Your Skin Is Your Soil

CEBU, Philippines - It took me by surprise that the councilor isn’t exactly a beauty care specialist but his strong advocacy for environment preservation and restoration far exceeds his care for physical beauty. He endorses organic and health care products more for its effects on the environment rather than the skin.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, when you take a shower, you use chemically processed shampoo, conditioner and bath soap or body wash. When you have rinsed your body of these, the chemically saturated effluents go to the sewage systems, to the soil or even to the sea. To simplify the equation, for every sachet or bar of bath soap that you use, you pollute the environment because of its chemical contents.

If these chemicals go to the soil, you eat of the harvest or produce from the soil. If these go to the sea, you eat of the harvest of the sea like the shrimp in tempura or the fish in sushi. And that’s not the only thing, you make the multinational manufacturers of health care products richer, while inadvertently hurting farmers and fisherfolks.

From the soil to the soil.

Organic health care products by Human Nature do not use artificially manufactured chemicals. The products are manufactured from the fruit or grass in your backyard. They have shampoos made from cucumber, guava or mandarin oranges, body wash from guava, beauty oil from sunflower seed, toner from tomatoes, facial scrub from cocoa butter and brown rice and even hand sanitizers from pineapple and watermelon.

“When you use these, it won’t harm the environment because these already come from the environment,” said Councilor Archival.

If you think you have splurged your skin by pampering it with imported and expensive beauty products, you may be doing the exact opposite. The harmful and allergy indications of artificially manufactured products are real. Though you may not own up, how many times have you found your hair turn like chicken wire or maybe barbed wire because the shampoo was just too strong for you? Or how many times did you experience your face erupt into pimples because the chemicals were just too harmful for you? Even the Bureau of Food and Drug warned that skin whitening products can be harmful.

What this is saying is that anything artificial you apply on your skin, is not exactly for your skin. Making an analogy with the soil, Archival said “your skin is your soil. When we apply chemicals like fertilizers to the soil to increase production, we make the soil acidic until such time it can no longer produce nutrients on its own or it becomes useless for planting. But compost or its enzymes brings back the nutrients of the soil. The moment you bring back the nutrients of the soil, the soil will be fertile and you will have these plants growing and growing strong.”

He went on to say that, “acid weakens the growth of plants and trees and because these are weak, pests feed on it. While the pests can be killed with pesticides, the toxins remain on the plants like vegetables and fruits. So when you eat these, you eat including the toxins from pesticides.” It’s a pretty scary thing to be saying but we are not afraid to use those expensive and imported shampoo, conditioner or body wash from which effluents can literally pollute the soil and water.

Bring back skin nutrients.

When you use organic products on your skin, you bring back the nutrients of your skin naturally. That besides, you don’t pollute or degrade the environment. More than anything else, you give the farmers a nice favor. That means they will be encouraged to plant more bananas, oranges, watermelon, sunflowers, calendulas and earn from these. That mango in your backyard can make a nice hairstyling cream.

By using organic products, the cycle of nutrients nourishes and feeds on itself. Councilor Archival calls it green entrepreneurship. For the farmer and the consumer, these are not expensive. Me, I use Human Nature’s organic beauty oil for my hair because it’s like having a rebond everyday. And while a rebond or cellophane can cost P1,000, the 50 ml beauty oil is only P99.75.

Archival said there are no legislations yet that would urge or endorse people to use organic products. He said it takes a lot of mind-setting to imbibe behavioral change and choices. “He deplored that while he has been advocating environment-friendly products and methods for the past six years, nobody believes him. Maybe people want to see the environment go to waste first before taking the caution.

People generally never take heed of a warning until a disaster or tragedy happens at the skin of their teeth. By that time, it maybe too late to do any caution. Blessed are those who don’t see but believe, they are spared from the affliction of unbelief.