Funkless Deodorant Tangerine & Lime Review

You know the no plastic kick is getting serious when I start buying deodorant that comes in a glass jar.

I’m no stranger to ~natural~ deodorants. I jumped on the no aluminum train about ten years ago when I started using the crystal. Now I think that the aluminum fears have pretty shaky evidence. Which is great, because the crystal deodorant still contains aluminum. That’s a different post. Greenwashing is real. The important part here is that I’ll rub a solid rock on my armpits. A paste wasn’t anything strange for me.

I quit using the crystal because it was a colossal pain to remember to use it while my armpits were still wet from showering. I’ve bounced around between other ~natural~ deodorants that irritated my armpits, and then settled for men’s deodorant. I hate smelling like flowers and I hate the pink tax. I also kind of hate how quickly I go through a stick of deodorant. That’s a fair amount of plastic that I didn’t feel was necessary.

So I went down the internet rabbit hole of eco-friendly deodorant. It gets little weird. There are lots of burnt armpits from essential oils being misused. I’m very wary of ~natural~ deodorants because of things like this. Funkless had good Amazon reviews, though. I decided to give them a try.

The ingredients are pretty straight forward. A lot of homemade deodorants are basically baking soda and essential oils for scent. I think the arrowroot starch is just an added thickener, and then the magnesium oxide presumably acts the way that aluminum does in commercial deodorants. It keeps you from sweating by plugging up your sweat holes.

That’s scientific.

I’m not fussed about rubbing magnesium oxide in my armpits because I currently eat 200 mg of it a day in tablet form. If magnesium (a normal thing that we need in our diet) turns on us, this deodorant is going to be the least of my worries.

So how does it work? At room temperature this deodorant is a pretty solid paste. I have to use some pressure to get it out. It smells lightly of tangerine and lime. The smell doesn’t linger. I kind of wish that it did. It smells like something I’d want to drink. I want to smell like a fancy drink.

I usually get about this amount out, then rub it between my index fingers to warm it up so it spreads easily.

One finger for each armpit. You don’t need a representation of me rubbing this on my armpits, right? Good.

It dries a little chalky, but I haven’t noticed any rubbing off onto my shirts. After a few wears it does leave a little white powder on my bra. That doesn’t bother me.

I haven’t had any weird armpit irritation. A+ safe use of essential oils here, at least for my body chemistry. I haven’t noticed that I get sweaty (but then again, I also don’t actively look for antiperspirants in my deodorant). I will say that when do get disgustingly all-body sweaty, my armpits still don’t smell. It’s pretty impressive.

Based on my current use rate, I’d guess that one jar of this would last approximately..forever. The pictures were taken when I had been using it daily for a month. A MONTH. A jar could easily last a year.

My only complaint is that it will melt during shipping. I received a pretty messy, but yummy smelling envelope. I gave the deodorant a good stir and let it return to room temperature. It’s been fine.

Ingredients are good. Performance is good. There’s not a giant plastic tube for me to buy, like, every week. We’ve got a winner here.

 

Advertisement

Meg Cosmetics Good Night PM Mask

Ipsy sent me this sheet mask in March. I used to think that you couldn’t mess up a sheet mask, but they’ve proven me wrong in the past. Let’s take a look at the claims and packaging first.

There is 27 mL of serum in this mask. I’m not sure if that’s comparatively a lot because that’s not a number I’ve paid attention to in the past, but this mask is JUICY. Like be careful opening it, juicy. I nearly shot some in my eye.

The ingredients

• Eco-friendly lyocell sheet certified by OEKO-TEX
  I did some googling, and as best as I can tell, this certification just means that there weren’t crazy chemicals used in the production process. I was hoping for the sheet to be extra biodegradable or to use less water in the production process, but nah. It’s just a regular woodpulp fabric. I assumed that they’re Standard 100 certified instead of Made In Green. The Made In Green certification is supposed to give me a tracking code with my product that lets me look into the production process. There isn’t one. I’d be into that.
• Camellia sinesis leaf water
  It’s tea. It’s just tea. Can you imagine being this pretentious?

The other ingredients are pretty normal: some botanical extracts, some typical skin stuff. I did learn that people use arginine for erectile dysfunction. So that’s now in my brain forever.

• Glucose
  This is normal for skincare, I’m just mad there’s not more of it in the mask because I got some in my mouth. It tastes AWFUL.

How did I get it in my mouth, you ask? This is the worst fitting mask I have ever used.

