To get you up to speed: The OCA's Coming Clean Campaign is focused on cleaning up the organic personal care industry by ridding of fraudulent labeling that is misleading consumers.
A few weeks back the Organic Consumers Association released a study that showed the carcinogenic 1,4-Dioxane was found in leading "organic" brand personal care products.
What does this all mean? In a nutshell, companies start with a base of harsh ingredients. To make those ingredients more mild they add a petrochemical called Ethylene Oxide. The process is called ethoxylation. This generates 1,4-Dioxane as a by-product which is known by the state of California to cause cancer. Then they slap words like "natural" and "organic" on the label. Unsuspecting consumers are then bathing themselves in cancer causing oil, see the problem?
Here is the opening for the original press release:
A newly released study commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a watchdog group with over 500,000 members, and overseen by environmental health consumer advocate David Steinman (author of The Safe Shopper's Bible), analyzes leading "natural" and "organic" brand shampoos, body washes, lotions and other personal care products for the presence of the undisclosed carcinogenic contaminant 1,4-Dioxane. A reputable third-party laboratory known for rigorous testing and chain-of-custody protocols, performed all testing.
[full story]
I was pleased to see the OCA had another follow-up press release today. In a nutshell the OCA and Dr. Bronner's offer these misleading companies a way avoid litigation: Sign a contract to say they'll clean up their act.
Here is the opening for the follow-up press release:
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps today made a settlement offer to bodycare companies who have misbranded their products as "Organic" or "Organics" despite the fact that their cleansing ingredients are actually made from non-organic conventional and/or petrochemical material preserved with petrochemical preservatives. The offer is an attempt to give leading body care brands a chance to resolve claims made earlier this month against them, without litigation.
[full story]
I like this, a lot. They're basically saying to these companies: Come clean now and we won't drag you through the mud. Avoid us and we'll sue you and tell everyone that we're suing you and your brand will suffer. These companies have until April 20, 2008 to pledge to remove all false claims and until September 1, 2008 to remove all claims that they are "organic".
Our junk drawers were outta control. Since we moved in to our new house the 4 drawers on the island in the kitchen were a mess. Sarah and I went drawer organizer shopping only to find them to be a little overpriced.
I've been hammering on this pretty hard lately in my personal life and blog. I'm on a quest to live as naturally and organic and chemical free as possible. So I decided to do some very light research this morning and here is what I found.
Reuse - Make old shopping bags into a walletOn my quest to go green, I'm making a quick stop to pat myself on the back for mastering one of the R's, Recycle. Now I'm starting to focus on another R, Reuse. Today I mentioned something on twitter and @tony sent me a cool link on how to reuse old shopping bags.
Supporting the Tower Grove Farmers' Market is the smart thing to do. Why? Cause it's the right thing to do, AND you get a t-shirt. Beat that! It starts up again this season: Every Saturday from May 10 through October 25, 8:30am until 12:30pm.
As you may or may not know, I work from home. I've made some efforts to make my workplace more "green-friendly" so I thought I'd list a few here to note my progress. If you have any other ideas I'd definitely be up for 'em.
I picked up an excellent book a few days ago. It's titled "Green, Greener, Greenest" by Lori Bongiorno. It's a practical guide to making eco-smart choices a part of your life. Lori worked for BusinessWeek and has written for The Green Guide (among other magazines) so her writing style is spot-on.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/
Imagine my surprise when after only 5 minutes of browsing the net I found the baby bottles we bought contained Bisphenol A (BPA). There are two schools of thought when it comes to BPA, 1) It's totally safe 2) It's totally toxic.
That's it. I'm "going green". Frankly, I'm a bit mad / pissed / fed up (call it what you want) with the amount of crap we unknowingly ingest and inhale through our food, household cleaners and other materiels on a day-to-day basis. I've been doing some reading, a lot of reading and my findings have been quite sobering.
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