Aside from my sister, who doesn’t like strangers touching her, most women adore spas. These days, no matter how much we’re rubbed (sometimes even with butter), wrapped, baked and/or steamed as though we were being prepped for dinner, we still can’t get enough.
Unfortunately, pampering can be a very wasteful process — the endless streams of water used in Vichy treatments or body scrubs, the various towels, bathrobes and slippers that all get washed after one brief use, not to mention the countless bottles of product that, when emptied, may or may not get recycled.
All this has prompted me to decide that from now on, I’ll only frequent eco-friendly spas. There’s a list here with some internationally recognized institutions, but it just takes some poking around the neighbourhood to figure out which places have put some thought into it and which haven’t.
Recently, for example, I mentioned 889 Yonge, a place in Toronto that’s gone all-out green. But I also know that Body Blitz (in the photo above) uses Giovanni products in their vanity rooms and all-natural scrubs and muds. And the cheap place I go for manis and pedis keeps a little box full of nail care equipment for each customer so they can reuse instead of dispose of all the pumice stones and filers.
I’m not going to restrict myself to vegan spas or try in vain to locate some wind-powered, organic, greywater spa. I just want a place that will maybe offer drinking water from a fountain rather than a complimentary plastic bottle, that will have signs about where to leave dirty towels as opposed to clean ones, and perhaps let me bring my own flip-flops and robe.
Photo courtesy of Toronto Street Fashion
yea that body scrub where you wear a disposable thong and get rubbed like a seasoned chicken doesn’t appeal to me…I just don’t get spas
I’m with your sister. If some random stranger on the street groped me, I’d call the cops. But at a spa you PAY to let a random stranger grope you? No thanks.
Yeah, I was just waiting for someone else to say it first… LOL!