Eco-Friendly

Watching the NFL playoffs last week, I suddenly remembered that division championship weekend marks my one-year anniversary of not using shampoo. It’s crazy to think about, but as I’ve already adoringly professed, it’s a change that has dramatically improved my life for the better.

Not long after I published my last post on this topic, I began noticing a higher rate of breakage from the ends of my hair. I had accepted (and actually enjoyed) a degree of dryness as part of the no-poo result, but this was starting to look like straight-up damage, and I worried that I would have to abandon my shampoo-free ways. However, before doing anything drastic like buying shampoo, I decided to try some adjustments to my hair-washing routine. I was incredibly pleased to discover that these minor changes resulted in my hair looking and feeling even better than before!

Here’s my updated routine, with the key changes noted:

1. Fill a small travel shampoo bottle with one part baking soda and six parts water. This is a much lower concentration of baking soda than I was using previously, and I now only mix one wash’s worth of the solution at a time. I use all or almost all of this mixture for one wash.
2. Combine 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with 1 cup water in a small spray bottle. This is the same concentration I was using before, but now I spray my hair much more heavily each time. This quantity now lasts me about three washes instead of six. I theorize (with zero science knowledge to back me up) that the dryness and breakage I was experiencing was due to not using enough acid to balance out the effects of the baking soda.
3. Wash wet hair and scalp with baking soda mixture. Do not wash ends of hair. Rinse well. Because I’m now using less baking soda, I spend a little more time scrubbing my scalp for extra manual cleaning action.
4. Spray vinegar mixture onto hair until fully saturated, spraying the scalp thoroughly to balance out the baking soda and also spraying all the way to the ends of your hair. I let it sit for a minute or two to absorb. Rinse well.

With this new routine, my hair is now softer and shinier than before and breakage has decreased to a normal level. My hair is less voluminous because it’s less dry, but it still successfully holds a curl. For a while I had been back up to three washes per week, but with these changes I’m now back down to two.

There are several blog posts out there in which people describe their horror stories of going no-poo. I certainly can’t attest that this method works for all types of hair—I only know it works for mine. But if you give no-poo a try and start having a bad experience, I encourage you to experiment with your routine to find the method that works for you before giving up completely. Maybe your hair needs a lot of baking soda scrubbing action, or maybe your hair needs hardly any baking soda at all. If you feel like your hair is truly becoming damaged, definitely stop and assess the situation, but a few simple adjustments may be all you need to reset the balance.

For a couple of months I’ve been wanting to try the BlueIndy electric car sharing service in Indianapolis. There’s a station about half a mile from my apartment, and I was curious about the cars and what the overall user experience is like. I also wanted to address a lingering question I’ve had since the system appeared: Who is BlueIndy for?

As a car owner whose daily commute is outside the BlueIndy range, I figured I was not the primary target market. However, the BlueIndy website touts free, guaranteed parking as one of its benefits, so I wondered if would BlueIndy be convenient for occasional trips downtown. Every Indianapolis urbanite knows the frustration of arriving downtown to unexpectedly find the cheapest parking garages plastered with “$20 Event Parking” signs. Could BlueIndy be a way to avoid this unpleasant surprise?

With the warmer weather this past weekend, I thought Sunday would be a good day to try it out for a trip downtown for lunch, so I logged on to the BlueIndy website to start planning my excursion. My plan was to pick up a BlueIndy car from the SoBro station, drive downtown and deposit the car at one of the many downtown stations, eat lunch, then pick up another BlueIndy car and return to the SoBro station. I quickly learned that this plan would be inconvenient to the point of impossibility due to two major flaws in the BlueIndy system.

Two major flaws

According to the membership description pages on the BlueIndy website, all BlueIndy memberships (including one-day memberships) must begin at an Enrollment Kiosk.* This in itself seems reasonable, since you need to verify that you’re a licensed driver before using the cars. However, as of the date of this post, there are only three operational Enrollment Kiosks in the city out of dozens of stations, with only two more under construction. Standard BlueIndy stations run along the north-south corridor as far south as the University of Indianapolis and as far north as 63rd Street, with some popping out to the east and west near downtown. Despite this broad coverage area, two of the Enrollment Kiosks are located downtown within two blocks of each other, and the third is located at College & Broad Ripple Ave.

*In the more deeply-buried FAQ, the website says that monthly and yearly memberships can be purchased through the website or mobile app, but there was no clarification on whether the user would still need to visit an Enrollment Kiosk to obtain their membership card.

It would take me about an hour to walk to the Broad Ripple kiosk—technically doable, but hardly convenient. It would only take about 15 minutes to ride my bike there, though, which seems like a reasonable alternative except for the fact that there is no bike parking provided as part of any BlueIndy stations. There may be nearby bike parking or there may not; it is in no way guaranteed. This seems like a huge missed opportunity, as including bike parking as a fundamental part of each station would make the system accessible to a much broader geographic area.

Who is BlueIndy for?

Because of the Enrollment Kiosk requirement, it seems apparent that BlueIndy is not really intended for one-day use. The inconvenience of getting to an Enrollment Kiosk would far outweigh the guaranteed parking benefit in most cases.

The Enrollment Kiosk requirement also begs the question, is the system intended for people who don’t own cars? If it is, how are these users supposed to get to an Enrollment Kiosk to sign up? Yearly membership cards are sent out via snail mail according to the BlueIndy website, so once you have your card you could use any station for your first trip, but a yearly membership is a big commitment if you haven’t even had a chance to try out the system.

