Everyone wants to be GREEN. Or look GREEN. Or sell something to people who want to be GREEN. Some of the results make me mad--but sometimes I have to laugh...
Yawanawá Indians participated in ceremonial games and dances marking the arrival of Aveda executives.
MUTUM, Brazil—In a remote Amazon village a full day by canoe from the nearest road in western Brazil, Yawanawá Indians in grass skirts gather around a pile of urukum, a spiky fruit they use to make body paint, and pose for two photographers from the U.S. beauty firm Aveda.
The images will help Aveda, a unit of Estée Lauder, sell its popular Uruku line of lipsticks, eye shadows and facial bronzers that use the plant as coloring. The company can charge a premium for products that look good and, at the same time, help save the rain forest by giving the tribe a sustainable livelihood.
But there's something wrong with this picture. For starters, the Yawanawá don't produce much urukum. They delivered none of it to Aveda between 2008 and 2010. Also, urukum itself isn't as exotic as Aveda portrays it in a documentary-style video on its website. Best known as annatto, it's an inexpensive food coloring, grown commercially around the world, that gives products like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese an orange hue.
So not only is Aveda not getting its annatto, I mean urukum, from the Yawanawá, or helping the tribe in any way, but yep, that exotic Amazonian urukum can be bought in any bodega--don't you love it? Maybe tribal peoples were correct when they said that Europeans were stealing their souls when they took their pictures.
This excellent article by John Lyons can be read in full at the WSJ.
If this link doesn't work--the WSJ is a subscription online site--Google the title and you should be able to read it then.
Being in the cosmetic business in a small way, and sourcing all ingredients responsibly, & taking care to inform my customers when they are constantly bombarded by super crap like this gets me really tired.
I was trolling for silly personal care products to post about, I admit it. And this came up--it seems to be about six bucks per package--hmmnn, a little pricey--but maybe it's worth the price.
GreenYour.Com had some reasons to go natural on the floss
Use natural dental floss
Dental floss may seem like an insignificant bathroom item, but the amount of dental floss sold in the US each year could span the distance from the earth to the moon and back four times![1] All that dental floss—from production to disposal—surely adds up to have a significant impact on the environment. Lessen your impact by choosing floss that is not coated with petroleum-derived and environmentally damaging chemicals and floss sold in minimal packaging.
What to look for when choosing a natural dental floss
The main component of most dental floss is nylon, a synthetic fiber derived from petroleum products. Petroleum is a non-sustainable resource, the extraction and production of which has had major detrimental impacts on the soil, ground water, surface water, and ecosystems of the United States and around the world. Alternative flosses are made of silk. Silk is a natural fiber with minimal manufacturing-related eco-impacts (think resource intensiveness, pollution, and waste), but is frowned upon by many pro-animal rights environmentalists.
Despite the lack of a clear eco-friendly alternative for the basic component of dental floss, you can still make your dental floss purchases more eco-friendly by looking for the following:
Avoid polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE): Some floss (most popularly Crest Glide) is coated with PTFE, an ingredient that also provides the coating in non-stick cookware. Concern over this substance, called Teflon in everyday use, surrounds a chemical used in its manufacture, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that PFOA is persistent in the environment and in the blood of the general US population. While the EPA does not currently recommend that consumers stop using products made with PFOA, it has called on companies to reduce facility emissions and product content of PFOA and related chemicals by 95 percent by 2010, and to work toward eliminating emissions and product content by 2015.[2]
Look for unwaxed or natural wax coatings: Conventional waxed floss is generally coated with petroleum-derived, synthetic wax. Natural floss manufacturers eschew synthetic ingredients in favor of natural (plant-based or beeswax) coatings and flavorings.
Choose dental floss with minimal and recyclable packaging: Many dental floss containers are made from plastic (there's that pesky petroleum component again). Some manufacturers have limited the amount of plastic needed in their packaging by using cardboard cases or skipping the blister wrap. When considering packaging options, less is more, and always recycle, no matter what type of packaging you choose.
Go cruelty-free: If you're concerned about animal byproducts and animal treatment, you'll want to avoid silk floss and floss coated with beeswax, and choose products that do not employ animal testing. Two organizations supply third-party verification of a company's cruelty-free and vegan product claims. By looking for products with the Leaping Bunny Logo or the Certified Vegan Logo, you can rest assured that your dental floss does not contain animal-derived ingredients and its components were never tested on animals.
To me, the nylon may not be an issue--you'd have to do a cost analysis of water & energy usage to produce the different flosses, and I suspect nylon is probably not more costly overall than the other materials--of course the silk is just ridiculous--I'm ignoring that--the idea of using silk floss is kind of the Yoga version of , "Let them eat cake".
The two issues with real merit are:
The PTFE --don't like the sound of that--probably better to not use that--the idea of it in contact with gums is not attractive.
The packaging--yes--agree with that--I'd love to have one less plastic thingy to throw in the trash.
Ok, so let's look at the Cranberry Floss--
Cranberry Floss:
coated with pure unsweetened cranberry essence, which is removed during the action of flossing and deposited on the gums to help break up plaque.
the floss is spun in natural beeswax to help sliding through tight spaces.
I kind of like the cranberry stuff coating--that might be nice for your gums--but I'm unclear on the "spun in natural beeswax" what is spun? So you don't know what it's made of, not good--it may be silk as the other floss made by Radius is Natural Silk Floss. And the packaging is plastic--not good at all.
If you want to natural, I'd go with http://www.eco-dent.com/floss.htm--cardboard packaging, twice as much yardage, it's nylon, but whatever.
This is strange & interesting--Milk of Magnesia really works as a deodorant. I read about this recently, at the Dish. Of course I had to try it--and it is very effective. No niff even the next morning. And it doesn't make your pits chalky--it dries clear.
I guess this qualifies as Green--a bottle has to last for six months at least--and the bottle's recyclable, which I don't think deodorant containers generally are.
And even though I'm kind of doubtful about the connection of the aluminum salts in deodorant to breast cancer, they are an irritant, and the magnesium hydroxide in MOM is considered safe for ingestion, so I think it's pretty safe for skin application.
I just generally like oddball uses for products so I love this....
