Kashi, Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Good, Natural, Socially Conscious Brands? Owned By The Corporatocracy.

Oldspeak: “Burt’s Bees; owned by Clorox. Tom’s of Maine; Owned by Colgate-Palmolive. Kashi Cereals; Owned by Kellogg’s. Naked Juice; owned by PepsiCo. The Body Shop; owned by L’oreal/Nestle. Most all “Naturally Produced Spring Water”  is actually corporate owned tap water. Deliberately deceptive ‘Marketing strategies have been fooling us to trust that the niche brands continue to be small, environmentally conscious businesses that combine ecologically sound practices with a political agenda to put products out on the market under a business model of “the Greater Good.” In fact, they are frequently cogs in the giant corporate wheel.‘ –  Andrea Whitfill Most all socially conscious, environmentally friendly brands are now nothing more than revenue streams for profit-hungry Megaconglomorates. The commons, social, environmental, political, media, have been commodified and corporatized. Is there no way to escape giving our hard-earned dollars to the decidedly anti-social, anti-environmentally friendly entities that are destroying and exploiting our planet and peoples alike? But I guess the fundamental Catch 22 question as discussed in the article is this: “If you want to change what people consume on a grand scale, you have to penetrate mass markets. ‘And you can’t do that if you’re a small, specialist brand stuck in the organic or whole-food niche, even if that means you are on supermarket shelves. It is a familiar dilemma: stay pure and have a big impact on a small scale, or compromise and have a small impact on a grand scale.’ –Roger Cowe

By Andrea Whitfill @ Alter Net:

My first introduction to natural, organic and eco-friendly products stems back to the early ’90s, when I stumbled upon Burt’s Bees lip balm at an independently owned health food store in the heart of Westport, Kansas City, Mo.

Before the eyesore invasion of ’98, when Starbucks frothed its way into the neighborhood, leading to its ultimate demise, Westport was the kind of  ‘hood I still yearn for. It was saturated with historically preserved, hip and funky, mom-and-pop-type establishments, delivering their goods people to people.

I was surprised more recently when I saw Burt’s Bees products everywhere — in grocery stores, drug stores, corner bodegas and big-box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. I thought to myself, fantastic; the marketplace is working, and good for Burt. He has made his mark, and the demand for his products is on the rise.

Needless to say, I was shocked when I recently found out that Burt’s Bees is now owned by Clorox, a massive corporate company that has historically cared very little about the environment, but whose main industry is directly associated with harmful chemicals, some of which require warning labels for legal sale.

Clorox; yes, that’s right — the bleach company with an estimated revenue of $ 4.8 billion that employs nearly 7,600 workers (now bees) and sells products like Liquid-Plumr, Pine-Sol and Armor All, a far cry from the origins of Burt.

I now understood. The reason Burt’s Bees products were everywhere was precisely because they now had a powerful corporation in the driver’s seat, with big marketing budgets and existing distribution systems.

The story of Burt is a charming one gone bad. Burt Shavitz, a beekeeper in Dexter, Maine, lived an extremely humble life selling honey in pickle jars from the back of his pickup truck and resided in the wilderness inside a turkey coop without running water or electricity.

In the summer of 1984, Shavitz was driving down the road and spotted a hitchhiker who needed a lift to the post office. He pulled over and picked up Roxanne Quimby, a 34-year-old woman who eventually became Shavitz’s lover and business partner. Quimby started helping him tend to the beehives, and that eventually led to the all natural-inspired health care products made with Shavitz’s honey and the birth of Burt’s Bees products.

Burt’s story and very powerful narrative gave Burt’s Bees products their legitimacy in my book. Creative entrepreneurs and knowledgeable consumers together working their magic; not the results of a corporate behemoth out to dominate the marketplace.

However, Quimby and Shavitz’s relationship became ‘sticky’ in the late ’90s for reasons unclear, yet probably having little to do with honey. Their romantic break up carried over to the split of their business partnership as well. In 1999, Quimby bought out Shavitz’s shares of the company for a small six-figure sum. Quimby then continued, becoming phenomenally successfully and growing sales to $43.5 million by 2002.