Despite these flaws (which I hope the city addresses soon), here are some groups that I think can actually benefit from BlueIndy as it exists today:

• Partners or families who own only one car, particularly if one working adult can use BlueIndy for their commute
• Non-car owners who have access to an Enrollment Kiosk
• Tourists staying downtown could use one-day memberships to visit other “notable” neighborhoods like Irvington, Broad Ripple or Fountain Square
• College students
• Electric car owners can use BlueIndy stations to charge their own vehicles

Do I still think BlueIndy is a valid mode of green transportation? Yes. My favorite thing about BlueIndy, now that I realize I can’t practically use it myself, is the charging service it offers to electric car owners, as this could increase the adoption rate of all-electric vehicles in the city. Is it a perfect system? Far from it. Hopefully as the program matures it will find its niche and clarify its marketing to reach the people who can truly benefit.

It’s been 10 months since I’ve used shampoo. To some of you that may sound shocking, and others of you may already be familiar with the movement winkingly known as “no poo.” The underlying belief of the no-poo movement is that conventional shampoo is actually more damaging than it is helpful, and by stripping the natural oils from hair, it creates the need for more frequent washings than would otherwise be needed.

While I spent a couple of years experimenting with natural shampoos, the no-poo method lingered in the back of my mind as a mysterious, too-good-to-be-true myth conjured by the internets. However, once I found out that my two bandmates with dramatically excellent hair were also no-poo, I decided to give it a try.

I chose one of the methods I saw discussed most frequently online, using baking soda and apple cider vinegar in place of store-bought shampoo. I started out washing my hair on the same schedule I used to shampoo (every other day), and over time that became less frequent. Now I only wash my hair twice a week.

If you Google “no poo,” you’ll find a myriad of different methods and opinions and experiences. Some people have had negative experiences, and others, like me, only wish they’d done it sooner. Here are my five favorite things about no longer using shampoo:

1. It changed the way I think about my hair

Until I went no-poo, I was very concerned about my hair being clean. I felt like it would be a scandal to go out with unwashed hair. I washed my hair every day for most of my life and assumed that everyone else did the same. Now that I know about the wider world of hair care methods, I feel like I’ve been freed from a prison of my old assumptions about socially acceptable hair.

2. Less time spent styling

Changing the way I wash my hair has also changed how I think about styling it. I used to think I had to straighten my hair for it to be acceptable. Over the last 10 months I’ve begun to embrace my natural hair, which is sometimes mostly wavy and sometimes mostly straight—I’ve come to appreciate both without feeling like I need to intervene with a styling tool.

I felt like it was especially imperative to blow dry and straighten my hair for work, and now I realize that there are way better things to do with that 20 minutes every morning, and life will not end if I show up at the office with my hair how it naturally dries. Plus, since I wash my hair less, if I do decide to style my hair it lasts for several days.

I’ve also come to love wearing my hair in a bun—it’s quick, it looks good whether my hair is wet or dry, and it curls my hair for later. A trifecta in only 30 seconds.

3. No more traveling with a hair dryer and straightener

Breaking my reliance on heat styling means no more lugging around small appliances on every trip. Extra room in my suitcase for the win!

4. Uses no plastic bottles

Now that I don’t buy shampoo, that’s one less plastic bottle in my waste stream every couple of months. My baking soda comes in a cardboard box and my apple cider vinegar comes in a glass bottle. I go through the baking soda every 4-6 weeks, but I’m still working on my original bottle of vinegar since I use so little at a time.

5. My hair has more volume and holds curl

I remember the first day I went out in public having washed my hair the new way. It was the Colts vs. Patriots AFC Championship game this past January, the game of Deflate-gate fame. I washed my hair in the morning and wore it in a bun most of the day, and when I let it down to go watch the game, it was holding beautiful, voluminous curls. Though the Colts’ playoff hopes and the game balls deflated, my curls did not, and I’ve never looked back.

For those of you interested in the details of my hair washing routine, here’s what I do specifically:

1. Fill a small travel shampoo bottle halfway with baking soda, then fill it the rest of the way with water. Shake to mix. Depending on the size of the bottle this should last for 2-4 washes.
2. Combine 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with 1 cup water in a small spray bottle. This quantity should last for 6-10 washes, depending on how heavily you apply it and and how much hair you have.
3. Wash wet hair and scalp with baking soda mixture. Do not wash ends of hair. Rinse well.
4. Spray vinegar mixture onto hair, including the ends. I let it sit for a minute or two to absorb. Rinse well.

Edit Feb. 2016: I’ve made some changes to the proportions of baking soda and ACV I use, resulting in my hair being softer and shinier. Check out my updated method.

You may be tempted to skip the vinegar rinse, but don’t. I’m not totally up on the science of it, but because baking soda is basic on the pH scale, it’s important to follow it with an acid to keep the pH of your hair balanced.

Lots of no-poo articles describe an adjustment period during which hair gets incredibly greasy. That was my biggest fear going in, but it ended up not being an issue for me at all. I think this is due to the fact that I started using the new supplies right away instead of letting my hair “lie fallow” for a few weeks, as many articles recommend. There was a brief period where my hair looked slightly greasy, but not to the extent that I felt like I needed to cover my hair. Following the slightly greasy period there was a dry period, which I also didn’t really mind because it gave my hair temporary super-volume and I had a lot of fun with that. I don’t remember exactly when my hair found equilibrium again, but I think it was around the three-month point.

I have often pondered how people in the past kept their hair from looking greasy, because I know if I lived on the prairie in a cabin with no heat, I would not be washing my hair at all between November and March. No-poo hasn’t totally answered this question for me, but it has shown me that human hair can take care of itself more than most people give it credit for.

Have you tried no-poo? What was your experience? Can anyone enlighten me about old-timey hair care methods?