Earth Friendly Shaving

 A More Earth Friendly Shave

Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 8/13/22

Every little bit helps. Just remember that as you read my story about the pursuit of a way to shave my face every day with minimal impact on the environment. Up until about nine or ten years ago, I would alternate my daily shaving method between disposable razors and an electric shaver. Of those two methods, the electric shaver is by far the more green option of the two, but I would always switch back to disposable razors because it gave me a much closer shave in my opinion.

It wasn’t that my facial hair is thick and prolific, but no matter how many times I ran the electric shaver over my face, by the afternoon my face felt stubbly. I would grow tired of that after a couple weeks or so and switch back to lathering up and using whatever set up was popular in disposable razors. When I first started shaving on a daily basis, during the end of the Ford or beginning of the Carter administration, plastic razors had a single razor blade. Then after a while they decided we needed two blades to get a really smooth shave. Nowadays, what are they up to in blade count? Five…..seven….ten? Will my grandsons be confronted with a 12 blade razor? Whoops, sorry for chasing that rabbit.

Anyway, a decade ago while I was poking around the internet, I read an article by a guy who was making the case for less plastic in our everyday lives and he suggested returning to the old double edge razor set up. He talked about how plastic disposable razors sit in landfills for a very, very long time before they decompose. I think it was something like 200 years. Since my beard was not very thick, I could make a disposable razor last a week. Still, that amounted to 52 of those going into the dump every year. Multiply that by the millions of guys and gals who shave with them and we can fill up a stadium or two with them every year, right? It made me start to think about the subject.

Shortly thereafter one of those divine coincidences happened when I was in a bookstore and spotted a book about shaving. I grabbed it for two reasons. First, the subject of shaving was rolling around my brain pan. Secondly, my dad had never really showed me how to shave and the book had lots of pictures that explained shaving in detail to supplement the text. Well, the book advocated for two methods of shaving – either with a straight razor that you keep sharp with a leather strop or using a two sided, single edge stainless steel razor housed in a stainless steel shaver that could be changed out when the blade got dull. The book also went into great detail about the comfort and great results that could be obtained by using a pre-shave oil and a post shave lotion to really get great results from the daily ritual.

I figured the Universe was speaking directly to me to quit with the plastic razors and go old school. I paid attention and bought a stainless steel razor kit for about $50.00 or so. It had a brush, steel razor handle, and 20 razor blades. I went to the Art of Shaving store, when we used to have one, and bought some stuff to put on my face before, during and after I shaved. I must say that using high quality shaving oil, cream, and after shave lotion is very much worth the money. Also, the better quality shaving creams last a lot longer than the cheap stuff, so I would argue that all things considered it is not that much more expensive to use the good stuff.

Julie supported my effort by picking up Dandy Dan, a vintage method for holding my shaver, brush, and for keeping the used razor blades for recycling. On that last bit, Dandy Dan has a slot in the top of his head and the used blades slide right in.

Over the years I have tweaked my eco-shaving a couple of times. My first brush for applying the shaving cream was the traditional badger hair because it was presented as the best. Since that time I have made the switch to a synthetic badger brush for a couple of reasons and it works even better in my opinion. My real badger brush shed hairs regularly, but I have not experienced that with the synthetic.

I have also transitioned from shaving cream delivered in a recyclable plastic tub to using a shaving soap. Talk about value, the shaving soap provides the lube necessary for a close shave and lasts a very, very long time.

Just for the sake of discussion, we can suppose I have been “eco shaving” for 10 years now. I change my razor blade once a week just like I used to toss out my plastic razor once a week. So that means I have 520 razor blades in my used blade holder that can be re-cycled because they are steel. That means I have put 520 less disposable plastic razors into the ground to sit for 200 or more years. One might shrug and figure that is no big deal.

What if 1,000 people did the same thing – then we are talking 520,000 plastic razors not clogging up the waste stream. If 100,000 of us across the country did this, then we could keep Fifty Two Million of those plastic things out of the waste stream. Now that would be something worth writing about, right? Well, maybe this article might inspire a couple three seven people to eco-shave who might inspire another 50 people who might, and so on.