Since I was a teenager in the Seventies, I’ve always regarded myself as pretty green. Green in the environmental sense that is. I remember the campaign to get lead out of petrol with affection. I studied Environmental Science at university and can remember talking long into the night about issues affecting the planet. I think I even joined the Ecology Party, the forerunner of the Green Party when I was about 18 – though I don’t remember doing anything other than pay the subscription.
Jobs were short when I graduated and I got a job formulating cosmetics rather than doing the environmental work I had originally had in mind. I was surprised to find myself in an industry where people seemed pretty positive about issues close to my heart. Biodegradable surfactants were a new thing but there was never any question of using anything else. I have spoken on other blogs about the fact that formaldehyde was still in use then, but was being removed purely at the initiative of the chemists in the labs .
Given this, I have always listened with care and attention to the environmental lobby. For a long time I didn’t have any problem with being an environmentalist as well as being a scientist at the same time as developing cosmetics. They all seemed to be going in the same direction.
So when I first heard about an American pressure group called the Environmental Working Group I was predisposed to support them. I came across the Skin Deep database and was initially quite impressed with the idea. In fact I am still impressed with the idea. Why not collect all the information about cosmetic raw materials onto a database and make it available to the public. I hope somebody does it some day. Even when I started looking things up on the Skin Deep database and found it to be almost comically inaccurate I still gave the people behind it the benefit of the doubt. I imagined enthusiastic young volunteers – probably in California – punching data in during all night long sessions powered by idealism and pizza. I assumed that they would be getting complaints and would be putting it right shortly. You always have to give people a bit of time to get things straight.
Then I saw the Story of Cosmetics video. This really changed things. Whatever else you think of it, this is a professional piece of work. Time, effort and money has gone into it. And you can’t miss that it is propaganda not advocacy. It sets out to scare.
Even now, I was prepared to justify it to some extent in my mind – as you will see if you read my post from only a few days ago. They had gone off the scale for accuracy, but maybe they felt that they had to use modern techniques to get their message across. I started to think of the EWG as sort of green Lenninists. They had betrayed the ideals of the revolution, but they were still radicals. They had chosen the wrong way to go about fighting the system, but they were still against the system. Even when I heard about the very large salaries that the directors of the EWG were drawing from their organisation I still did not realise what was really going on.
But now I understand. Did I say I was green? Well I sure was. Green in the sense of being inexperienced and unknowing in the ways of the world.
Today I saw a hand out from a recent trade fair in the US. In it, a company called American Private Label, was pitching its services to American retailers. Consumers, it says, want safe cosmetics. What are safe cosmetics? Well you have to avoid parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances etc. But it wasn’t a list of all the things that have got bad head lines. It was specifically the things that the EWG have been campaigning about. Helpfully the names as they appear on the ingredient list that you needed to avoid were spelled out.
Almost every product on the market would fall foul of this list, including ones from companies that specialise in very green products.
Two things made it clear to me beyond any doubt that there was a link between this company and the EWG. First, one of the slides called for companies to sign the Safe Cosmetics Compact. This is being organised by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, definitely a group completely within the EWG’s orbit. Secondly, they described their services as Green Chemistry. I was instantly reminded of the reference in the Story of Cosmetics to green chemists who were working to solve the problems caused by the unsafe ingredients in modern cosmetics. I had no more thought that these green chemists actually existed than that the supposed carcinogens in shampoo actually existed.
I had taken it as an a bit of idealistic wishful thinking. In fact it was a sales plug.
Now things that had puzzled me fell into place. The EWG’s ambition is no mean one. They intend to create a new category of cosmetic product and to supply that category via American Private Label and probably other companies as well. American Private Label already offer branding, packaging, QC and manufacturing. But no doubt there are other sales to be made.
Now I could see it all. I had imagined the EWG, which is extremely well funded, had got its money from donations. Clearly not – this is big business in every sense of the word. Why were they ignoring pleas from small natural companies who you would think would be their natural allies? Because they are in fact their competition. Why is the science on their website and in their reports so poor? Because it isn’t science at all. The aim is to make a case against their competition not inform the public about risk.
And let me emphasise this proposition is aimed at retailers. It is not a grassroots consumer protest. The video has been created as part of a programme to sell stuff. The Safe Cosmetic Act is a publicity stunt. If it alarms small producers, that is irrelevant. If it infuriates scientists, that doesn’t matter. The object is to deliver a tranche of consumers to the shops who will seek out ‘safe’ cosmetics. And just as importantly they will be in a position to satisfy that demand with suitable products. In his talk, David Pollock the CEO of American Private Label said that retailers should create ‘safe cosmetic’ areas in their stores. These would be much like the organic sections they currently have.
And I think the retailers will listen. As the front page of American Private Label’s website says, the margins on this new category will be good. I bet they will. Will they be safer? That question will probably not have even crossed their minds. But just to be absolutely clear I believe that there will be no difference in safety between ‘safe’ products and established ones.
So I think I should end this post with an apology. I write this blog with the idea that as an industry insider I have some knowledge and insight that might be useful to people who use the products of my industry. I genuinely believed that I sort of knew what was going on. But I have just realised that I completely missed the biggest marketing coup this business has ever seen. I really couldn’t have got things more wrong. Far from being a well meaning but flawed attempt to make the world better, the Story of Cosmetics is a sales pitch. Nothing more.
