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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Green Guinea Pig: Coffee Facial Scrub

 My stockpile of Desert Essence facial scrub is all used up and the brand has disappeared from the shelves of both the Park Slope Food Coop and Trader Joes. What's a girl to do?

Inspired by dull skin, a lack of motivation to search for a new brand of facial scrub, and the crafty folks on the World Wide Web, I made my own facial scrub today. I used the coffee grounds leftover from this morning's coffee, a minuscule sample of fancypants Mayan sea salt, the dregs of a honey bottle, a drop of tea tree oil, and a wee bit of olive oil.

The results?

The Bad: I had to be super careful not to get any of the brown mixture on my white shower curtain. There was a lot more cleanup to be done post-shower because of the coffee grounds. I wouldn't recommend this unless you have a mesh strainer over your tub drain. (Luckily, I do.) Predictably, the mixture also smells like burnt coffee, which I'm not so into.

The Good: Although the scrub was a bit coarser than what I'm used to, it did an excellent job exfoliating at least a week's worth of nasty dead skin cells- maybe even better job than the Dessert Essence scrub. My face also felt very soft, moisturized, and refreshed. It probably cost me less than a dollar to make this vs. the $4 I would have spent on a store bought product. Reusing something always feels great and because the city compost worms will still get the coffee after I've scrubbed with it, I've given the coffee 3 lives!

Conclusion: I will probably continue to use this but only over the kitchen sink. If I get my hands on a chamomile tea bag, I'd like to add some tea to this mixture.

Olivia Lane is a Blogger, Green Living Educator, and Health Coach trained at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She's also author of Baking Soda & Bliss: The Healthy & Happy Guide to Green Cleaning 
 
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2 comments:

  1. Thank you for posting this -
    I'm always interested in DIY skin care - I may give this a go! x

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is one of those kitchen cupboard solutions for a healthy skin. The used coffee grounds are perfect to deodorize yourself in a bath or shower.

    skin care reviews

    ReplyDelete