My guest is Narelle Chenery, who is joining us from Australia. She is the creator of Miessence, the world’s first certified organic skin care and personal care line. We’ll be talking about organic ingredients in personal care products, organic certifications, and the power consumers have to make change. Narelle is a passionate educator and activist for social and consumer change, speaking worldwide to business leaders, entrepreneurs, cosmetic industry professionals and government bodies. After completing her Applied Science degree in 1993, Narelle discovered that ‘natural’ cosmetics weren’t all they claimed to be and began making her own products in her kitchen. In 1998, 6 weeks after the birth of her third child, she launched her hand-made cosmetics as a mail order line. She quickly attracted a small and loyal band of customers, many of whom still use her products today. A year later she teamed up with her then husband Colin Chenery and business activist Alf Orpen and, after 18 months of research in 2001, Narelle revolutionised the beauty industry with the world’s first certified organic skin care products; Miessence. Seven years on, industry giants like Estee Lauder are following in her footsteps, launching their own certified organic products. Narelle is passionate about empowering and educating consumers on how to avoid harmful chemicals in their products. “We, as consumers, are incredibly powerful; we just need to own it! Most of the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry turnover supports the use of toxic chemicals. If we tell those chemical-peddlers we will no longer put up with the toxins they put onto our bodies and the environment (by refusing to buy them) they will have no choice but to make the changes we wish to see!” Narelle is a member of the Australian Society of Cosmetic Chemists and continues to develop her Miessence products. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/miessence
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Personal Care Products Certified Organic to Food Standards
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Narelle Chenery
Date of Broadcast: September 19, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. And yes, it is a toxic world. There are many toxic chemicals in all kinds of consumer products. Even just walk outside your home, or even your home, the air is full of toxic chemicals. The water we drink is full of toxic chemicals. And we do live in a toxic world.
But there are many people who are doing things to change that. There are many people who are trying to change regulations, who are making less toxic products and completely non-toxic products that you can use in your homes so that you can have a toxic-free home like I do. You can also remove toxic chemicals from your body. And we talk about that too.
And so, there are all kinds of things that you can do that you don’t have to be a victim of toxic chemical exposure. You can be well and healthy and happy. It is possible. We can do it.
Today is Thursday, September 19th 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining. We have a few clouds, so we might get a thunderstorm, but we’ll see. We haven’t had any hurricanes. I live here in Florida where there are hurricanes. And we haven’t had one all season. There hasn’t even been one anywhere near the state of Florida. So that’s a good thing. But hurricanes regulate the temperature, so it’s okay to have one every once in a while.
Today, we’re going to talk about organic personal care products. And I’ve had actually a number of guests on recently talking about personal care products. But what’s different today is that we’re going to be talking—these personal care products are actually the first body care products certified organic to food standards.
And my guest today is Narelle Chenery. She’s joining us from Australia where it’s two in the morning. She’s the creator of MiEssence. And it was the world’s first certified organic skin care and personal care line. We’re going to be talking about organic, organic certifications.
And she, like I, agree that we, as consumers, have a lot of power to make a change. So we’re going to be talking about that too.
Hi Narelle! Are you there in Australia?
NARELLE CHENERY: Hi Debra. How are you?
DEBRA: How are you?
NARELLE CHENERY: I’m well given it’s nine minutes past two in the morning.
DEBRA: Oh, good! Well, first, why don’t you start off just by telling us your story? You really have been a pioneer. And you did something creative and different at a time when nobody else was doing it. So tell us how you came to do this.
NARELLE CHENERY: Thank you. Like most massive life-changing things, I was inspired by an unfortunate event in my life which was—I don’t know whether you call them pap smears in the States.
DEBRA: Yes, we do.
NARELLE CHENERY: I was 23 years old, and I had a bad pap smear which scared the living daylights out of me. That meant I’m on my way to cervical cancer. So that inspired me to create huge changes in my life and clean up my diet and clean up my personal care and basically try and detox myself starting with getting on the path of natural hygiene and natural health and eating organic foods and detoxing my body.
