The Organic Greenwashing Game: Part One

So, you’ve purchased a raft of delightfully fragrant and attractively packaged beauty products, lured by the promise of natural botanicals, but are you being conned? 

We are becoming increasingly enamoured with beauty brands marketed as ‘natural’ and ‘organic,’ understandably anticipating that we are purchasing something that has undergone minimal processing in the period between being plucked from the earth and ploughed into a cosmetic formulation. According to market analysts Organic Monitor global sales of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ cosmetics are increasing by over $1 billion a year, and it is forecast that by 2010 the value of the global organic and naturals market will exceed $10 billion.

Consumer demand is driving mainstream brands to incorporate natural ingredients in their products. The number of ‘ethical’ cosmetic launches increased five fold in 2007 to 2,260 with the UK and France leading the ethical trend. Examples of organic moving into the mainstream include the acquisitions of Aveda, and organic Canadian haircare brand Ojon, by cosmetics giant Estée Lauder, along with Estée Lauder’s creation of Origins in the 1990s. Supermarket retailers, such as Asda, Safeway, Tesco, and Waitrose have also launched their own ‘organic’ ranges.

Fairtrade cosmetics are now di rigueur with consumers caring more about the ethical and environmental impact of the products they purchase. Some companies are investing in social community projects and growing endangered plant species.

Clearly we care more about our health and the environment, but is the market explosion of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ beauty everything it seems? Currently the answer is a resounding no and consumers are becoming increasingly confused about what ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ really means. Testament to this a 2008 survey of 100 committed eco-savvy consumers conducted by natural beauty brand Spiezia Organics found that although 87 per cent of those questioned regularly bought organic foodstuffs, almost half thought that products labelled as pure, organic and natural contained no chemicals, 39 per cent did not know that a skin care product labelled as organic need only contain 2 per cent natural ingredients and a whopping 71 per cent believed the term ‘organic’ to mean that the product contained no chemicals.

The sad and shocking truth is that a smattering of companies produce genuinely organic products relative to the hundreds more producing pseudo-natural products. Anyone can plaster the terms ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ over cosmetic packaging.

The Greenwashing Game

Many brands marketed as ‘natural’ use high concentrations of synthetic chemicals with a minor percentage of ‘natural’ ingredients thrown in to dupe the consumer. A product may contain one solitary organic ingredient amidst hundreds of toxic synthetic chemicals and be declared an “organic” shampoo, conditioner or any other beauty product you can think of.

The ‘natural’ inclusions are often marketed as miracle ingredients with therapeutic effects, but most brands include such ingredients in too low concentrations for any noticeable effect to take place. They could literally waft a flower over a formulation and declare the flower to be present! 

Cosmetics derived from animal or vegetable sources often undergo significant processing prior to being included into our products. Some products labelled as ‘organic’ contain petroleum-derived compounds.

Many ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ brands use oleochemicals in their products, which are principally derived from vegetable oils (palm or coconut), but are structurally similar to petrochemicals. Oleochemicals are derived from renewable resources and touted as an eco-friendly alternative to petrochemicals. However, the vegetable oils used are often hydrogenated during the manufacturing process to produce fats, fatty acids and emulsifying waxes which are cheap, have a long shelf-life and give cosmetic formulations a pleasing feel, but they may be contaminated with metal catalyst residues and petrochemicals. We know the health risks associated with the consumption of hydrogenated fats so why would be want to put them on our skin?

Oleochemical production also has a detrimental impact on the environment, particularly given that the international trade in palm oil is a key factor in rainforest destruction and human rights abuses in Malaysia and Indonesia. In these regions the indigenous peoples land is seized from them and handed over to companies for the development of palm oil plantations. Companies often clear land with uncontrolled fires. Between 1985 and 2000 the cultivation of palm oil plantations resulted in 87 per cent of deforestation. The burning and draining of peatlands (which are concentrated stores of carbon) in Indonesia produces around 2 billion tonnes per year of CO2 emissions, making Indonesia the third largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases, preceded only by the U.S. and China. 

Deforestation, peat fires used to clear land for palm oil plantations are responsible for around 30 per cent of global CO2 emissions. 

To source and produce oleochemical surfactants utilises natural resources, requiring large amounts of energy to heat water and generate steam for processes and substantials amounts of hazardous materials. It also creates toxic waste which contaminates rivers and kills aquatic organisms. Air emissions from the production of oleochemical fatty acids include volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as hexane (a neurotoxic substance, possible reproductive toxicant and irritant that is dangerous for the environment, toxic to aquatic organisms and readily forms explosive mixtures with air), as well as degradation products such as ketones and aldehydes. 

