My mother died from breast cancer in 2016. The cancer was first detected because of lumps in her armpits and by that time, it had spread pretty extensively. A year after diagnosis, she died and I was left wondering what had just happened to my world.   A couple of things kept running through my head. Her oncologists told me to never do hormone treatment therapy (her cancer was estrogen dominant) and to change my deodorant. Immediately.   To that point in my life (I was 30), I’d never thought much about deodorant other than it was necessary to stay fresh and dry. I really didn’t know much about what toxins conventional deodorants contained, nor the connections they had to breast cancer. It was my mother’s cancer that put me on a path to be as clean and natural in all products that I can be, and it all started with my search for a clean deodorant that worked.   Then, there weren’t many options. But as more research continues to make us aware of the dangers of the chemicals in conventional deodorants, and the benefit (yes, benefit) of sweat to our body, we are seeing more clean and effective deodorants available.  

Smells Great, Still Wet

  The biggest thing you have to remember when using a natural deodorant that really works is that a deodorant is just that–a remover of odor. An antiperspirant is very different. Antiperspirants block your sweat glands and prevent them from producing sweat. If you don’t sweat, you’re not wet, and theoretically, don’t smell.   But there is where the problem starts. Sweating is important for our bodies to detox and maintain temperature control, organ function and so much more. Additionally, most common antiperspirants contain aluminum chlorohydrate or aluminum zirconium and those have both been linked to several diseases like breast cancer and Alzehimer’s. They have also been linked to gene instability, and more research is being done regularly as more women are being diagnosed with cancers and other diseases earlier than ever before.   So what do you do? Well, you have to just give several the old college-try. There are many ingredients natural deodorants contain that help prevent wetness and odor by killing the bacteria that is creating the odor and absorbing the excess wetness so you don’t feel so…pitty. Natural powders like baking soda, kaolin clay, arrowroot and corn starch are the main ingredients, but different bodies react differently. I have no issue with baking soda, but my husband definitely does. Our skins are living and breathing as well and you may have to try a couple to figure out what works best for you.   Don’t despair, though, as we’ve polled moms, reviews and tried them ourselves so we could find the best natural deodorants that really work. We don’t like having smelly, sweaty underarms any more than the next Mama, so you can relax since we’ve done the initial work for you. All you need to do is try them out to find out which is your best fit.  

Top 10 Natural Deodorants That Really Work

            In 2018, Chantel Powell picked her six-year-old son up from basketball practice and found he ‘smelled like a grown man!’ She didn’t find a single thing in stores that she felt was safe enough for his precious skin, or that smelled good enough and was fun enough for her boy. That’s where mama-ingenuity and love comes in. She created her own deodorant and her son, Kameron, loved it so much he told her she should make it for everyone.   She laughed that off at first, but after Kameron kept insisting his mama had a fab product under his arms, she offered it initially to other team moms and from there, word of mouth spread. Her Sonshine and Suga were so popular, she ended up creating products for the entire family, including the King and Queen line for adults. The best part is that each of the natural and vegan ingredients in Play Pits’ products was personally hand-selected, tested and molded with the love of a mother. Chantel only wanted non-toxic ingredients that were safe for everyone, so that means no parabens, synthetic fragrances or aluminum. Instead, Play Pits’ specialized formula is designed to kill odors, absorb bacteria and keep your whole family fresh all day and night. We love that this female minority-owned small business has taken the sweat world by storm!               We’ve always loved Earth Mama (what’s not to love?) and we adore this mini-deodorant set because you can get the best of all their deodorant worlds in one adorable box. Find your pit-fix and make it yours forever.   Earth Mama has worked super hard to make this the perfect deodorant for those with sensitive skin, and that INCLUDES baking soda. Yes, they know–they made it with just the perfect balance of magnesium and baking soda to make it work but not irritate. It’s formulated especially for sensitive skin, pregnant mamas or breastfeeding mamas and the only fragrance comes from organic essential oils. The only non-vegan ingredient is organic beeswax, but even that was of course ethically sourced in a bee-centric manner. There’s nothing bad like propylene glycol or parabens or aluminum and it’s so good it was NSF/ANSI 305 certified by Oregon Tilth.                      

A geração de resíduos vem crescendo em grande escala, principalmente por conta da expansão de empresas e dos hábitos de consumo. As sobras que não são destinadas corretamente afetam diretamente o meio ambiente e a saúde humana. A coleta seletiva é uma das principais ações que vem colaborando para reverter esses danos. Além de evitar a disseminação de doenças e preservar a natureza, a prática é o primeiro e mais importante passo para fazer com que todos os tipos de resíduos se encaminhem para os seus devidos lugares. Quando separadas corretamente, estas sobras podem ser recicladas, transformando-se em novos produtos e ajudando a mover a economia de forma sustentável.

