Shaving Cream

You wouldn’t crack open a can of shaving cream, hold the nozzle to your mouth, and eat it whipped-cream style. But slathering it all over your mug is actually as good as ingesting it because your skin absorbs up to about 60 % of what you put on it. And between absorbing vegetable-based ingredients and possibly harmful ones, we’ll take vegetables.

You can find our selection of Tom's of Maine products here.

Sometimes the greener choice is simple. Other times, it might not work for you. Tell us your preference by voting and commenting below.

Traditional Shaving Cream

Tom’s Natural Conditioning Shave Cream

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Do the math

About $3 for 11 oz.

Tom's of Maine Natural Conditioning Shave Cream costs about $4.50 for 3.6 oz.

What you’ll miss

100 % natural ingredients and recyclable packaging.

A few extra bucks and a few more shaves.

What’s in this stuff

A laundry list of hard-to-pronounce ingredients. One of the pronounceable ones, fragrance, is actually a blanket term for a whole host of chemicals known as phthalates. These toxic chemicals accumulate in our bodies over time and have been shown to aggravate asthma. They’ve also been linked to low sperm counts and infertility. Another common ingredient, Laureth-23, contains 1,4-dioxane, which the EPA considers to be a probable human carcinogen.

Water, coconut and olive oil soaps, stearic acid, glycerin, natural fragrance. The only ingredients you might not be familiar with are stearic acid, which comes from many vegetable fats and oils, and glycerin, a natural by-product of the soap making process that attracts moisture.

Big picture

While many conventional manufacturers lists involvement in a number of philanthropic causes on their websites, lots of the ingredients in these products aren’t as safe or green as they could be. And aerosol cans are difficult to recycle.

The tube is made from recyclable aluminum and the recyclable box is 40-65% post-consumer recycled material and Tom’s provides detailed information on how to properly recycle their packaging on their website. That extra cash you’re spending on Tom’s goes to worthy causes as the company gives 10% of its pre-tax profits to nonprofit organizations benefiting the environment, human need, arts, and education, including their own Dental Health for All™ program, which supports nonprofit dental clinics and dental education programs.

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