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Guest Blogger:  Gillie from Ware in Asheville answers the question, "How do you choose what to carry in your store?"

Guest Blogger: Gillie from Ware in Asheville answers the question, "How do you choose what to carry in your store?"

How does Dip Hair Care arrive on so many shelves?  Conditioner bars are one of those low-waste products that even seasoned sustainable shoppers will claim “just don’t work on my hair.” And then they try Dip conditioner bars and come to understand that there is as much variation in quality and efficacy in solid hair care as there is in liquid.

How to Choose the Best Conditioner Bar for Curly Hair and the Importance of Shopping Small to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

How to Choose the Best Conditioner Bar for Curly Hair and the Importance of Shopping Small to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

"I have curly hair so a conditioner bar just won't work for me." We hear this over and over, yet our curly customers are our biggest advocates since the Dip conditioner bar can replace so many plastic bottled products including detangling sprays, leave in conditioners, hair masks, air-dry creams, curl creams, and deep conditioning masks. Conditioner bars have become increasingly popular as a sustainable alternative to traditional liquid conditioners. However, choosing the best conditioner bar for curly hair can be a daunting task... ...especially when you have a graveyard of conditioner bars that you've already tried and been disappointed by. Sound familiar?  It usually does.

Small Business Spotlight: Dip in with Rise Up Retreats & Kassia Meador

Small Business Spotlight: Dip in with Rise Up Retreats & Kassia Meador

 Women friendships (and the shared passions that go with them) are an untapped power source in our industry. These types of friendships can spark some amazing things, and going forward, Kassia and I are ready to put those to good use.  So this is the meet-cute story of how Dip was built with human connection, and not corporate emails, conference tables, & phone-tag. We invented a new kind of "board meeting". We met with surfboards in the wild: your friendly neighborhood Dipette, Kassia Meador, and the badass crew from Rise Up Retreats.

No hair texture left behind: creating an all-textures welcomed culture

No hair texture left behind: creating an all-textures welcomed culture

Dip deserves a slow clap moment, because it’s about time that there’s a quality, sustainable product that is good for your hair and the environment.  Let’s keep in mind that until recently, sustainable beauty was not very colorful (literally and figuratively) in how it was marketed. Aside from crunchy packaging that came in fifty shades of beige, there was a lack of diversity in the faces and hair textures we saw representing these beauty brands.

Why Refill Is The New Record Store (And Why That Matters)

Why Refill Is The New Record Store (And Why That Matters)

Record stores, on paper, were just another shop trying to stay afloat. In person, however, they were cultivation grounds for something entirely different and beautiful. They were a place to slow down, to reminisce with music you already loved, or discover new artists that sometimes pulled you in a whole new direction in life. And, of course, they were always staffed by people who loved the art (not just the job).

5 Ways Travel Can Change Your Perspective on Pollution

5 Ways Travel Can Change Your Perspective on Pollution

We’ve all seen them, the Instagram versus reality posts with influencers hitting the right angles to allude to fantastic sights all to themselves and then you see what it really looks like, crowded with tourists holding Walkman style audio guides and new balance trainers. What if we did that with pollution? Those influencer Lightroom presets taking the hazy smog out of the air, making sure to get the angle of the beach without the mounds of micro plastics collecting where the wave retreats, and making sure to photograph towering skyscrapers in cities instead of the litter that lines their streets.  First hand travel has shown me what really exists behind the posts and given me the opportunity to understand it in a new light. Here’s how travel has changed my personal perspective on pollution and what it might do for you too:    The village I spent time in on Zanzibar didn’t have a waste management system which meant a more creative approach to handling trash. Up at the school, which was very open to the public and a spot where a lot of locals spent time in the courtyard, there were bins for different types of waste. Hard plastics, soft plastics and waste, and compostables. The soft plastics were maneuvered into the liter size plastic bottles and packed in mixed with sand to fill the tiny openings until they were hard as bricks. Eco bricks. Which were then used to create the infrastructure of the village. The entire school, water well, and extending into shops were made from these eco bricks. Instead of producing new material this community turned a waste problem into a solution, using the plastics already in existence instead of moving a pile of trash to a bigger pile of trash (aka a landfill). When it comes to social media it seems like the only time garbage is highlighted is when exploring developing nations, next time you see that influencer “doing good” stop and think about how that community might already be handling the waste problem.  While there are creative solutions to plastic and pollution that already exists I noticed in my travels preventative measures as well. As I walked around Amsterdam one sign kept popping up in windows of every restaurant and cafe I passed, “no take away”. Even when I sat down to order in a cafe the server heard my American accent and reminded me that my coffee would be brought out in a ceramic mug, no take away. As much as my intention was to sit there and enjoy my coffee, this comment left me even more aware of the amount of waste produced by the to-go culture of the United States. Time is a luxury not everyone has, but when you do, take the moments to get your coffee at the table in the cafe and reduce how much unnecessary waste you produce.  Tampons. Yeah I get that most people don’t want to talk about them but it’s still a total change that I was not expecting and quite literally never thought about. The entirety of my 8 months in Europe and Northern Africa traveling to a multitude of regions and countries, I never once saw a tampon with a plastic applicator. They just didn’t exist. It made me rethink what we add to everyday products that are just not necessary. Not even what we can use to replace like the heavily promoted diva cups, but just less. The absence of the plastic component. It’s just simply not necessary and how much of this unnecessary part contributes as a pollutant in landfills and waterways? There are no trash cans outside in Okinawa, Japan. Not because they want you littering but because if you have to carry your own trash you become more aware of the waste you’re producing. It actually encourages people to stop and think about what they’re about to buy before making the purchase because they know that tossing it won’t be convenient or accessible so they typically don’t buy what needs to be thrown away immediately.  Not specific to one country but different cultures as a whole, the way food is sold and meals are prepared can dramatically effect the amount of waste produced by eating, something everyone has to do everyday. One of my favorite things is to wander the isles of grocery stores in every country I visit and what I have found is the lack of plastic packaging in most other grocery stores and the accessibility for daily food runs. When I was living in Prague my refrigerator was about half the size as the one I own in United States. It wasn’t expected to have such large grocery hauls and attempt to store it. I was able to get on the tram everyday and go to one of the smaller but more frequent markets and buy precisely what I needed for my meals that day and what I noticed was a large reduction in food waste. When I would bring home my tote of groceries (because bagging was not available, bring your own or carry it our in your arms) and cook what was in it immediately there was no food I was tossing because it went bad. The reason this is so significant is because even though something is compostable, it doesn’t mean it will compost in a landfill. The conditions have to be right for compost to be created so all that food you think will just go away actually piles up in landfills buried under other trash contributing to the production of methane gases. On top of this benefit, the food itself that I was buying was allowed to be more natural. I have seen bananas and oranges packaged under plastic as if it didn’t already have nature’s own protective covering on it, but never once did I see packaging as such in Prague. There was plenty of plastic in other areas, but never something that I looked at and thought, who came up with that bad idea? 

The Secret Hidden Plastic That Lots Of Eco-Friendly Brands Don’t Want To Admit To

The Secret Hidden Plastic That Lots Of Eco-Friendly Brands Don’t Want To Admit To

Our goal is to get you into small stores that do not accept palletized goods.   That means locally-owned, small-scale, passionately-driven businesses! Sure, we make less money when we send you to stores instead of buying directly from our site, but that’s cool with us because we figure once we get you into a small store, you’ll notice that the experience is better.  

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