In 2003, a private equity firm, AEA investors, purchased 80 percent of Burt’s Bees from Quimby, with her retaining a 20 percent share and a seat on the board. In 2006, John Replogle, the former general manager of Unilever’s skin-care division became CEO and president of Burt’s Bees. The company was sold to Clorox in late October 2007 for $925 million.

Quimby was paid more than $300 million for her stake in Burt’s Bees. At the time of that deal, Shavitz reportedly demanded more money, and Quimby agreed to pay him $4 million. Quimby now refurbishes fancy, swank homes in Florida, travels the world and buys massive chunks of land in her free time. Our bearded man Shavitz, on the other hand, now 73 and unchanged, continues to reside amidst nature in his now-expanded turkey coop, which still remains absent of electricity or running water.

The Burt’s Bees story is disconcerting. I vaguely remembered long ago that one of my favorite ice cream products, Ben & Jerry’s, sold out. Unilever (which also owns Breyers), the giant conglomerate with an estimated market cap of $50 billion and close to 174,000 employees, bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 for $326 million.

I began to wonder about the other products I liked, trusted and respected for their independence and their social responsibility. How many were really owned by big corporations, who were going out of their way to hide the link between the big corporate company with the small, socially responsible brand? It didn’t take long for my list of disappointments to grow and grow.

Upon first meeting someone, I can usually tell a quite a lot about them by the contents of their bathroom. The brand I see most often behind medicine cabinets of people I consider to be environmentally conscious is Tom’s of Maine. What Tom’s says to me about the person is that they are willing to spend a little bit of extra cash in order to take proactive steps to help green the Earth.

Well, no more. My bathroom assessments will never be the same. Tom’s of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive, a massive, tank-like company with an estimated 36,000 employees and revenue of approximately $11.4 billion. Its big products include: Ajax, Anbesol and Speedstick.

I am only left to wonder, is Trader Joe’s, popularly known to showcase Tom’s of Maine in its hygiene department, just as much in the dark about all of this as I have been? Or is Joe’s simply another conduit for big corporate products?

As my curiosity grew, I took a little field trip to the grocery store with one of my friends to be a “brand anthropologist.” “Let’s get to the bottom of this,” I said, aiming to check out all of the brands that I and countless other good consumers were buying in our efforts to support grassroots business and not corporate behemoths. Little did I know how deep the hole was going to be, and in some cases, how hard to find out who owns what.

Thinking Dairy

In the dairy section sit many flavors of Stoneyfield Farm Yogurt. I knew its socially conscious CEO, Gary Hirshberg, had created major organic brand recognition to become the No. 1 seller of organic yogurt in the United States, but since then Danone, the French conglomerate (which also owns Brown Cow), acquired a majority holding in Stoneyfield. This is the same Danone that had to recall large quantities of its yogurt in 2007 after it was found to contain unsafe levels of dioxins. (In an interesting twist, the still-active Hirshberg sits on the board of Dannon U.S.A. Unlike most of the early entrepreneurs, who took the dough and left the scene, Hirshberg is still involved. )

Meanwhile, I learned that Horizon Organic milk was bought out by the largest dairy company in the U.S., Dean Foods Co., in 2005.

Thirsty? Juices and Water

Next I ventured to the juice section. Drinking Odwalla juices was an expensive habit I had justified for years because of its healthy California brand. The ubiquitous refrigerators in thousands of stores should have given it away that Odwalla wasn’t the small company it once was. It is now owned by Coca-Cola. Almost as soon as Coca-Cola bought the company, back in 2001 for $181 million, it stopped selling the fresh-squeezed OJ that had made Odwalla famous and popular among the healthy set. With its massive distribution system, fresh squeezed wouldn’t last the days and weeks the juices are in transit or on the shelf.

