Ingredients To Die For Blog

In today's market there are so many different definitions for natural, organic and now green that it is becoming harder and harder for all of us to stay focused.

Natural should be simple right, products made from ingredients that come from nature, but does that mean found in nature? If it does then not even essential oils are really natural because you can't, with the exception of pressed citrus oils, squeeze a lavender bud and get essential oil. Lavender buds only contain about 5% essential oil so to produce a lavender essential oil it takes water, heat and pressure to extract just the fat soluble, aromatic compounds that we call essential oils. Since green is supposed to be products which are made using processes that do not have negative effect on the environment and green house emissions, in the form of heat, which is used to extract the essential does that mean essential oils are not green? What about the fact that they are not the full plant? Does that make them less green and / or natural?

CO2 extracts are made by manipulating carbon dioxide from its vapor state to its liquid state to extract the plants aromatic compounds. So does that make them more natural, more green? Bergamot essential oil contains high levels of the photo toxic, skin damaging compound, furocoumarin (bergaptene. There is a type of bergamot known as fcf, furocoumarin free Or bergaptene free, used by most people wanting to create safer products, that do not have the potential for sun related skin damage. There has always been debate over bergamot fcf being natural because the essential oil is manipulated, using vacuum distillation, to remove those furocoumarin compounds. Is that form of manipulation harder on the environment than the manipulation of carbon dioxide used to extract the aromatic compounds in a CO2 extracts?

Some say that its an indication of its closeness to nature if the resultant extract smells the same as the starting material does in nature. Does rose essential oil smell like a rose on the vine? No, does chamomile essential oil smell like a chamomile flower? No, but chamomile co2 smells exactly like a chamomile flower and because the anti inflammatory compound, matricin, is not subjected to heat which turns it into chamazulene - the highly sought after compound in German Chamomile, it is known to have 10x the anti inflammatory power.

So, if you were looking for ingredients to make an anti inflammatory product, isn't it more effective to use the CO2 extract? We might say yes, but, is it more natural because it smells like the original material does in nature? Is it more green because they are not hurting the environment by creating heat, but they are using carbon dioxide, is that more or less green? And then we say "but, is it organic?" If the farmer grows and harvests his crop clean, without the use of pesticides, herbicides or chemical enhancement of course its organic and good for your right? Some would say no, simply because that farmer refuses, or can't afford, to pay the fees involved to certify that their chamomile is organic.

What is the bottom line? We all need to decide, for ourselves what we want our companies, and the product we offer, to be. Whether that means natural products made from ingredients that comes from nature or are found in nature. Whether that means green products made from ingredients that come from our environment which do not harm our environment, or us, in their production, use or disposal. Whether that means ingredients that were grown without herbicides, pesticide and chemical enhancement, certified or not certified.

If a company is creating and offering, products that are known to be safe for consumer use, utilizing clean ingredients that are known to be effective and serve the purpose of the product being offered, that's integrity and we can all stand behind that.

The success of a company lies in identifying the needs and desires of the customer base that it wants to capture, identifying the means to address those needs and utilizing the means to deliver to their desires in an ethical, consistent manner. Let your potential customer know who you are and what you stand for and they'll make their own decision as to whether, or not, as a company your product meets their needs.

But, we can't let our customer define us because there is too much confusion and there are too many definitions for what is natural, organic or green. We won't be able to keep up if we don't know who we are and we end up trying to please everyone, all the time. It will just lead to our getting disillusioned as the owners of our companies and it will lead to our not being happy doing what we do and isn't that why we started our own companies in the first place, to do what we love to do and to share the products that were created, from that dedication, with our customers? If a customer is wanting only certified organic ingredients to make their 100% certified organic product and you don't emphasize the sourcing of organics, isn't that just going to make your product much more costly to create, which will bring down that customers perceived value of your product and will probably move on anyway. Why isn't it okay to just say "no, I don't specialize in organics and I would be doing you a dis-service to try to make that product for you using only certified materials that I would bring in just for you and in smaller quantity"? How does anyone get certified organic water anyway? Is anything that contains water capable of being 100% certified organic?

Proctor & Gamble, one of the largest manufacturers of shelf products is utilizing the "Green" label, in part, because they are recycling methane gas, harmful to the environment and a by product of dumps, to power their processing plant. That is fantastic for the environment and hats off to the technology that enabled that move but, is the chlorine that is in some of their products any better for you now than it was before they went green? Is the petro chemical in their products better for your skin now than it was before? No, the materials are still chlorine and petroleum and they are still going to perform like chlorine and petroleum and your body is still going to react to the chlorine and petroleum the way it did before.

So isn't the bottom line that just because something is made in a manner that is good for the environment doesn't mean its good for us or our customer and just because it is available in nature, and natural, doesn't mean that it is good for us or the environment. We all need to continue to determine what we want in our products and on our skin based on the same guidelines we started our companies with.

We are determined to keep site of what that means to us, are you?