Marketplace

Burt's Bees takes on cosmetics

The Burt's Bees new ad campaign, fashioned by Pool advertising in New York, raises some magnificently sexy issues that are better than a dog-eared copy of some Danielle Steele paperback.

Burt's Bees advertisement

Good for Burt’s Bees who has decided to "show one ingredient vs. another ingredient," rather than attacking other brands.

I decided to look up all of Burt’s Bees products versus Aveda products (now owned by Estee Lauder) to see what the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep database revealed. Burt’s Bees had 72 products rated low health concern, although a goodly number were of moderate concern. Aveda products -- which are solely advertised as plant-based aroma therapy and whose very expensive products line our bathroom rack -- miserably failed with only two products of low concern. Now there's an ingredient vs. ingredient offensive.

Contrary to Mr. Bailey's assertions, personal care products are the least regulated FDA products on the market and that deal was sealed in a 1973 trade-off between partial labeling and an industry self-regulatory mechanism called Cosmetic Ingredient Review. Burt's Bees is doing us a favor because as Stacy Malkan noted, it will create a seed of doubt in consumer’s heads and prompt them to ask some questions -- hard ones.

The real villains here are the FDA, which has utterly failed to protect the American public from barely tested personal care products -- and the freshly PR'd Personal Care Products Council and many of its members who continue to put profits before consumers. In its defense, FDA doesn't have the regulatory authority to properly regulate these products so let’s throw Congress into that boiling cauldron of water as well.

Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face (the Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry) revealed some truly horrifying stories, including the American Cancer Society’s joint program with the PCPC called Look Good…. Feel Good in which women with cancer are plied with up to 25 cosmetics (probably untested) to help them feel better. And they probably do feel a tad better but I found this feel-good gesture obscene, particularly since the ACS will not address the issues related to avoiding cancer (which tighter toxics regulation could help accomplish).

Ms. Malkan also went undercover for the 2006 industry Health & Beauty America conference where, at the regulatory panel, she heard that people are sick because they have horrible diets and that the people behind the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics were run by "the bored and the lonely with Internet connections" which I found amusing. More telling, she heard from Mr. Bailey about the new Consumer Commitment Code, which includes a website that will "enable consumers to search for cosmetic ingredients and get a message about safety." (p. 114, Not Just a Pretty Face). Now there’s a trusted source of consumer information! Go Burt’s Bees! Maybe Clorox will help them tame the pretty council.

• February 6, 2008 by Heidi Siegelbaum
• 7 comments

• tags: Burt's Bees Clorox cosmetics

It doesn't take a porta-potty!

Nancy Marshall-Genzer photo

My ears perked up when the Marketplace Morning Report ran a story this morning about the tri-state water wars and what people were doing to reduce their water use. I'm a bit of a water efficiency nut, and I feel like the issue is generally under-reported in the mass media. And unlike energy efficiency, which can be pretty complicated, water efficiency is easy.

So I was excited by the possibility that the story would identify some of the many state-of-the-shelf water efficiency measures that are available. Instead, they talked about a dental clinic in Athens that was using port-a-potties to reduce water use! While I can appreciate the intent, and the clinic is to be commended for trying to be more responsible, come on! Why not run a story with examples of all the new efficient and ultra-efficient plumbing fixtures that can yield significant water savings without the ick factor?

Waterless urinals use no water, utilize conventional plumbing waste lines, and have become 'standard' on many campuses, such as Arizona State University and Harvard. Dual-flush toilets allow you to select a 'half-flush' option for liquid waste. Sloan even makes an automatic dual-flush flush valve that decides how much water to use based upon the duration of your 'visit'. Simple low-flow aerators on faucets can significantly reduce water use. And all can be incorporated in a retrofit, as they utilize conventional plumbing.

In my experience, these three simple strategies in combination can cut restroom water use in half, without resorting to sticking port-a-potties outside your office. That's just gross.

• February 15, 2008 by Jim Nicolow
• 1 comments

• tags: water use

Biofuels' virgin flight an important step

As the price of oil passes $100/barrel, motorists aren’t the only ones that suffer. So does the airline industry, which has relied on cheap fuel to get people where they want to go quickly and affordably. Now that the price of oil has quadrupled in the last six years, alternative fuels like biofuels may help to keep oil from getting even more expensive. And since the combustion of oil for flights is a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels may help mitigate climate change as well. Thus Virgin Atlantic planned this week’s flight many months ago as a pioneer to help usher in a greener airline industry.

But recent studies, including one by my colleagues at Princeton have shown that the push into biofuels created some unintended consequences and production processes do not yet achieve the climate mitigation we all hoped for. The reliance on edible crops like corn for ethanol in the US has contributed to rising global food prices. And it turns out that the cultivation process for our corn, its refinery into ethanol, its transportation, and the lower energy content make it mostly on par with using gasoline in terms of emissions. So, the current generation of biofuels is not the silver bullet many hoped it would be. But does that make Virgin Atlantic’s flight just a publicity stunt?

I say no – it is a crucial precedent that shows the world that airplanes can use biofuels to power their flights. Now it is our responsibility to support the development of next-generation biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol off of bio-wastes like what Vinod Khosla supports in Georgia. But we also must not trick ourselves that biofuels can solve our cost and climate concerns. Biofuels can only supply a small part of our current demand of liquid fuels. We need much more efficiency in our vehicles, plug-in hybrids to run on wind and solar, and better public transit like Japan’s bullet trains to compete with carbon intensive air travel. Of course we shouldn’t look to an airline to stop people from flying so much – but we can support them when they take precedent-setting steps forward within their business.

We should put a moratorium on new production capacity of food-competing biofuels until the inflation of food prices gets under control – but let’s also recognize the transformation that took place as average people now see they can run their vehicles on something other than gasoline. And it’s not like Virgin Atlantic pioneered the first coal-to-liquids flight, which would double the carbon dioxide emissions of jet fuel.

Our efforts at mitigation will inevitably be a mix of successes and failures. It is up to us to try to anticipate the unintended consequences of alternatives to unsustainable fossil fuels. As long as we don’t have an attitude that stifles innovation and sincere efforts, we can together solve the global warming crisis upon us.

• February 27, 2008 by Dennis Markatos
• 8 comments

• tags: airplane travel biofuels