Not to be outdone (although it took it a while), Pepsi bought Naked Juice in 2006 for $450 million, in order to compete with Odwalla. Smuckers, the brand we are told is the “brand we can trust”, grabbed several juice mainstays from the health food store shelves: After the fall — R.W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organic.

Turns out that Coca-Cola also owns Glaceau, the company once known for its “fresh new approach to bottled water that is inspired by nature and enhanced by science.” Glaceau is the maker of Vitamin Water, Fruit Water, Smart Water and Vitamin Energy — all bottled waters that are adorably marketed and loaded with sugar. It’s no wonder Coca-Cola was slapped with a lawsuit in 2006 for making deceptive and unsubstantiated health claims in its Vitamin Water marketing strategies; they are selling glorified sugar water.

As for bottled water, egads! That’s a whole article in and of itself. The scourge of bottled water, of course, is an environmental disaster on many levels, as corporations have moved in to take control of water local supplies, while some of the same companies and their mega advertising budgets have created a giant market for bottled water, with enormous waste from plastic bottles and giant carbon foot prints as water is shipped over many thousands of miles from Fiji for example, or Italy, when pretty much no bottled water is needed. Frequently, tap water is of higher quality and more closely tested than bottled water.

And as Michael Blanding notes on AlterNet, “In fact, many times bottled water is tap water. Contrary to the image of water flowing from pristine mountain springs, more than a quarter of bottled water actually comes from municipal water supplies. The industry is dominated by three companies, who together control more than half the market: Coca-Cola, which produces Dasani; Pepsi, which produces Aquafina; and Nestle, which produces several “local” brands, including Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ozarka and Calistoga. Both Coke and Pepsi exclusively use tap water for their sources, while Nestle uses tap water in some brands.

The Breakfast Nook

Over in the breakfast aisle, my friend was a bit apoplectic when we learned that the “super healthy” Kashi cereals, the favorites of millions of healthy breakfast eaters, was bought in July 2000 for an “undisclosed sum” by Kellogg’s, the 12th-largest company in North American food sales, according to Food Processing. I picked up a box of Kashi’s “Go Lean Crunch” and searched every word; not one mention of the fact that Kellogg’s owns them. That change was rally below the radar. In 2004, Kraft Foods, known for processed cheeses and Kool-Aid, bought the natural cereal maker Back to Nature. Kraft is a subsidiary of Altria, which also owns Philip Morris USA, one of the world’s largest producers of cigarettes.

According to the New York Times, “Many of the alternative cereal brands are owned by larger companies, including Kellogg and General Mills.”

“Cereals, like milk, are one of the primary entrance points for use of organics,” said Lara Christenson of Spins, a market research group for the natural products industry, “which is pretty closely tied to children — health concerns, keeping pesticides, especially antibiotics, out of the diets of children. These large firms wanted to get a foothold in the natural and organic marketplace. Because of the mind-set of consumers, branding of these products has to be very different than traditional cereals.”

These corporate connections are often kept quiet. “There is frequently a backlash when a big cereal package-goods company buys a natural or organic company,” Christenson said. “I don’t want to say it’s manipulative, but consumers are led to believe these brands are pure, natural or organic brands. It’s very purposely done.”

A little more digging shows that General Mills owns Cascadian Farm; Barbara’s Bakery is owned by Weetabix, the leading British cereal company, which is owned by a private investment firm in England; Mother’s makes it clear that it is owned by Quaker Oats (which is owned by PepsiCo); Health Valley and Arrowhead Mills are owned by Hain Celestial Group, a natural food company traded on the NASDAQ, with H.J. Heinz owning 16 percent of that company.

The Sweet Tooth

After the Kashi news, I wondered what was next? I didn’t have to go any further than the organic chocolate aisle of my favorite deli to find Green and Black’s organic chocolate was taken over in 2005 by Schweppes, the 10th-largest company in North American packaged-food sales. And even more surprising to chocolate lovers is that Dagoba Chocolate, which had a little cult chocolate following for a while, is surprise, surprise, owned by Hershey Foods.