Cold-pressed plant oils are a much more eco-friendly alternative and far less energy intensive, but not so cheaply produced, hence companies opt for oleochemicals.

Beware of ‘Free-from’ Claims

Brands can be very deceptive with the terms they use on their products. Claims that products are free from certain ingredients, such as sodium lauryl sulphate or parabens, does not mean that the product contains no synthetic chemicals. Also be wary of the term ‘chemical-free,’ everything contains chemicals. The pertinent issue is the demarcation between a natural and synthetic chemical, not whether something is a chemical or not.  

Watering Down Beauty Products

Even some products with organic certification contain watered down herbal ingredients. This heavily diluted herbal infusion is counted as an organic component by some inferior ‘organic’ standards, with the remaining formulation containing a myriad of synthetic chemicals. Ingredients must be listed on cosmetic products in descending order of weight, so the herbal infusion appears first on the ingredients list creating the illusion of a natural product. Floral water or hydrosol (the leftover water collected when plants are distilled to produce essential oils) is often used to make fraudulent organic claims, when only the floral residue is organic, the rest of the formulation is plain water. The organic certification body Ecocert allows floral waters to be counted as organic components in beauty products, meaning that some Ecocert certified products consist mainly of synthetic ingredients and floral waters.

What is natural and organic anyway?

Natural - All the ingredients used in cosmetics are chemicals, this fact is not up for debate. A compound is defined by its chemical structure. There is no such thing as a ‘chemical-free’ product. There are however natural chemicals which should  be extracted directly from plants, animal products or the earth and have undergone minimal or no processing. Be aware that there is no guarantee that natural ingredients used in cosmetic products are derived from crops grown without the use of artificial pesticides or fertilisers, or produced without chemical intermediates and intensive chemical processes. For instance the natural substance shea butter is often extracted with solvents and treated with synthetic preservatives such as the carcinogen butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and grapefruit seed extract is often converted to synthetic quaternary ammonium compounds via an intensive chemical process. Some natural ingredients, particularly certain essential oils, can cause allergy and irritation.

Organic - usually refers to non-genetically modified ingredients that have been derived from crops grown in an ecological manner, with respect for the environment, without the use of artificial pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and other toxic synthetic ingredients and processed using natural ingredients. You have no way of knowing whether a beauty product is genuinely organic unless it has been certified by a stringent certification body. Some brands do genuinely produce 100 per cent organic products but lack certification due to prohibitive costs.

Obstacles to organic

Beauty and companies often argue that it’s very difficult to create totally natural and organic products and protest that they need some kind of synthetic preservative system to make their products resistant to microbial contamination, but there are numerous organic certified foods that contain no preservatives because they are considered to self-preserving, such as olive oil, sugar, vinegar and honey. Beauty products made from 100% oils have a shelf-life of up to three years. Some essential oils also demonstrate natural anti-microbial activity. The primary challenges for organic manufacturers, who are often small to medium enterprises are the higher cost of raw materials and their availability, the cost and bureaucracy involved in certification, decreased product shelf-life, lack of harmonisation of organic standards, the different performance achieved with natural products and ensuring that raw materials are free from contaminants. That said, these challenges haven’t stopped some brands from producing 100 percent organic products, such as Terressentials, Eselle and Spiezia.

A lack of government standards for cosmetics

Beauty brands have had carte blanche to exploit the terms ‘natural’ and ‘organic,’ because there is no universally recognised scientific definition of these terms. A proliferation of industry defined organic standards but lack of government legislation to police organic and natural cosmetics means that each individual company can provide its own subjective definition of these terms. Companies can yell their organic rally cry whilst duping the consumer with products that are in fact synthetic. Inconsistencies even within the cosmetics industry itself, on what constitutes a ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ product are hamstringing any efforts for a universal definition.

In the EU the regulation of cosmetics comes under the jurisdiction of the EU Cosmetic’s Directive, which provides no guidelines or definitions for organic and natural cosmetics. Neither does the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the body responsible for regulating cosmetic products in the US.

However, contrary to the assertions of many pseudo-organic brands there are legal official definitions of organic and natural in the United States because the United States Department for Agriculture (USDA) has defined these terms under the USDA NOP (National Organic Program) standards for organic foods, which since 2006 can also be applied to cosmetics providing they meet the requirements of the standards. The USDA-NOP standards are heralded as the most rigorous organic standards worldwide and this generates angst for brands for wish to misuse the terms ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ without raising suspicions about their products.

Why the USDA standards are the best?

