Each day, as you shower and get ready to face the outside world, do you think about what in your beauty products actually makes your hair shiny or your lipstick last? You should. According to Safe Cosmetics, beauty and body care products of all kinds contain tons of chemicals, many of which are linked to cancer. The average woman in the United States uses about 12 personal care products a day, and men use about six—and each of these products contain a dozen or more chemicals! Of these hundreds of chemicals, less than twenty have been evaluated by the industry’s consumer safety panel—so it is a big mystery what they are doing to us!  Thankfully, there are ways to replace these dangerous chemicals in your daily usage with natural products that won’t make you sick. Here are five of the best, natural solutions to our beauty (or handsome-ness) dilemmas:

1. Need to control your frizz? Instead of Infusium 23 Complete Frizz Control Treatment, try Got2b Glossy Anti-Frizz Shine Serum. Where Infusium contains eight ingredients known to be dangerous to your health, Got2b has infinitely fewer ingredients and only one that may be questionable.

2. The shampoo you use to wash your baby’s hair is also a place where dangerous chemicals hide. Instead of Johnson’s Head-to-Toe Baby Wash, use Method Baby Squeaky Green Hair + Body Wash. Method’s product only contains only four ingredients of low concern, while Johnson’s has over 30 ingredients, nine of which pose some health concern.

3. When you are washing your own hair, look out for Nexxus. Their Botanoil Botanical Treatment Shampoo contains at least one ingredient that is a suspected immunotoxicant, not to mention the company’s disregard for the climate and ethics in their manufacturing practices. Instead, use Dr. Bronner’s Magic Citrus Hair Rinse—it contains only ten ingredients, most of which are natural oils, and only two of low health concern.

4. If lipstick is your thing, switch out Stila for Peacekeeper’s colors. Stila’s lipstick has an ingredient, Oxybenzone, that is a suspected skin or sense organ toxicant. Peacekeeper’s Paint Me Accepting Lipstick has no ingredients that raise a health concern, and they make their product while reducing climate change emissions and giving back to their local community.

5. We know you can’t live without your deodorant—or at least, we don’t want you to. Instead of Arm and Hammer’s Ultramax Victory deodorant, which has the very dangerous Triclosan in it, try Burt’s Bees Herbal Deodorant. It has no ingredients that raise a health concern, and is made of five ingredients that are all natural.

Until the government regulates the chemicals that are allowed into beauty products, our choices are frequently going to have to be between the greater and lesser evils. To see how your favorite products rank in terms of health, environment and ethics, check out www.goodguide.com. If you can, switch to products that will help you, rather than hurt you.

Perhaps the best way to lower your carbon footprint is to bike to work. Of course public transportation and carpooling do help, but nothing is as good for you and the earth as relying on a bicycle to get around. Biking is a great, low-impact exercise for those of us with damaged or stiff knees, and an awesome way to incorporate exercise into your day naturally. You probably already have a bike—here are a few great accessories for it to make the switch to cycling an easy one!

• TransIt Grocery Bag Pannier, $39.99 Maybe you are still driving to the store (with reusable bags of course) to buy your groceries. Not anymore! A great grocery bag pannier allows you to load up on food and then set the bag solidly on the back of your bike. Not only does this one fit on most standard panniers, it has a reflector stripe for added safety and a strap so you can take it into the store with you. Not grocery shopping today? That’s fine, just fold it up!

• CycleAware Reflex Mirror, $17.99 Nervous about biking in the street? Don’t fear, with a rear-view mirror you will be more aware of your surroundings than ever before. After attaching the mirror to your helmet, bend the flexible wire it is on to hit right in your peripheral vision. The base adheres permanently to your helmet, but the wire and mirror can be removed by ball and socket joints.

• Garmin Edge GPS with Heart Rate and Cadence, $599.99 In addition to guiding your bike route through the built in satellite map, this nifty tool will allow you to upload workouts, courses and saved rides. You can share your data with other GPS users, and automatically measure your speed, heart rate, cadence, distance, time, calories burned, altitude, climb and descent.

• NiteRider Sol LED Headlight, $129.99 If you work late or like to ride at night, don’t go anywhere without a headlight. This bright light can run for four hours per charge. Just plug it in to your wall and walk away! The charger self-monitors battery levels, so no worries about over charging. It is lightweight, compact, and fits most handlebars.

Depending on how serious you are of a biker and your intentions for your bike’s use, there are endless accessories to make your ride as convenient as a car trip. Bike around, see what you need, and get shopping!

As we have discussed in this post, bottled water is far from the most environmentally-conscious hydration solution. Greener alternatives to that include buying a filter or carrying reusable water bottles with you. But not everyone needs to go out of their way like that, some of us are just lucky because we live in cities where tap water is clean and drinkable. So are you one of the lucky bunch? Let’s take a look and see.

A couple of years ago Forbes.com tested the tap water from cities across the United States and analyzed the results.

Forbes studied data compiled from the Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR), which are provided annually by the EPA and community water systems. The CCR looked at each city’s water turbidity—commonly known as “cloudiness” –-as well as levels of bacteria, lead, and halo-acetic acids, which are byproducts of the water purification process.  Scientists have also found other contaminants, such as pesticides, germs, arsenic, and even rocket fuel in water samples.