There seems to be an apt analogy between the huge growth in the “naturalization” of packaged goods in grocery stores and supermarket aisles and the massive transformation of organic fresh foods. Organic farming began as a grassroots movement to produce food that was healthier and better for the land. But it is now a huge, $20 billion industry, increasingly dominated by large agribusiness companies. Furthermore, when the government certifies food as “organic,” it has nothing to do with the original values of locally grown produce, workers being treated fairly, etc.

So it may cheer some to know that on the East Coast, McDonald’s has served fair-trade-certified Newman’s Own organic coffee in stores, while others may cringe at the words of Lee Scott, former CEO of WalMart, when he said, “We are particularly excited about organic food, the fastest-growing category in all of food.”

“What’s important to keep in mind is that these big corporations are getting into organics not because they have doubts about their prior business practices or doubts about chemical, industrial agriculture,” said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. “They’re getting in because they want to make a lot of money — they want to make it fast.” He said the companies couldn’t care less about “family farmers making the transition to organic farms.”

What does this all mean? One conclusion it is easy to come to is that big food companies and the stores and supermarkets that deliver their goods have stretched and abused descriptions of food until they are sometimes almost meaningless, and consumers believe that they are getting more benefits than they actually are. Consumers “walk down the aisle in the grocery stores’ health and beauty area, and they’re confronted with ‘natural’ at every turn,” says Daniel Fabricant, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the Natural Products Association. “We just don’t want to see the term misused any longer.”

On the other hand, Roger Cowe, a financial commentator states: “If you want to change what people consume on a grand scale, you have to penetrate mass markets. And you can’t do that if you’re a small, specialist brand stuck in the organic or whole-food niche, even if that means you are on supermarket shelves. It is a familiar dilemma: stay pure and have a big impact on a small scale, or compromise and have a small impact on a grand scale.”

Some think that socially responsible business sellers don’t lose it all when selling out. Both Craig Sams from Green and Black chocolate and the late Anita Roddick from the Body Shop ( sold to L’Oreal/Nestle — one of the most vilified of multinational companies) have said that they believe that an acquired ethical company can influence its new parent to improve its corporate behavior.

Others are not so positive about this turn of events. Judy Wickes from the Social Venture Network describes corporate takeovers of socially responsible businesses as “a threat to democracy when wealth and power are concentrated into a few hands.” And David Korten, in his book,When Corporations Rule the World, explained how sustainable business “should be human scale — not necessarily tiny firms, but preferably not more than 500 people — always with a bias to smaller is better.”

It is clear that so-called organic brands are a rapidly growing portion of the consumer dollar, and that every major food corporation has invested deeply in buying these already-established brands.

Marketing strategies have been fooling us to trust that the niche brands continue to be small, environmentally conscious businesses that combine ecologically sound practices with a political agenda to put products out on the market under a business model of “the Greater Good.”

In fact, they are frequently cogs in the giant corporate wheel. I like to refer to this “other” business model as “We’ve Been Had.” It is time for we, the consumer, to question how much the ownership and neglectful marketing of these “pseudo” responsible brands warrant crossing them off our shopping list.

And it is time to find products more in tune with our values, which include thinking small. At least until they, too, get bought out by some large conglomerate.

Why Your Natural, Organic Soap, Cosmetics And Other Personal Care Products May Be Bad for You

Oldspeak: “Good idea to avoid putting petrochemicals (like Vaseline petrolium jelly, derived from crude oil), phthalates, formaldehyde, 1,4-dioxane and other toxins on your skin and hair. Personal care products can contain harmful carcinogenic ingredients. Even some labeled ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ aren’t that good for you. Here’s how to find the real deal.”

From Jill Richardson @ AlterNet:

It all began with toxic nail polish. About a decade ago, Jane Houlihan, who is now the senior vice president of research at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), was researching phthalates, a class of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, in nail polish. A few years later, the organization Health Care Without Harm, which was working to get phthalates out of medical supplies and equipment, noticed data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showing that women of child-bearing age had high levels of phthalates in their bodies. They wondered why — and suspected cosmetics. Teaming up with Houlihan and EWG, they tested a wide range of personal care products — none of which listed phthalates on their labels — and found that over 70 percent contained phthalates.

