Via Waylon Lewis, from the Holiday 08 issue.

You buy conventional soap, lotion or shampoo?

If it comes in a plastic container, make sure it’s #1 or #2—the only easily recycled plastics (yogurt containers, for example, are rarely recyclable). Why do we care? Because plastics are forever. There’s a mostly-submerged plastic island the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific. Fish eat little broken down bits of plastic, we eat the fish and the toxins go on bobbing in our bloodstreams.

But that’s not all! Unbelievably, the F.D.A. doesn’t judge bodycare by the same standards as food—though the skin is our largest organ, absorbing 87% of what we put on it—so if you buy a bodycare product that says “Organic” or “Natural,” it means…nothing.

Pangea Organics, however, is the real thing. Founder Joshua Onysko uses no petroleum-based ingredients or synthetic preservatives, no artificial colors or fragrances. Pangea’s ingredients are active, housed in infinitely recyclable dark (to protect light-sensitive ingredients) glass or recyclable #1 or #2 plastic. Most ingenious, and trail-blazing of all: their paper packages are made of folded origami-style (so no need for toxic glue) unbleached, undyed egg-carton stuff…that’s embedded with basil and amaranth seeds, giving you beautiful plants and keeping waste from the landfill.

So what’s the bottomline of all this bother about silly old Mother Earth? Success: Pangea Organics sells 40 plus skincare products in 21 countries.