Justifiably, the public often questions the healthful quality of tap water. According the Environmental Working Group (EWG), contaminated tap water can cause illness, especially among pregnant women, the elderly, and young children. Though tap water purity levels improved since being publicized, according to studies similar to the one conducted by Forbes, some cities still violated Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards with very high levels of contaminants.

Despite the odds, high EPA standards and green living initiatives inspire many cities to ditch the bottle and reap the benefits of their local water supply. Seven of the top cities with the cleanest tap water include:

• Las Vegas, Nevada boasts low turbidity ranks #7 overall according to the Forbes study.
• San Jose, California is leading the way amongst green cities, by announcing plans to recycle or reuse 100 % of its wastewater within the next 15 years.
• Miami, Florida ranks #4 on Forbes’ top cities, and also scored in the top 25 for low levels of turbidity, bacteria, lead, and halo-acetic acids.
• Midwesterners who call St. Louis, Missouri home are proud of the clarity, aroma, and taste of its local tap water supply. The US Conference of Mayors agrees, and after a blind taste test in 2009, announced that St. Louis had the best tap water.  Furthermore, St. Louis water only had traces of the pollutants decried by the EPA.
• Austin, Texas scored consistently in the top ten with low turbidity, halo-acetic acid, and lead levels, and thus winning the silver medal in Forbes’ survey.
• In Kansas City, Missouri, even the drinking fountains ranked high in clean tap water studies
• But it’s Des Moines, Iowa that takes the gold according to Forbes and also ranks high in other studies. Des Moines had the second lowest level of bacteria amongst cities studied, along with a consistent top fifteen ranking due to low levels of lead, turbidity, and halo-acetic acid. A job well done by all comparisons!

If you don’t live in one of these cities or are still concerned about the quality of your tap water, invest in a carbon filter, such as those made by Brita. By avoiding plastic bottles, you save money and the environment, and anyway, many bottled water companies use the same source as your tap: local municipal water.

Water is unmistakably good for your health in a number of different ways, but these same ways of using it can be extremely damaging to the environment. Without a plan to make water a sustainable resource, there is no guarantee that it will be around to make us healthy for much longer! How can we reform our reliance on water to make sure it is not only good for us, but good for the earth as well?

Perhaps the most obvious way we rely on water is for hydration. While our water needs vary depending on body weight and activity level, water makes up about 60 percent of our body weight. Water is necessary to flush out toxins, dissolve vitamins and minerals, moisten membranes and move nutrients between cells—without it, our body wouldn’t function at all. While many adhere to the eight by eight rule (eight, eight ounce glasses of water a day), there is no real formula for how much water each individual needs. As long as you drink enough so you rarely feel thirsty and produce clear or slightly yellow urine regularly, you are properly hydrated.

Sadly however, many people rely on disposable water bottles for their hydration needs, as they provide a clear option for portable and safe drinking water. While this might help us meet our hydration quota, the massive consumption of bottled water in the United States is devastating to the environment. According to MSLK, a New York based graphic design firm focused on raising awareness about plastic consumption, 1500 plastic water bottles are consumed every second in the United States. This staggering statistic results in the consumption of 50 billion bottles every year—with 80 percent of them ending up in a landfill.  Additionally, their production requires 1.5 million barrels of our precious oil, and even more for the fuel cost of transporting the extremely heavy bottles of water. All of this could be eradicated, should you choose to drink tap water instead. It’s cheaper, just as safe, and will help your body function in exactly the same way.

Slightly less crucial—but still important—is our use of water for cleaning and hygiene purposes. According to the American Water Works Association, the per capita daily household consumption of water for these purposes is about 69.3 gallons. This is water that has to be filtered and cleansed before it can be used again.

Should your family elect to install more efficient water fixtures, per capita consumption of indoor water could be reduced approximately 35 percent. If all U.S. households installed these devices, 5.4 billion gallons per day would be saved. A gray water recycling system is a great way to increase water consumption efficiency by recycling and processing your wash water at home.

We can’t forget the importance of water in our recreational activities, particularly in places with a warm climate. Swimming, surfing, sailing, fishing, scuba diving… the list of activities that our bodies of water provide us with is endless. While we may not really need to snorkel, what would life be like if it wasn’t an option anymore? Sailing and the freedom of moving with the wind over water could lose its appeal if the water was polluted and smelly. We would be landlocked.

All of our desire to be near the water, in the water, has resulted in a serious pollution problem that will only get worse if it continues to be ignored. There is a huge floating debris field in the northwest Pacific Ocean, 1000 miles off the coast of California. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t made up of trash as we imagine it—few bottles and cans are recovered from it. Over a huge expanse, tiny particles of plastic float in the water, potentially ingested by the smaller members of the food chain. Little is known about this area—it is probably around the size of Texas, and mostly comprised of a plastic “confetti” that floats just under the surface of the water. Birds mistake it for fish and die eating it. Fishing nets get caught in it and directed to areas where their mere presence is devastating.

If we could cut down on our consumption—and increase our recycling abilities—maybe the ocean could stop being an international dumping ground.

If we have the power to damage the resources we so badly need to support our life, we must have the power to fix them. Calculate your Water Footprint and see how much responsibility you must take to ensure that there is water for the future.