The environmental groups then wondered what other chemicals were used in the cosmetics and personal care products that we put on our bodies every day. A lot, as it turns out. As EWG and partner organizations like the Breast Cancer Fund and Women’s Voices for the Earth began researching chemicals in commonly used cosmetics, they found phthalates, formaldehyde, 1,4-dioxane (a carcinogen), and even lead in everyday products like lipstick, nail polish, deodorant, and shampoo. Many more ingredients hadn’t been tested for safety — ever. “Reading labels is important,” says Stacy Malkan, one of the original co-founders of the cosmetics campaign and author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, “but there are even more dangerous ingredients that aren’t listed on the label. And it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Revelations like these led them to organize, forming the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in 2004. They began by sending out letters to cosmetics companies, asking them to sign theirCompact for Safe Cosmetics, “a pledge to replace all hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives.” That year, EWG launched its Skin Deep database, rating the safety of cosmetics and cosmetic ingredients. The first year, 100 companies signed the Compact (although most major companies did not), and the Skin Deep database listed about 7,000 products. Today, over 1,500 companies have signed the Compact, and the Skin Deep database lists over 60,000 products. Recently, the Campaign worked with Annie Leonard to produce the video The Story of Cosmetics. Also, a bill before Congress, the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, would require more safety testing before ingredients are used in products.

In 2006, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics celebrated a victory when major nail polish brands OPI, Orly and Sally Hansen removed a “toxic trio” of chemicals (dibutyl phthalate, formaldehyde and toluene) from their products. Nneka Leiba, a research analyst at EWG, says that many of the problematic ingredients are preservatives, including endocrine-disrupting parabens, formaldehyde, formaldehyde-releasing chemicals, and suspected carcinogen BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole). She stressed that many teen products EWG tested contained parabens and phthalates, which both have estrogenic effects, a significant finding because bodies of teenagers are especially sensitive to hormones. “Right now, we’re not seeing a lot of preservatives being used that don’t have associated hazards,” says Leiba. “We would like to see more options for companies and many more studies on the safety of these chemicals. Alternatively, we encourage companies to add ‘best by’ dates to cosmetics and stress their importance to consumers.”

While the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics works to remove all harmful ingredients from cosmetics, some consumers rely on cosmetics brands marketed as organic and natural, hoping those products are safe. As Diane Kaye and Jim Hahn, founders of the body care products company Terressentials, could tell you, the word “natural” — or even “organic” — on a label means very little. Kaye is a cancer survivor who, at age 29, underwent an experimental, aggressive chemotherapy treatment that cured her cancer but left her with extreme chemical sensitivities. She and her husband purged toxic products from their home, adopted organic macrobiotic diets, and tried natural and organic cosmetics. Kaye’s body still reacted to these products. “We were washing our hair with bar soaps and using olive oil as moisturizer,” she recalls, telling how she abandoned even the so-called natural brands of cosmetics.

Kaye and Hahn first created Terressentials products for their own personal use. And as they shared their creations with friends in cancer support groups, they found there was a demand for products made from safe, organic ingredients. In 1996, they moved from the city to a farm in rural Maryland and turned their hobby into a business. Yet even today, nearly a decade and a half later, Terressentials is one of a minority of companies whose products are USDA-certified organic.

What’s more, many stores refuse to stock their products. Some stores complain about having to deal with their small, artisanal business, wishing to place one order with one distribution company for every product in their store every few weeks, taking advantage of bulk discounts (not to mention the free lunches they get when their rep from the distribution company visits). But there might be another reason why Terressentials products aren’t on the shelves of more health food stores. One honest store rep told Kaye she couldn’t stock Terressentials products because their pure, natural ingredients would blow the cover on the other not-so-natural brands of “natural” cosmetics.