And within a couple of years, I was actually pregnant with my first child. I was in my third year at university when I got pregnant. So I never actually—I completed my degree in Math. But soon after, I needed to get some kind of income. So I was doing part-time selling skin care products. And I’ve been introduced by girl friends to a company in the States that was proclaiming to have natural, non-toxic products.
So, I got involved with that company. And I couldn’t actually—the marketing was all around being natural and pure and safe. This is like 20+ years ago. But there was something I didn’t understand. The labels, I couldn’t pronounce the ingredients on the labels. Even though they were proclaiming to be natural, I couldn’t understand or pronounce the ingredients on the labels.
DEBRA: I understand. If something was natural, it would have an ingredient like lemons and not…
NARELLE CHENERY: That’s right! It’s not going to be sodium hydroxylate or… yeah! So that was challenging for me, or that, at least, raised questions in my mind.
And then, I actually found a book in a health food store that I was in by a pioneer in your country in the natural skincare arena called Aubrey Hampton. Have you heard of the brand Aubrey Organics?
DEBRA: Oh, yes! And in fact, they’re right here in Florida. I’ve known Aubrey Organics for 30 years.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah! Yeah. I mean, he’s a pioneer in the natural cosmetic industry, and also, his book, What’s in Your Cosmetics? in my early 20’s, I bought that book, and it absolutely inspired me and shocked me and disgusted me to think that the products that I’ve been using and selling that were proclaiming to be natural weren’t actually natural at all.
And in fact, some of the ingredients that they were talking about, “naturally derived surfactants” or “naturally derived sodium lauryl sulfate,” those ingredients from coconuts, and all these long-winded multi- or polysyllabic words, and then followed by “(coconut)”, I recognized or I realized that these companies that were claiming to be natural weren’t actually natural at all.
So, in reading this book by Aubrey Hampton, I was inspired to look for a brand that was absolutely pure and natural and safe in Australia. And when I couldn’t find it, I was having a whinge to my mother-in-law who worked in a bookstore, and she started giving me books about herbal medicine and how to make skin creams out of the ingredients in your kitchen cabinet. And it just started as a hobby.
And within a few years, I had a home-based business, like a direct sale business. And within five years of starting my hobby, I had cracked the world’s first certified organic skincare product. That was in 2001, January of 2001.
And i was still basically working from home at that stage. So, I met a man at a natural health festival who wanted to become my business partner. And fast forward 15 years, and we’re now selling our products online to 70 countries around the world.
DEBRA: That’s fabulous!
We’re going to need to go to a break in a moment. But I just want to comment on something that you said before we go. I want to explain because this was something that I was confused about for many years, but I finally figured it out.
When I first started, I thought if something was derived from a natural ingredient like coconut, that that was natural. And that is the definition of natural in most of the world and within the industry.
Next week, I’m going to the Natural Products Expo in Baltimore. And there’s going to be a lot of products like that. I know that there are going to be.
But the thing is that if you take coconut oil, and then you put it into a laboratory, and you mix it with petrochemicals, and then you change it a lot, then you end up with that ingredient that has in parenthesis after it “derived from coconut oil.” And it’s not the same as coconut. It’s not the same as actually putting coconut oil on your skin.
And this is where you can take a step out of the petroleum products kind of personal care products into those industrialized natural ingredients. And that’s a good step to take. But if you want something that’s truly natural where you have ingredients from nature in their natural state, then you have to take another step.
We’re going to talk more about that when we come back from the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Narelle Chenery who is the creator of MiEssence, the world’s first certified organic skin care and personal care line. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Narelle Chenery who is joining us from Australia where it’s 2 a.m. in the morning. She’s the creator of MiEssence, the world’s first certified organic skin care and personal care line.
Narelle, when you first got certified back in 2001, wasn’t it…
NARELLE CHENERY: Yes.
DEBRA: …you were the first personal care line to be certified to organic food standards. Now, is there a different standard then for personal care products? Can you just kind of explain the world organic certification and what gets on the label and things as it applies to personal care products?