Excellent, Colin. A faultess analysis of the insidious links between EWG and other organisations, but don’t forget their links to the political left organistion in the USA – Democracy In Action. It’s not just commercial – it’s political as well!
This is a fascinating look at the seldom-seen link between activism and commerce.
The EWG and other “activists” pose a lethal threat to California’s fledgling Green Chemistry Initiative. If they have their way, they’ll murder the movement in its cradle by overburdening the regulatory agency responsible for running it and by opening the floodgates for a tidal wave of litigation.
Read more about the threat to green chemistry here: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/21/2972951/activists-demands-threaten-to.html
Thank you so much for this. I have a friend who is always looking up stuff on that skindeep sight, and telling us all how dangerous everything is. It is good to know it is rubbish.
good to know that the products covered in that piece are 100% safe, and it’s all a liberal conspiracy. liberals have a long history creating conspiracies so they can secretly market so-called ‘safe’ products. thanks colin!
Thanks for your comment smith. As Dene has already pointed out, there are links between the EWG and the Democrats. A couple of Democrat senators are supporting the safe cosmetics act. But this isn’t a political blog and I am not even American, so I don’t really have anything to say on that side of things. I have a feeling that the politicians involved are dupes rather than scoundrels though. Ideally liberals and conservatives ought to agree that unscientific nonsense peddled to scare people off mainstream products is one thing that neither of them support.
You want to talk about unscientific? Let’s talk about an amoral cesspool of an industry that has no interest in scientific progress unless it can be sold, that doesn’t research the effects of their ingredients on humans in any meaningful way and that has a centuries long track record of selling blatantly and sometimes fatally unsafe products.
You want to call evil conspiracy? Let’s talk about a business that is built on preying on the vulnerable and insecure, that sells racist skin whitening creams chock full of mercury to the third world, that encourages 8 year old girls to be sexy and paint themselves up like whores just to sell them lip-gloss that comes packaged in lead-painted toys and that tells people the only way to age gracefully is by paralyzing their faces with botulin toxin.
P.S. Um, I’m pretty sure the E.U. didn’t pass an extremely comprehensive cosmetic safety act because of one American group’s “scare-mongering sales pitch/liberal conspiracy”.
@Em – oh dear, you sound very angry, and you have allowed your anger to cloud your judgement, as some of the statements you make are hyperbolic, to say the least!
“amoral cesspool”? Of course – and that sort of business can easily flourish amongst the capitalist dogs of Western imperialist society!
“centuries long track record”? Cosmetics as we know them have barely been in existance for 1 century, never mind “centuries”.
“fatally unsafe” – where is your evidence. Which company produced a cosmetic product that has killed people?
“racist skin whitening creams” – what on earth is “racist” about these products? The choice to use these types of products is a free one – I am not advocating their use, but it IS a free choice, and to call these products “racist|” is, frankly, ludicrous and smacks of hysteria.
You confuse the cosmetics industry with a completely separate beast when you accuse the industry of telling people to use botox. No cosmetics manufacturer offers botox-based products. The “beauty industry” is responsible – theb stars and the magazines that glorify youthful appearance – NOT the oosmetics industry.
I politely suggest that you stand back, take a deep breath, spare us the radical invective, calm down and talk some sense. There MAY be good points to be made, but not in this hysterical manner, imho.
Huh. I thought there was something fishy about that video. It seemed to rely too much on scare tactics to really be legitimate.
I’m not really surprised that it looks like a lead-in to “…so buy OUR products, because they’re safe! Everything else can KILL YOU.” Saddened, maybe, but not surprised.
excellent article colin!
lurv how you handled em. i know i will not be as tolerant had it occurred in my blog. i dunno, i tell the bullshit from all angles but i find when i hit on the greenies, perhaps their protein deficiency causes the sense of humour to go pffft.
i will be referring to your excellent post in one of my blogs if i may ask your permission.
cheers from bullshitville!
I am grateful to Em for putting the other side of the argument. I am always glad to hear as wide a range of viewpoints as possible.
The trade in mercury containing soaps to third world countries was indeed a scandal. This was something that continued in the UK certainly in the eighties and possibly into the nineties. It was a shameful business and should have been stopped much sooner than it was.
I am inclined to agree with you about marketing of products to very young girls too. And I would never advise anyone to have a Botox injection.
And on your last point, you are absolutely right. The Environmental Working Group and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and all the rest of them have certainly never had any influence on European legislation and let us all hope they never will.
So we agree about more than we disagree about. If you could concede that publishing deliberately misleading information with the intention of scaring people is also wrong we might well find ourselves in perfect agreement.
Well…I’ve never heard of American Private Label. but I have seen a lot of natural/organic cosmetic companies putting the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics logo on their websites.
There’s that “Dirty Dozen” list of so called toxic ingredients that we should avoid that keeps circulating. Some things on the list are really bad, like phalates. Others there seems very little evidence, yet no distinction is made.
That’s also what bothers me about the Skin Deep database.
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It is indeed important to carefully check the claims of organic cosmetics brands. While many aim to be safer and eco-friendly, not all “organic” labels are the same.