Way back in the day (when I was in Elementary School) I remember a commercial on tv that encouraged us to plant trees in honor of Arbor Day, which was created in 1872 to encourage planting trees and caring for them. It is celebrated on the last Friday in April each year. Another environmentally friendly day is Earth Day, which was established on April 22nd, 1970 - and considered the beginning of the modern environmental movement. This year we are lucky enough to have both of these great awareness days in the same week.

In honor of these days, I am going to highlight a few companies that are doing their part to encourage a greener, more environmentally friendly way of getting beautiful:

Origins: Origins has always been organically friendly but this Spring, they have started the "Return to Origins Recycling Program". This allows you to bring in *any* empty cosmetic containers (from any brand) to be recycled and they will give you a FREE sample of one of their high-performance skincare products.

butter LONDON: butter LONDON is a 3 Free (the toxic Formaldehyde, Toluene and DBP) polish line with such great colors, and whom basically admonishes "3 Free is a way of life". This Earth Day they will be giving out a bottle of their polish to the first 500 lovelies who click on their website (for us in the US, it starts at 8am PST/11am EST). But, don't despair, if you are not one of the first 500 clickers, you can still take advantage of a great offer of 5 for $40 of colors you choose, or let them know what you are looking for and they will make a recommendation for you. (Offer good thru 4-30-09) *also, don't forget to look at their cute dictionary.

Vert: Instead of looking all over online for more organic products to incorporate into your lifestyle, just go to the Vert - "The eco-chic beauty boutique" website to choose from over 25+ eco companies from around the world. Their goal is to provide conscious consumers "the best selection of pure and organic beauty products available". In addition, she carries my eco fave Josie Maran.
*(speaking of Josie, don't forget her "Earth Day Kit" is still available at Sephora, too.)

Lavanila: I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Plant a Billion Trees Initiative, the program that the yummy fragrance company Lavanila has teamed up with the Nature Conservancy for Earth Month. The Nature Conservancy's goal is to plant 1 billion trees over the next 7 years. Lavanila will "plant a tree" with every online order at lavanila.com during the month of April, helping them get even closer to their goal.

Have a great Earth Week, and remember, even if you don't live an entirely green lifestyle, we can all take baby steps to start incorporating green actions into our lives. I'll share one way I do this - my family and I reuse our shower towels. It saves on washing more laundry, water, electricity and the wear and tear on the towels themselves. We have over the door hooks in the bathroom and hang them there after we dry off. It just takes one step to start the journey.