Another source of truly organic — and safe — products is Dr. Bronner’s. David Bronner, the current president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, descends from a line of German-Jewish soap makers who have made liquid and bar soaps since 1858. Emanuel Bronner, David’s grandfather, immigrated to America in 1929 and began making the product we know as Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap in 1948. Back then, there was no such thing as USDA organic certification, but Emanuel wanted his soaps to be as natural as possible. Today, David continues — and even improves upon — his grandfather’s tradition. The company went certified organic in 2003 and fair trade in 2007.

Both Terressentials and Dr. Bronner’s are signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics. They also participate in another campaign, one called Coming Clean, started by Organic Consumers Association (OCA) in 2004, the same year the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics was founded. (Full disclosure: I have served on the policy advisory board of Organic Consumers Association since 2007.) Ronnie Cummins, executive director of OCA, supported the work of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics but felt there was a niche OCA could fill to help consumers get the safe products they demanded.

The word “organic” is strictly regulated in food, but it meant practically nothing on the bottle of a shampoo or lotion. To Cummins, that made no sense. “A bottle of olive oil cannot claim it’s organic unless it’s actually organic if you are going to eat it, but what if it is used as massage oil?” The Coming Clean Web site includes “naughty” and “nice” lists, calling out brands like Avalon Organics, Desert Essence, Giovanni, Jason, Kiss My Face, and Nature’s Gate for fraudulently labeling products “organic” and praising other brands for actually attaining and accurately labeling USDA organic certification.

Coming Clean had one of its first victories in 2005, when it settled out of court with the USDA, which promised to enforce the USDA certified organic seal on cosmetics that met the organic standards for food. More recently, this past June, Whole Foods Market (which carries most of the not-so-organic brands listed above) announced that by June 2011, it would require its suppliers to either reformulate their products so they are organic or remove misleading labels claiming to be organic.

Coming Clean teamed up with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and environmental health consumer advocate David Steinman in 2008, when it tested — and found — the carcinogen 1,4-dioxane in “natural” and “organic” products. 1,4-dioxane, which was also found in a number of conventional, popular cosmetics brands, is a byproduct of a process called ethoxylation, which OCA refers to as “a cheap short-cut companies use to provide mildness to harsh ingredients.” Ethoxylation requires the use of the petrochemical ethylene oxide (a carcinogen), and it generates 1,4-dioxane as a byproduct.

Five brands tested free of 1,4-dioxane: Dr. Bronner’s, Sensibility Soaps (Nourish), Terressentials, Aubrey Organics, and Dr. Hauschka. Perhaps this is because brands like Dr. Bronner’s and Terressentials do not contain detergents. David Bronner points out that his company’s products are soaps, not detergents, a distinction that many consumers are perhaps unaware of. Soaps, alkaline salts with fatty acids, are produced by a simple, straightforward reaction that has been used by humans for thousands of years. Long ago, humans used wood ash to obtain the alkaline salt that would turn vegetable or animal oils and fats into soap. Making detergent, on the other hand, is a more complex, energy-intensive process. Many detergents are made with petrochemicals like ethoxylates. While all cosmetics should be safe (and free of 1,4-dioxane), most consumers do not think they are purchasing petrochemicals when they select a “natural” or “organic” product off the shelf.

The European Union, which initially banned a list of 1,100 toxic chemicals from cosmetics in 2003, now bans over 1,300 chemicals. Meanwhile, in the U.S. consumers still are not promised safety, nor can they trust claims of “natural” or “organic.” And new safety issues are arising before old ones are resolved (Cummins worries about newly developed products using nanotechnology). American consumers have had options like Dr. Bronner’s for decades, and opportunities to obtain truly safe cosmetics exploded when the Internet became a part of everyday life in the 1990s. But it is still the responsibility of the consumer to become informed about cosmetic safety and seek out safe products. The vast majority of Americans who simply go to the store and choose a product off the shelf (likely assuming that any product legally sold in a store is inherently safe) receive no guarantee of safety.

Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It..