Sustainable Imports

Here are cruelty-free, affordable hygiene products that are otherwise unavailable in Austin.

It’s inevitable.  Starting a new job?  A new school? A new diet?  A new sustainable challenge?  Well, there will be a reason to disrupt it from the very beginning.  Whether it’s an emergency root canal during first week teaching or a family emergency within the first month of a perfect part-time job, life manages to get in the way.

Upon beginning this sustainability challenge, I am traveling to New York City for work at the busiest time in the semester.  Whatever mental focus on sustainability that I amassed has been obliterated in the myriad details of travel.  The worst was the confrontation of my new, more zealous, ideals and the routine of travel.  It seems that a sustainability challenge should become only gradually more arduous.

Immediately under reconsideration was my insistence on taking a cab from the airport instead of public transport.  It’s just what I’ve always done.  During this challenge, however, I’m walking to work and busing it to campus.   In Austin, my windows are open instad of the air conditioning.  In the City, I tend to keep my hotel room much cooler than at home because I’m not paying the bill. Ugh.  Not on this challenge, it seems. While the City recycles plastics numbers one and two from one’s residence, there are but a few places on the street to leave that plastic.  When in Rome, you just throw away the recyclables instead of schlepping them with you.  So many decisions.

Who starts a diet two days before their birthday?  That’s what this felt like.  By the end of the trip, I managed to find some silver lining.  It’s New York; I could more easily find a fake Fendi on Canal than a facet that fit right into my nascent sustainable narrative.  Thanks God for Trader Joe’s, I say.

Austin may recycle plastics numbers one through five, but we don’t have a Trader Joe’s yet, a store that makes more sustainable purchases accessible to those who chose teaching as a profession.  My favorite part of their hygiene products is that they are not tested on animals.  Do you have any idea how expensive a cruelty-free hairspray is?!  Don’t get me started on the staples such as an oil-free moisturizer with an SPF.

I found cruelty-free toothpaste, lotion, and sunscreen at great prices.  The pièce de resistance for the sustainable shopper was a toothbrush sold with its own postage on the packaging to send it in when it’s time to toss it out.  This was a sign to stock up as I was shipped back to Texas.  Sure, you’ll feel like a pretentious peddler in the airport security line, but at least the new narrative didn’t derail with this first formidable challenge.  For the neophyte in the (costly) world of sustainable shopping, importing where possible must earn a bronze medal.