Pure Mavens

Any parent has heard that you have to be careful with plastics. There’s no question that it’s smart to use Pyrex, real glasses, ceramic dishes, uncoated aluminum water bottles, and real silverware as much as possible. But you just can’t eliminate plastic entirely, and it does appear that some plastic is tolerable (in baby bottles, for example), provided it’s BPA-free and you don’t heat it up (e.g. put it in the microwave) or cut food on it.

There’s a small triangle on the bottom of plastic products with a number inside – some numbers should be avoided, others seem okay. But for all the times I’ve heard what the acceptable plastics are, I can never remember when I’m actually buying things. So I made up a saying that has forever seared “the rules of plastic” into my mind:

“1 way 2 go 4 a high 5 is to avoid 3 and 7″

At this point, I just remember “1 way 2 go 4 a high 5″ – the latest research says that plastics with the number 1,2,4, or 5 on the bottom are best. Just repeat it a few times and you should be good to go!

Hello – my name is Hunter, and I’m a junkie. My juice of choice is sunscreen. Like many, I dabbled at first in my teen years. Rubbing it on just because “everyone was doing it” – urged by my friends. It went on harmlessly enough. Then, one relatively mild sunburn a few years back, and I became obsessed. And not just some cut-with-lotion recreational balm. I was on the hard stuff. 45 SPF and up. Sweatproof, waterproof, non-stinging, spray-on, rub-on, comfort grip bottles… you name it. I knew where to score the high grade, PABA free for the best price.

I started hiding it from the people in my life. Putting it on in private before joining everyone at the pool. “Running to my car for a minute” for a quick re-app. Then, one day, I found myself using alone. It got so bad I needed a hit of 15 SPF just to get my day started…

Finally my family tried to intervene. “It’s too much,” they said. “Just cut back a little and see how it feels,” they urged. “If for nothing else, you’re going broke on Coppertone,” they pleaded. Nothing worked. I only retreated further into the bottle. Or tube. An ugly, greasy addiction.

But unlike most addicts, I never had a dramatic wake-up call. Rather, one day as I lathered up for the umpteenth time with that intoxicating cocoa-scented elixir, I pondered “This has got to have chemicals in it. What’s the downside of all this ‘protection’?” I shrugged it off, and lathered on.

Then my son was born. And I faced the sobering choice of either getting smart, or raising my boy to follow in my pasty footsteps. So I made a half-hearted attempt at self-help by googling “chemicals in sunscreen.”

And that was the beginning of my new obsession: seeking products that are pure for myself and my family. But that’s no easy task. There’s a ton of information – and misinformation – out there. And, while I’m keen on living a healthier lifestyle, I have a career and family, too. So the hours of confusing research to sort out the pure from the Pewr (TM) is a handful.

I could’ve just waited for the next media-driven craze, but I decided this needed to stick. So my friend Matt and I proclaimed ourselves PureMavens and began educating ourselves and taking on the pursuit of making the world a purer place.