The USDA standards are born out the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 which required the USDA to develop national standards for organically produced organic products. This Act, along with the National Organic Program (NOP) – a marketing program within the USDA, requires that agricultural products labelled as organic are derived from farms certified by a USDA-accredited State or private agency.

•  To label a product as “organic” it must contain at least 95 per cent organic ingredients with no synthetic preservatives or petrochemicals permitted in the cleansing ingredients. Products that meet these requirements can bear the USDA seal.
• Products containing at least 70 per cent organic ingredients can be labelled as “made with organic,” and the remaining contents must not contain synthetic compounds. 

The standards are thorough compared to other unofficial organic standards and beauty brands fraudulently using the USDA seal can be fined. 

Organic Standards Boom: Confusing Consumers

The world is certainly not suffering from a shortage of organic standards. In fact, the US Organic Consumers Association (OCA) sees the recent standards boom as an attempt to undermine the official USDA standards with diluted versions that permit the inclusion of undesirable synthetic chemicals in cosmetic products. Even retailers are getting in on the act with Boots developing their own standards for their Botanics organic range and the Wholefood Store developing organic standards.

The main certification organisations in the EU are Ecocert (France), BDIH (Germany), The Soil Association (UK), AIAB (Italy) and Ecogarantie (Belgium), all with standards that differ in the detail.

Europewide efforts to harmonise standards in the last 6 years have culminated in the Cosmetics Organic Standard (COSMOS) launched officially in November 2008. This standard is the creation of the European Standards Working Group, consisting of the European certification organisations Bioforum, Cosmebio, Ecocert, BDIH, AIAB, ICEA and the Soil Association. The complete standard is expected to be fully launched by April 2009 and the draft standard was recently opened for public consultation. To achieve organic certification at least 20 per cent of the total product must be organic, which is abysmally weak and doesn’t conform with the USDA standards or California law. If the term organic is used in the name a product must contain 95 per cent organic content. Products under the COSMOS-Natural certification are not required to be organic and chemical processes such as hydrogenation and sulphation (which would allow the inclusion of ingredients such as sodium lauryl sulphate) are permitted.

To add to consumer confusion, an industry group called NaTrue (European Natural and Organic Cosmetics Interest Group or EEIG), representing a range of natural cosmetics companies, in cahoots with the German Cosmetic, Toiletry, Perfumery and Detergent Association has also released its own standards, which allow products containing as little as 19 percent organic content to be labelled as ‘organic.’

Numerous other standards have popped up worldwide, including OASIS, NSF-International and Certech. Both the standards of OASIS, spearheaded by conventional industry members and Ecocert have been condemned by the U.S Organic Consumers Association (OCA) for allowing the use of some questionable petrochemicals in cosmetic products, some of which are made in part with ethylene oxide, a known human carcinogen, which often results in the contamanint 1,4-dioxane being present in these products.

In 2007 and 2008 the OCA in conjunction with Dr Bronner’s and David Steinman commissioned a study which found the carcinogenic impurity 1,4-dioxane in a number of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ beauty products produced by brands, such as Ikove, Avalon Organics, Stella McCartney’s CARE line, Kiss My Face, Nature’s Gate, Giovanni, Desert Essence Organics and Jasons. The publication of the study results led the Attorney General of California to file a lawsuit against companies whose products contained the highest levels of 1,4-dioxane. The lawsuit seeks to compel organic cheaters to drop ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ claims and certification from products that contain 1,4-dioxane. So far the companies found to be ethoxylating ingredients have been reluctant to reformulate their products or cease ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ claims. Craig Minowa, Environmental Scientist at the OCA says,

“Bigger companies have thumbed their noses at us. I would think they have made millions of dollars from these products that are misleadingly labelled as organic and they have big pockets to defend themselves against litigation. Both the USDA and the FDA have turned their backs on the whole issue because neither of them have the capacity to deal with the ubiquitous nature of this mislabelling in the marketplace, so I would imagine that these big companies are just hoping that government agencies will end up not caring and consumers will not pay any attention to it.”

So don’t buy the ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ beauty brand hype. If you really want to get natural and organic products become a savvy consumer and look for USDA certified products, bearing the USDA organic seal. Products certified to USDA standards were found to be free from 1,4-dioxane because the practice of ethoxylation and using petrochemical ingredients is prohibited by these stringent standards. 

You can also make your own natural beauty products (recipes will be featured on the blog shortly) and cut down your usage dramatically. We really don’t need two-thirds of the products marketed to us!

Part Two Coming Tomorrow - Get the lowdown on certification schemes and see my top certified organic brands.