Terressentials: Obstacles to Natural Beauty

 Diana Kaye and James Hahn, Founders of organic beauty brand Terressentials, explain the story behind their company and expose the flaws in the ‘natural’ beauty industry.

“Diana found herself highly reactive to synthetic chemicals after her successful, but highly toxic, experimental chemotherapy treatment for cancer almost twenty years ago. In researching how the cancer originated and how we could keep it at bay, at first we thought, we’ll just use natural products from a health food store. But, when we scrutinized the ingredients in those allegedly natural shampoos, moisturisers and such, we found the same industrial chemicals found in mainstream products - they weren’t even natural at all. We discovered that the ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ personal care product industry is largely based on misleading claims and what some have called outright fraud.

We realised that, if we wanted to be clean and cancer-free, we’d have to find out how to make products to our standard - truly natural. This launched us into a long odyssey of research and development, in a field that was entirely new to both of us.

During the course of our research, we investigated all of the most well-known ‘organic’ standards from around the world and were surprised to find that our own USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) organic standard was the strictest standard in the world, by far. Upon scrutinising the actual standards, we were disturbed to find the European and Australian standards to be very short documents - far less than 100 pages compared to the USDA’s 500+ page law, and quite vague.

Also troublesome was the fact that, unlike the USDA-NOP (National Organic Program) law, the various international standards were not actual laws based on consumer input, but rather were creations of the cosmetic industry and their suppliers and retail partners and, importantly, permitted a wide range of synthetic chemicals including detergents, emollients, coloring pigments, and even synthetic preservatives. We took a look at some skin care lines that are advertised as ‘certified organic’ and/or that the public believes to be ‘organic,’ and noted dozens of conventional synthetic chemicals as active ingredients in their formulas - chemicals that would NOT be permitted in USDA certified organic goods.

Following are some of the chemicals we found in those ‘organic’ personal care lines:

Benzyl alcohol - conventional synthetic chemical preservative.
Cocamidopropyl betaine - a conventional oleochemical surfactant/detergent.
Decyl glycoside - a conventional synthetic petrochemically-reacted oleochemical surfactant/detergent.
Hydroxyethylcellulose - a petrochemically-reacted conventional synthetic thickener.
Methyldibromoglutaronitrile - petrochemically-reacted preservative.
Phenoxyethanol - petrochemically-reacted conventional preservative - also used as a synthetic rose fragrance.
Iodopropynyl butylcarbamate - petrochemical-reacted preservative.
Glyceryl monostearate - oleochemical synthetic conventional emollient.
Cetyl alcohol - a conventional oleochemical reacted/hydrogenated emollient.
Cetearyl alcohol - a conventional oleochemical chemically-reacted/hydrogenated emollient/emulsifier).
Dehydroacetic Acid (DHA) - a fungicide and anti-bacterial agent also used as an industrial plasticizing agent.
Benzyl alcohol - conventional synthetic chemical preservative.
Cocamidopropyl betaine - a conventional oleochemical surfactant/detergent.
Decyl glycoside - a conventional synthetic petrochemically-reacted oleochemical surfactant/detergent.
Hydroxyethylcellulose - a petrochemically-reacted conventional synthetic thickener.

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (USDA-NOP) finally ruled in 2005 that body care products could be certified to the USDA organic standard (a result, in part, to our testifying and eating our products at a National Organic Standards Board hearing in Washington DC), it wasn’t necessary to make any significant changes to our products to qualify, as they were intended from the beginning to be literally natural and free from synthetics. After completing much paperwork and a facility inspection we were awarded organic certification to the USDA standard for every product we make - more than 100 (and counting). To our knowledge, no other company in the world, big or small, has achieved this and we’re a tiny company!

Fighting the Tide

Competing in a dishonest industry has been an entirely different story altogether. This is made especially difficult by the USDA’s failure to police false organic claims made by body care manufacturers and retailers.

Years ago, when we first began to offer our organic beauty products wholesale to retail health food stores, we thought that they would be very interested in healthier products and eager to learn about the chemicals in the products lining their shelves – how those chemicals were made and how they were toxic for their customers and the environment. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

We learned, first-hand that the vast majority of the store owners and managers did not want to learn about the chemicals and, curiously, did not want to offer our products.

For years, this situation had us baffled. Finally, one store owner told us the truth. She said that, though our products were the best that she had seen in years, she wasn’t going to bring them into her store, because, if she brought them into her store, they would make her other products look bad! One store owner actually told us he wasn’t concerned about toxic chemicals in body care products affecting his customers because could sell them supplement pills for their health problems!

We found the scope of this situation to be practically beyond belief. It seems unfathomable until you look at the natural product industry’s own reports of product sales and learn that health food stores do not make the bulk of their profits through the sale of food. On the contrary, the industry’s published figures have shown that a majority of a health food store’s revenues come from pills (synthetic supplements) and personal care products. Low maintenance (low labor costs), long shelf-life and large profit margins make the sale of synthetic personal care products quite appealing, indeed.

So, the current situation is that we have personal care product manufacturers partnering with raw material ingredient (and chemical) suppliers, retail stores, wholesale distributors and brokers, making generous contributions to magazine publishers and non-profit organizations in a complex web that is generating multi-billions of dollars in a windfall of sales of allegedly ‘all natural’ and ‘organic’ personal care products to trusting consumers.

The industry is making lots of money and nobody wants anyone to upset the apple cart. The big question is: with the enforcement agency looking the other way, and non-profit ‘watchdog’ groups accepting cash from industry players, who is actually looking out for the consumers?

Fortunately, there are far more consumers than there are personal care product manufacturers and retail store owners, and we do have the internet to get our research out to the public. Despite there being so many closed-minded retailers, there are millions of concerned and intelligent, organic-minded people around the world who are doing their own research and reading personal care product labels and questioning the ingredients - going the extra mile to find better products.

Weak Standards Dupe Consumers

We are troubled because manufacturers have realised that consumers are attempting to educate themselves and are seeking certified organic products. In a cleverly crafted strategic move manufacturers have developed a campaign to confuse the organic consumers. Working together with their retail partners, materials suppliers, brokers and distributors from around the world they have developed their own voluntary ‘organic’ standards (that don’t come close to meeting the strict USDA NOP law) and been systematically flooding the marketplace with all manner of ‘organic’ and even ‘certified organic’ products that aren’t true organic products.

There’s that old saying, attributed to Lenin, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” We have a new saying: “If it doesn’t have the USDA seal, it ain’t the real deal!”"

www.terressentials.com