Estee Lauder buys Aveda. Then there’s that whole thing with lead in red lipsticks. And now, Clorox buys out Burt’s Bees. Rather than actually going green, a lot of companies really are just out-and-out green raiding, keeping the green cache built by the original brand and sooner or later completely abandoning the ingredients and standards that made the brand environmentally positive in the first place.
((image by worstdecember on flickr))
So Treehuger raises an interesting point: is Lush the last big green cosmetics supplier standing? Is it that easy to sell out? Is it that hard not to? Is success and sustainability together so hard to sustain, that one or the other must eventually go by the wayside?
At this point, I’m in no danger of becoming a “big green.” I’m a tiny, little green, and given that I have an endangered plant or two in my stock, I have to face the fact that I’m a green with a bit of brown on my leaf. Sandalwood is in serious danger. Frankincense ain’t doin’ so well either. While the amount I use is unlikely to risk an entire forest, my small part contributes to the millions of small legitimate parts, plant piracies, and bad farming practices that make up the great big damaging whole.
The endangered materials were gifted to me in the first place, but now I’m running low, and they are really popular among my customers. So I have to face a serious choice: continue with wherever I can get it, drop them from stock, or send out feelers for a sustainable supplier? I operate on a narrow budget (bootSTRAP, baby). So stuff like this is a truly tough decision for me.
So contemplating what would happen if I became a large producer? Yikes.
5 Responses to “Lush, the Last Big Green Standing?”
what an interesting post. i think about things like this sometimes and it gets my head spinning. i was considering doing a t-shirt project recently but then got into a similar thought-process about sweat shop labor. oi! well, i hope that wherever things take you, you’ll be able to still breathe and stay sane. nice blog. :-)
Where do francincense and sandalwood come from? Maybe you could look at organizations in those countries that are supporting people’s efforts to develop a sustainable livelihood. The perfumer chick that gave a talk at my local herb fair talked about a fair trade cooperative in India where people were growing jasmine and tuberose sustainably. It sounded like a cool place to visit.
Elizabeth - frankincense comes primarily from Africa. Typically, agricultural workers strip trees or overtap them for the gum/resin that is used. Most of the issues with frankincense could be resolved by raising prices and using better agricultural techniques.
Sandalwood is actually a parasite plant found mainly in India, but also in Australia. I don’t know much about Australian sandalwood, but given sandalwood’s parasitic nature, I suspect that there isn’t much that can be done in terms of sustainability except to practice restraint, since Indian sandalwood isn’t exactly a farmable crop.
Oh duh, since my post a few minutes ago I just checked out your links to information about frankincense and sandalwood. Poor trees!
Bummer that something so nice as sandalwood isn’t farmable, or sustainable.