It's October, which means that every shopping mall looks like the aftermath of a Pepto-Bismol hurricane. Now, don't get me wrong. I care about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I lost my dear grandmother to the disease, and it runs in my family. So finding a cure for breast cancer is a cause close to my heart—which is exactly why you'll never see me in a pink T-shirt, pink sun visor, or socks replete with pink fuzzy balls.

That's because I'm wary of "pinkwashing"—that's when companies toss a pittance at a breast cancer charity so that they can slap a pink ribbon on their product and rake in more money for themselves. The actual donation that the company makes is often either a low preset amount or a small percentage of the purchase price. Pinkwashing watchdog group Think Before You Pink maintains, "If shopping could cure breast cancer, it would be cured by now."

But my big beef is this: Much of the money goes to fund archaic, cruel animal experiments that still haven't produced a cure, even while cutting-edge non-animal testing methods are readily available. So for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, here are four ways that you can help women more than if you had bought another pink doohickey:

Instead of buying a $40 May28th.me watch with a pink strap, donate $40 to the American Breast Cancer Foundation.

Only 10 percent of the proceeds from May28th.me's pink watch go to charity, and that money is donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which wastes money on animal experiments. By donating to the American Breast Cancer Foundation, you can help underprivileged breast cancer patients get the care and treatment that they need.

Instead of buying Progresso Soup, donate vegan food to the Breast Cancer Society.

It's not clear whose lives Progresso's "Save Lids to Save Lives" campaign is supposed to save. It's certainly not the women who are eating soup stored in cans that are made with cancer-causing BPA or the animals who are suffering in the experiments that every purchase helps fund via Susan G. Komen for the Cure. You'll do a lot more good by donating healthy vegan food to the Breast Cancer Society to help impoverished patients eat right.

Instead of buying a $35 pink leather Nook cover, donate $35 to the Breast Cancer Fund.

Only $5 from the sale of each of Barnes & Noble's pink leather Nook covers is donated to charity, and that money goes to—you guessed it—a charity that funds animal experiments. By giving the same $35 to the Breast Cancer Fund, you could help do away with the environmental causes of breast cancer, such as the cancer-causing chemicals used by leather tanneries. 

Instead of buying a $150 pink-and-blue Lacoste tote bag, donate $150 to the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. 

When you spend $150, Lacoste will give $15 (are we sensing a pattern here?) to a charity that funds animal experiments. But by giving $150 to the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, you could fund sophisticated, modern non-animal tests and get us that much closer to a cure.

Find out which charities do test on animals and which don't.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure is coming under fire today for cutting off hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to Planned Parenthood that were used to provide underprivileged women with breast cancer screenings. We've never been big fans of Komen because it funds cruel animal tests, so we are sending Planned Parenthood a list of cruelty-free charities to look into working with.

Many of us have stayed away from Komen because the organization does women a great disservice by wasting money on archaic animal experiments that have proved to be ineffective. In one recent study funded by the Komen foundation, mice had tumor cells injected into their brains. When the animals developed brain tumors, they were killed, and the tumor tissues were implanted into other mice, who had their necks broken and their brains cut out and dissected. After billions of dollars spent and billions of animal lives lost, we still have no cure for breast cancer. Mice do—we've been curing cancer in mice for decades. But the methods don't transfer to people.

Fortunately, many cancer charities are investing in modern, effective non-animal research. The resources that we gave Planned Parenthood include the American Breast Cancer Foundation, the Breast Cancer Fund, BreastCancer.org, the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and the Keep A Breast Foundation, all of which fund preventive care and/or reliable research methods.

We encourage everyone to visit HumaneSeal.org to see a list of charities that are truly trying to save lives—both animals' and people's.

Watching my cherished grandmother suffer through breast-cancer surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, then pass away, was the hardest thing that I have ever gone through. I felt so helpless—then I became determined to help find a cure. For me, that meant participating in walks and other fundraisers for breast-cancer charities that are actually helping us get closer to a cure by funding cutting-edge, effective, non-animal research.

After decades and billions of dollars spent tormenting and killing dogs, cats, monkeys, rabbits, mice, rats, and other animals, we still have no cure for breast cancer. Experiments on animals are unreliable because of the significant genetic, cellular, and physiological differences between species. Former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner has stated, "The history of cancer research has been the history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans."

While every 12 minutes in America, another woman dies from breast cancer, organizations such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation waste money on cruel, archaic animal experiments, and people are starting to say "Enough." The Seattle Veg Singles group was set to do a charity walk for Komen, but when the group learned that the charity funds experiments on animals, it immediately canceled its plans.

If you want to help raise money for breast cancer research, do women a favor by supporting one of the many charities that don't fund experiments on animals, including the American Breast Cancer Foundation, the Keep A Breast Foundation and the Breast Cancer Fund. And let the Susan G. Komen Foundation know that it won't be getting a dime from you until it stops funding animal experiments.

Written by Michelle Sherrow