  A Jewish medical student is recycling hundreds of plastic gloves used during the coronavirus pandemic.   Leora Marcus from Hampstead Garden Suburb, 20, launched an initiative during lockdown after noticing an increase in the use of plastic.   ‘I try my best to do things for the environment in my everyday life” she said, but due to Covid-19, “the amount of plastic is going to massively increase because of gloves and PPE” (personal protective equipment).   “I just thought, let me see if I can find a way to recycle them or reuse them”.   She came across a company called TerraCycle which recycles plastic gloves, and got to work collecting from across the community.   The second year University of Nottingham medicine student said: “When I started like living on my own, I realised how much plastic there is in everyday life, and in my labs we would go through so much [plastic] unnecessarily. So it used to frustrate me quite a lot.”   Since I’ve been back at home during lockdown, I’ve had nothing to do, nothing to distract me. I thought might be a good time to try and do something more positive for the environment.”   Explaining how it works, she says gloves are put in a bag and be left at the bottom of a person’s driveway “and I go around wearing my own PPE to collect them.”   Usually, I try my best to go cycling or walking, so not to increase my own carbon footprint.  I pick them up and I have like a large box where I store them. Once stock has got high enough, I either send them to a drop off point, then they send it to TerraCycle.”   She says that “in the next few days, my house will become a drop-off point” too.   The former Hasmonean student, who attends the Central Square minyan, has gathered a crack team of volunteers collecting across north London, who have so far collected more than 300 gloves, including in areas such as Finchley, Cockfosters Edgware and Golders Green.   Find Leora’s initiative on Facebook here.

With glaring inclusivity problems in both the hair-care and tech industries, Black female entrepreneurs are stepping up to serve long-overlooked consumer demands.   Hair care has been flooded with VC money in recent years with the proliferation of buzzy DTC startups, but gaps have remained in products and services related to hair care for people of color. These include ethically sourced extension products and salons qualified to work with all hair types. With a VC funding gap for Black entrepreneurs, significant market opportunities are being overlooked, say beauty founders. A 2019 report by Nielsen found that what it calls the “ethnic hair and beauty aids category” is worth $63.5 million in the United States, with African Americans comprising 86% of the spend in the segment.   Fashion influencer Freddie Harrel founded DTC hair startup RadSwan in the beginning of 2019, filling a gap she saw for high-quality, ethical and eco-friendly hair extensions offered through an upscale shopping experience.   According to Harrel, the current beauty supply store shopping experience for hair extensions for women of color is lacking for style-conscious and ethically minded consumers. She said that she would previously shop for extensions directly through a wholesaler in China, and she noted that physical store shopping experience for extensions in the U.S. and Europe often involves “sticky shelves” and “cultural clashes” with staff. “It doesn’t match the fact that [Black women] spend six times more on beauty than white counterparts,” she said.   Harrel will be launching her RadSwan product line in the fall, which will be preceded by a connected content site called Black Like Me that goes lives next month. Geared toward the global African Diaspora, the brand has raised $2 million from an all-female group of VC funds including BBG and Female Founders Fund, making her one of the few Black female founders to raise over $1 million. In addition to stylish, millennial-friendly branding, the brand specifically provides synthetic hair extensions to avoid ethical problems in the human hair market. RadSwan is also launching a recycling program with TerraCycle to keep the synthetic products out of landfills.   According to 2018 Mintel data, one-third of Black consumers purchase hair-care products online and the percentage buying through online-only retailers has increased by 9% since 2016.   Recognizing this, salon-booking app Swivel was founded to provide women of color with a curated directory of stylists qualified to work with their hair type. Stylists “can’t just add themselves” to be featured, said Thompson, who noted each one is vetted by the team before being listed. Once on the app, they can be reviewed by clients in a Yelp-style interface.   “We can’t just walk into any salon and walk out thinking that we’re going to look our best,” said co-founder Jihan Thompson. “It’s so important that we find stylists that are skilled working and have been trained to work with textured hair.”     Thompson said that the app was founded in 2016 with co-founder Jennifer Lambert when “so much was happening in the beauty tech space,” but “so much of it just overlooked the unique hair care needs of Black women. I found that a lot of startups that were coming out at that time, whether they were booking apps or just tools or services, completely ignored us,” she said. The app allows users to search for stylists based on type of service offered, including braids and extension services.   “One of the key difficulties is that beauty schools don’t routinely teach stylists how to work with all textures of hair,” said Thompson. “I’ve definitely gotten my hair done and been in situations where, as soon as she started doing my hair, I was like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’”   As the beauty industry has been focused in recent weeks on how to improve product diversity, with initiatives such as the 15% Pledge, Thompson hopes this will be turning point for the industry to value inclusion.   “One of the things that I hope comes out of this — and I think we’re starting to see some of it, especially with products — is that we continue to highlight and promote the businesses that were created to fill the voids that weren’t being filled by major beauty companies before,” she said in reference to the service side of the beauty industry. “So many Black entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses launched in response to the fact that we were being ignored. It’s not like we sat here and were like, ‘Nobody’s helping us; we’re not going to do anything.’ What it has shown is that so many Black entrepreneurs are willing to solve their own problems.”

