. Interior and exterior lighting uses energy-efficient LED and compact fluorescent fixtures. Remarkable Kone EcoDisc elevators use a low-friction, gearless design to reportedly achieve 70% energy savings over traditional elevators.

Dual flush toilets in the guestrooms (designed by a local company called Baden Bath) and waterless urinals in the public restrooms help save water. Soap dispensers in the guest rooms cut down on the use of plastic bottles.

Hutton employs the key card system prevalent in Europe where guests must insert a card into a slot when entering their guestroom in order to active the room's lights. When guests take their card on exiting the room, the lights automatically shut off 30 seconds later, saving even more energy.

Meanwhile, the hotel's restaurant 1808 Grille has gotten rave reviews in the local press. The restaurant has made a commitment to serve locally-produced wines and beers and Whole Trade coffee (from Allegro Coffee Company, which also provides organic tea bags in the Hutton's guest rooms). I believe the restaurant also places an emphasis on sustainable seafood and using organic ingredients when possible. Some of the restaurant's furnishings involve the use of reclaimed wood, saving natural resources.

While it's certainly possible to walk from the Hutton to Vanderbilt and even to Downtown Nashville, the Hutton also offers a hybrid courtesy car for use within 3 miles of the hotel. That 3 mile range easily covers trips to the convention center and nightlife in the downtown District.

Meanwhile, for Nashville visitors who prefer a bit of distance from the downtown hubbub, the Aloft-Nashville Cool Springs hotel located about 20 minutes south of the city offers another good eco-friendly option.

Owned by Starwood and associated with the W Hotel brand, Aloft Cool Springs has a number of eco-friendly touches including the use of cork building materials, sustainably-sourced wood venees and in-shower soap and shampoo dispensers (cutting down on the use of disposable plastic bottles). Various online sources indicate that Aloft hotels use biodegradable, eco-friendly cleaning products both within the rooms and on the hotels' pools.

If you do choose to stay at the Aloft Cool Springs, you'll be right nearby the town of Franklin, recently honored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a 2009 Distinctive Destination.

One more note for bicyclists - the area near Nashville is home to the northern terminus of the Natchez-Trace Parkway, a 444-mile road maintained by the National Park service that offers a beautiful and relatively safe bicycling option from middle Tennessee to the far Southwestern corner of Mississippi. We wanted to bike a little bit of the Parkway, but ended up only having about 30 minutes to drive a tiny piece of the road. In that time, we saw only about five cars and an equal number of bicyclists. Seems like a lovely route for long-distance cyclists.

PS - Nashville has a great zoo that helps spearhead conservation efforts for endangered animals like the clouded leopard. In addition, I was surprised and pleased to find out that zoo's cafeteria  has eschewed petroleum-based plastics in favor of renewable and biodegradable plates, cups and utensils made from such materials as sugarcane, corn and potato! Handy signs (like the one pictured in the unfortunately dark photo above) explain to zoo visitors that all plates/cups/utensils are compostable, biodegradable and designed to 'return to nature' in 45-60 days. Pretty cool.

Compaq Presario CQ2009F Desktop PC

Compaq's energy-efficient CQ2009F desktop computer

There are lots of websites that will talk about the exciting scientific research moving forward on powering our homes with fuel made from algae or other exotic substances.

Hey, I like algae as much as the next guy, but in the meantime, we get most of our energy from 'dirty' sources like oil, coal and nuclear.

So...what really gets me in a tizzy is when manufacturers makes quantum leaps forward in terms of efficiency, materials and affordability.

My last desktop computer was a Compaq. I bought it around late 2001 or early 2002. I spent around $1000 on it. It weighed approximately 27 lbs and (as I found out when I reviwed the Kill-a-Watt last year) used between 70-109 watts of electricity.

That old Compaq performed admirably for a while, even if it did look clunky and take up a significant chunk of my workspace. But then it started suddenly turning itself on and off without warning. And this thing was loud. It's not fun to be wakened in the middle of the night by the giant 'whoosh/click/whirrr' of your computer coming to life.

I had two choices - hire a computer exorcist or buy a new machine.

After looking high and low, I surprised myself by settling on another Compaq.

Compaq doesn't get much respect these days. Businesses are focused on brands like Dell and Lenovo. The hipsters all love their Apples or maybe their Acer eee box.

But I think the Compaq CQ2009F surpasses them all. Here's what I like:

1. Energy efficiency. My old desktop needed 70-109 watts of electricity. As measured by the Kill-a-Watt, the CQ2009F so far seems to draw only 29-32 watts no matter what it's doing. That's an efficiency improvement of approximately 60-70 percent!

2. Size/materials. As mentioned, my old desktop weighed approximately 27 lbs and took up a massive amount of desk space. The CQ2009F is much smaller (4.41" x 10.71" x 9.69"). It weighs only 7 lbs and requires much less space on the desk. That's a 74 percent weight reduction! So this desktop obviously needs much less in the way of raw materials - and since those raw materials tend to be made of plastic (oil) or metal, less is certainly better from an environmental standpoint.

3. Noise pollution. The CQ2009F is much quieter and unobtrusive than my old machine. Less noise pollution is always a good thing.

4. Features. Energy efficient machines are always great, but they're especially impressive when their feature set matches what other machines can do. In this case, I really wanted the ability to read and burn DVDs. The Asus eee box and some of the other tiny desktops don't have any DVD/CD drive, but the CQ2009F has one built in. It also has a handy little card reader so I can take the SD card right from my digital camera and plug it into the desktop without worrying about finding a USB cable.

5. Design. Remember when PCs used to be boring beige or grey boxes? The CQ2009F is sleek and sexy, slightly curvaceous, but not outrageous.

6. Price. It's nice when someone builds a great eco-friendly product, but if that product is out of reach for all buy a few millionaires (i.e. the Tesla electric car), then the practical environmental benefit is minimal. What's so beautiful about the CQ2009F is that it costs less than $300 (not including monitor)! That's a very competitive price these days and far less than I paid for a much less efficient machine just 7-8 years ago.

Why would anyone in the market for a desktop PC buy any other machine? I can think of just a few reasons:

- You're a serious gamer or video producer and need more RAM/power for your PC. (The CQ2009F has plenty of juice for typical home word processing and Internet browsing, but probably not enough for heavy gaming or video editing.)

- You want the smaller size and more efficient energy use (20 watts, according to Asus) of the eee box and you don't care about having the DVD drive.

- You're a Mac user, in which the Mac mini is probably your best eco-friendly bet (as discussed on Metaefficient).

Incidentally, the Dell Studio Hybrid also looks like a good eco-friendly option for PC fans, but it is a bit more pricey than the Compaq CQ2009F and according to the same Metaefficient article, a bit more power-hungry (26-44 watts).

Where to buy:

You can purchase the Compaq CQ2009F through various only retailers including Compaq's own website ($279.99 with free shipping) and Amazon.com ($269.99 with free shipping).