Shampoo: Washing away the natural oils in our hair, causing the body to produce them in higher volume, causing our hair to get greasy, creating a need for shampoo.
Recycling: Only about 10% of plastic is actually recycled, the rest is sold to countries without environmental laws, and they are dumped irresponsibly. Composting is simple, effective, and would reduce landfill use by about 30%, not to mention creating a useful end product. Yet it is rarely promoted.
Mattresses and box springs: They are worse on our spines and end up causing neck and back issues. Sleeping on a firmer surface, even a thin mattress or pad on the ground, alleviates these issues.
Lawns: Turning a useful piece of land on which we can grow food into a barren wasteland and making it into a chore that requires expensive equipment and encourages chemical use.
Sales tax on food: Some countries and US states have them. It's a tax on existence. Also, taxes on gym memberships and personal protective equipment. The government simultaneously claims it wants healthy, safe citizens, and charges them when they try to be healthy and safe.
Depends on your hair, also, some shampoos are good at cleaning your hairs without that intense feeling of sucking the oil from your hairs. I like silicon-free shampoo because I have very, very fine hairs, and it gets either too dry or too greasy.
Yes this does happen at first. If you can stick it out for a few weeks your body will adjust. For me it took about a month. Also no shampoo doesn't mean not washing or scrubbing your hair. I use a comb to exfoliate the scalp skin.
I've done the nopoo thing. It made my hair so gross for a while, then amazing. Just, absolutely amazing. I used water, baking soda, and tea tree oil. It worked really well. But then tea tree oil became impossible to acquire for a while, and I went back to my old ways.
You do that and then you start smelling like shit, no one would like to be near use, at least use natural shamboo, I had snowlly sculp, with a slightly chemical shamboo 2 times per week and with one natural for the rest of the days I'm fine now and smell like an exotic garden.
The only purpose of lawns was originally to flaunt wealth: "see how much land I can waste and how many people I can employ maintaining it for no purpose whatsoever".
Why this continues and is even encouraged in places, to this day, is a mystery to me.
A lawn is a great usable space for all sorts of recreation. So many sports are played on mown grass. Millions of people use and enjoy their lawns. They're not just a burden of maintenance. Just look at what happened during lockdown, people with gardens were very lucky and not just because they had "control of something"
The trouble with shampoo is that our hair and skin is not build to handle the pollutants most people get in contact with throughout the day.
Soap and shampoo may not have been necessary in the past, but they are now because water alone and even some natural remedies that would otherwise be preferable, can't reliable wash that gunk of your skin/hair
There's so many bad stuff in a lot of cosmetics, but sadly we do need soaps to wash off some of the other bad stuff from outside.
I like shampoo (gentle shampoo about once a week) and, more importantly, conditioner and styling products because I like my hair to look more organized and smooth. I've seen plenty of pictures from the past with people with my hair type and generally speaking it's bad. And mine was pretty bad before I figured out it needed conditioner left in.
I have met two people with curly hair who did water only and both had good hair, both had fine textured loose curls that were angelic and blond.
I don't think body or hair cleansing products are scams, nor are moisturizing products. Or perfumes. They all do what they say they do.
SOAP, natural soap should never be used in hair. Soap scum is no joke - soap will lock the dirt onto your hairs in a nigh-unbreakable film of soap scum if you have minerals in your water (like most of the world does). And in soft water it will strip more oil than shampoo. Never use soap on your hair. If you are really so anti-shampoo then yes, nothing but water. Just rinsing it out will do a lot. It's not "chemicals" that trigger overproduction of oil, it's the removal of oil and sebum. Soap is worse for your scalp than shampoo by every possible measure.
As far as pollutants go you may be right. I haven't considered that, just the fact that my head always felt greasy before I stopped shampooing. And you can use a soap without chemical additives every few weeks without triggering your body to go ham on oil production.
About mattresses. I hike and backpack and I can attest that sleeping on the ground (meaning earth and grass) with a tent and a pad is fantastic. But you can't really do that in your house. I'd love to, cheaper, less noise, less hassle, but the floor is hard. Even with a big air mattress I find it extremely uncomfortable. I'd love to try a hammock, but without an expensive stand you can't comfortably set it up in a house.
Advice?
We all have different body dimensions so there's definitely not a single solution that works for everyone. My optimal setup is some of those interlocking foam exercise mats, with a thin mattress on top of it. One important thing is to flip the mattress and let it air out once a week or so. Sweat and moisture can't evaporate from underneath like it would with a traditional setup.
I tried a hammock a few years ago but wound up with worse sleeping posture because of the way my back curled. But I also have a friend who loves hammock sleeping.
I stopped using shampoo years ago because I'm allergic to a lot of the stuff that goes in them. I use baking soda and apple cider vinegar (you rinse in between so you don't make a volcano). My hair has always been brittle and frizzy, but now the texture is really nice.
And for the record, no my hair doesn't stink. You can use vitamin E oil after with essential oils if you really want your hair to smell pretty.
Everyday. You can put the baking soda on dry or mix it into a paste. Make sure you massage it into your scalp (not too hard). Then you rinse that out and put on a rinse of vinegar water. I comb my hair out at this point and then rinse out the vinegar then apply a little vitamin E oil after I towel dry it.
As far as lawns go, thanks to lead paint and leaded gasoline from the mid-20th century, that land isn't even one you'd consider suitable for growing food unless your house was built after the 1980s. At least, as long as you're trying to avoid getting lead in your produce.
Really feels like our grandparents' generation did a lot to fuck over our current generation. So many of these issues trace back to when even the Boomers were children.