There are pets. There are influencers. And then there are petfluencers — those internet-famous fur balls who capture our hearts, our attention, and possibly our brand allegiance.   They may be cute, but don’t assume they work for peanuts. As ANA magazine reports, petfluencers can really claw at the bottom line: “Producing a video is pricier than a photo, of course, while posting on Instagram Stories carries a higher fee than a single Instagram post. Total costs for such campaigns range anywhere from $5,000 to $500,000.”   If you need more tails in your tales, take a gander at “A Different Breed of Marketing.”   More ANA Newsstand highlights from May:  

• Louder Together. Brands are waging an information war against the coronavirus, and the Ad Council is helping to lead the charge. As of early May, Ad Council President and CEO Lisa Sherman tells ANA magazine, “we've worked with more than 70 brand and creative partners, and over 200 influencers have activated on behalf of our crisis efforts.” See which brands have activated as part of the effort, and how yours can join the fray.
• Brands Doing Good Series: TerraCycle. “Our purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste," Michael Waas, global VP of brand partnerships at TerraCycle, tells Greater Good magazine. The company, which turns post-consumer, difficult-to-recycle waste into new and repurposed products, works with brands such as Colgate, Capri Sun, and Procter & Gamble's Head & Shoulders. Read how the company, which to date has helped raise $44 million for charity and worked with more than 202 million recyclers around the globe, all began with worm poop. Really.
• Are Shoppable Posts Clicking with Consumers? Kate Spade says they’re an important accessory for your social media marketing: shoppable posts. Explore the trend in social media marketing that’s providing a shortcut along the buyer’s journey, from post to purchase.
• Why Martech Investments Fall Short. What’s the secret to building an effective marketing technology stack? According to the latest from B2B Marketer it’s actually using the technology you pay for, which, it turns out, not all marketing organizations do. “Marketers use just 58 percent of their marketing technology stack's potential, despite pouring 26 percent of their marketing budgets into martech,” the story reports, citing the Gartner Marketing Technology Survey. “As a result, many marketers are apparently falling short in fully justifying those expenses.” Read what experts say are the major pitfalls to avoid and how to get the most from your marketing organization’s tech stack.
• How to Go Big. With smaller budgets than established competitors, up-and-comers like Grain & Barrel Spirits’ Dixie vodka use savvy marketing and feisty tactics to win an out-sized portion of marketshare, and as ANA magazine reports, there are definite lessons larger brands can learn — especially when facing an economic downturn.

  Also, be sure to catch up on the latest industry trends contributed by ANA partners in Forward magazine. May’s contributions include:  

• How the industry can upskill the next generation of marketers, from The Ad Learning Exchange
• When it comes to digital ads during COVID-19, are consumers getting the right message? From CivicScience
• Redefining relevance in a new era of personalization, from Innovid
• How to organize teams for scoping season success, from Decideware

  See highlights from April or find even more great coverage of the industry on ANA Newsstand.   Let us know your thoughts. Leave comments on articles or write me directly at aeitelbach@ana.net.

I have a slightly complicated relationship with my deli containers. I have a drawerful that made their way in via deli soups, meal kits, and supermarket olives, and most of them have been in there...forever? Some may have turned cloudy. Others absorbed the myriad smells of foods they’ve since held. I greatly value them for their usefulness: as vessels for bulk grains, soups, the giant potato I parboiled but didn’t use immediately. “If you are in possession of the full range—a quart, pint, half-pint—you basically have a container to suit every storage need,” says Allison Bruns Buford, Food52’s Test Kitchen Director, ex-catering maven, and deli container fan. They’re so easily stacked in the fridge, she adds, and there’s “nothing quite like eating straight out of one.”

The Facebook profile photo for Fight Dirty Tybee gets your attention. It’s one word written on the beach. It’s not what you usually see in script drawn in the sand with a finger or stick. It’s not somebody’s name or “Peace” or “Love” or curvy lines that will wash away with the next tide.   The word is “Quit,” and it’s formed in block letters with piles of cigarette butts. Butts that were litter just hours before. Butts picked up by people who love the unspoiled beauty of the beach.   Every Sunday evening or Monday morning from spring to fall there is a beach clean-up hosted by the grass-roots group Tybee Clean Beach Volunteers (TCBV). They scour the beach for all the litter left behind by weekend crowds.   It’s straightforward work that is instantly rewarding. You make an immediate environmental and aesthetic difference. I joined the effort at the pavilion at 9:30 a.m. June 1.   Tim Arnold and the TCBV team were signing people in. Each volunteer got two pieces of equipment. That’s all you need — a bucket for one hand, a reacher/grabber for the other. The bucket has a painter’s cup hung inside it for cigarette butts; the rest of the bucket is for everything else.

Summer will be here before you know it, and while I would not exactly consider myself a warm-weather person, there is one reason I love the season: frozen cocktails! Don’t forget to recycle the pouch! The company has teamed up with TerraCycle to make responsible disposal of their containers an easy task.