Just LOOK at how tiny the mouth hole is. It’s really hard to not accidentally eat some of the serum.

As far as the serum formulation, it was a pretty okay mask. I would have preferred that it didn’t smell like lavender, but my skin felt hydrated after I used it. The packaging and actual sheet are just awful, though.

I’m also really cranky that they want to tout an eco-friendly process when there’s an entire extra plastic sheet in there.

I’ll just throw that directly into the ocean.

We can do better than this.

Earth Day Reflections

This is a lobster molt, not a dead (or very chill) lobster.

This Earth Day had me feeling a little guilty. I volunteered for an aquarium all throughout college. Nothing makes you feel like you’re protecting the ocean like talking to a hundred people on a Friday about ocean acidification, you know?

I haven’t been volunteering for a little over a year. Earth Day was the 22nd. It seems like a good time to reflect on what I’m doing to help protect the planet, and what I could be doing better.

I’m feeding my favorite toad here. Hand feeding isn’t always the way to go, but she was old & blind and needed the help.

Things I’m Currently Doing

– Take public transit 90% of the time.
27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US are from transportation. Public transit options in the US are pretty atrocious. If it’s not feasible for you to stop driving you could also try to shop more locally to cut down on transportation on that end.

– Carry a reusable water bottle and don’t drink bottled water.
Bottled water is dumb. It’s expensive. It’s wasteful. So is soda. You can’t promise me that a bird wont eat your bottle cap and starve to death because its stomach is full of plastic.

– Use reusable menstruation products.
If cups and reusable pads aren’t an option, you can buy tampons that don’t have applicators. You don’t need a plastic or cardboard tube.

– Use stainless steel straws when I can.
There are very few instances that you NEED a straw. I keep these (not an affiliate link) in my bag for restaurants for when ice is out of control. You can read more about how awful straws are here.

– I eat meat like..once a week.
It’s the inverse of a Meatless Monday. Food is complicated (and still produced with actual slave labor) so blindly following a diet without looking into the supply chain isn’t enough. Beef is pretty inefficiently produced, though.

– Vote for people that support environmental policies.
We need more oversight and regulation to solve these problems. It’s nice that I can know that I didn’t personally choke a sea turtle, but the sea turtles are still being choked.

I didn’t work with the cuttlefish. They’re just cool af.

Things To Integrate Before Next Earth Day

– Stop buying paper copies of books that I haven’t read before.
I feel old. I can remember when we were more fussed about the paper clogging our landfills than we were the plastic in the ocean. But really, there’s no reason for me to go out and buy books that I might not ever want to reread. I have an e-reader and can walk to the library.

– Clothing shop entirely second-hand or non-synthetic.
The issue of synthetic fibers isn’t one that people talk about as often because it’s not an easy problem to solve. I know that I can’t personally afford to throw out all of my clothing and wear exclusively natural materials. I’m on the email list for a Cora Ball if those ever enter production (EDIT: They have! The day I posted this. I’ve ordered one). And now that my wardrobe is in a good place, am planning to thrift or buy natural fibers for anything new. Thrifting synthetic materials isn’t a fix, but it at least prevents a new polyester shirt from entering the cycle.

– Eliminate more microplastics.
Microplastics are everywhere in cosmetics. Any new purchases I make will be free of these 67 ingredients.

– Stop buying sheet masks and other single use beauty items.
Guys, we need to cut our sheet mask habit. I have a ton laying around that I will still review and use, but they’re wasteful and expensive.

Tell me something that you do (or are going to try) to help the planet in the comments!

Don’t Cover Yourself in Glitter and Run Into the Ocean

I am full on dragging a product I’ve never tried today, but for good reason. Look at what showed up as an ad for me:

Glitter sunscreen. If you don’t think about it, it sounds pretty great. Antioxidants! Paraben free! Cruelty free! Vegan! It even is somewhat ocean aware and is oxybenzone free. (Though it still contains octinoxate, making it toxic to marine life.)

But it has glitter. Some shimmers aren’t plastic, but polyethylene terephthalate and polymethyl methacrylate definitely are. Plastic in the ocean is a huge problem. This week a sperm whale washed up on a beach with 64 pounds of plastic in its stomach that led to its death. Microplastics are everywhere (in your food! bottled water!) and this company wants you to jump into the ocean covered in it. I don’t care how nice it smells or how fun it is, don’t run into the ocean covered in glitter.

Actually, don’t jump into any body of water covered in glitter. Remember the water cycle? All water goes back to the ocean.

Let’s all collectively quit glitter.