More on Eco-friendly products

The most fashionable color in makeup this spring may just be green.

Cosmetics companies are increasingly jumping on the eco-chic bandwagon, finding botanical ingredients to replace chemical-based ones and focusing on improving packaging practices.

Here's a look at some of the latest products claiming environmental friendliness:
* Aveda's Light the Way Earth Month Candle is packaged in leftovers, called make-readies, from the company's other printing runs that used to be discarded; the outer carton is printed with soy ink on 55 percent post-consumer recycled paper. All proceeds of the candle go to Global Greengrants for water-related projects.

The soy wax candle burns cleanly and completely, sits in a glass container made of 95 percent post-consumer recycled glass and is scented with organic Bulgarian lavender oil.
Aveda offsets about 7 million pounds of carbon emissions a year by purchasing wind energy for its manufacturing and distribution hub in Minnesota, said Mary T'Kach, Aveda's director of environmental sustainability.

* Lancome's Primordiale Cell Defense Double Performance Cell Defense and Skin Perfecting Serum. The product, which targets the symptoms of environmental stresses on the skin combines natural ingredients and those perfected in a lab.

After the serum hits the market in June, Lancome will plant a tree for each of the first 10,000 bottles sold. The company also has done a paperless press launch, creating a Web site for public relations purposes instead of using hundreds of mailers.

* Cargo's PlantLove lipstick is contained in a tube made not of plastic but of a corn-based polymer called PLA. One ear of corn will make 12 lipstick cases, according to the company, and each case biodegrades in as little as 47 days if composted.

The lipsticks themselves use an environmentally friendly recipe: meadowfoam seed oil, jojoba and shea butter and no mineral oils or petroleums. The outer packaging of the lipstick box is embedded with seeds, so if you plant the paper you can grow wildflowers.