NARELLE CHENERY: Sure! Yeah, at the time, 2001, this is actually before the USDA National Organic Program launched their standards. We have dozens of certifiers in your country, but there was no overarching standard.
And at the time, they were only organic food standards on the planet. There were no organic cosmetic standards in existence.
So that was the only choice I had. I had to meet food standards.
That was what inspired me. Because I was so disappointed at the products that I had been selling and I’ve been involved with, I was inspired to create something that was absolutely pure, and no one could pick any bones with, and have it so that it wasn’t just me saying it. I’ve been fooled by the marketing and the green-washing, I wanted my products to be independently certified. And the only relevant certification for absolute purity at that time was organic foods.
So, organic food is a minimum of 95% organic content […], with very minimal allowance, that up to 5% allowance for natural, non-organic ingredients. And that’s a very similar standard here in Australia. Organic food standards around the world are, by and large, that 95%+ content standard.
DEBRA: I want to ask you before you go on about that because I’ve had many people ask me over the years, “I want 100% organic. Why did they allow that 5%?”
NARELLE CHENERY: Because we live in the real world.
DEBRA: Yes, okay.
NARELLE CHENERY: Not everything is available…
DEBRA: And there are some minor ingredients that may not be available organically that you still need to put in the product.
NARELLE CHENERY: And that 5% still has very stringent criteria that you must adhere to. It doesn’t mean that you can use toxic chemicals or preservatives or all sorts of nasty junk. There are still very stringent criteria for that 5%. It basically an allowance for natural ingredients that haven’t been grown organically. So there’s a small allowance.
This is the real world. Not everything is available in organic form.
DEBRA: Not yet, that’s correct, that’s correct.
Okay! So, what’s going on today about certifying? When you see on just like a natural product that you see, a personal care product in a natural food store say, and it’ll say it contains organic this and that, organic that, but they don’t all say “certified,” are there any regulations or certifications for organic for personal care. How is that working now? I know there’s been some talk and some changes. I’m not quite sure where it is at the moment.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yes. Well, to the best of my knowledge, in your country, the USDA has stated publicly that they don’t want to get involved with personal care, that they will allow personal care products that meets the organic standard to be certified USDA. So that’s great news. But it’s not like a state objective of theirs to incorporate personal care products into their standard.
DEBRA: I also heard in that regard that in textile products—like mattresses, for example, is where I’ve heard about this—what the USDA will do is they’ll certify an agricultural ingredient, an agricultural material. So they could certify say apples or something else that might be in your personal care product, like some essential oil or something, and they can also certify cotton, but they’re not certifying the product in the same way in other categories as they are in the category of food.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yes, yes. Well, they will certify products that meet the food standards even if the function isn’t food.
DEBRA: Okay, good. That’s good to know. So, it could say “certified organic,” if you see that “USDA certified organic” symbol on a product that’s not a food product, that means that it’s following the same rules as if you saw that USDA certified label on a food product like catsup, for example. It has to be 95% organic.
NARELLE CHENERY: Absolutely, yes.
DEBRA: So if you see it on a personal care product, then it will be 95% organic just like that catsup would be.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yes, that’s right.
There are actually three levels of certification with the USDA. They do have a 100% organic certification. If every single one of the ingredients in that product is certified organic, they do allow a 100% organic claim.
Then there’s the certified organic which is that 95%+ organic content. And then, they have a “made with organic” claim that you can make, but no logo is allowed to be used on the product. You can’t bear the USDA logo on the product. But you can make the claim “made with organic ingredients.” And that is a 70%+ organic content.
DEBRA: Good, good.
NARELLE CHENERY: That sounds tiny. But interesting, that’s only pertaining to food, that “made with organic.” So to the best of my knowledge, they don’t allow a “made with organic” claim for personal care products.
DEBRA: We need to take another break. We’ll come back right after this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Narelle Chenery who is joining us from Australia at two in the morning there. And she’s the creator of MiEssence, the world’s first certified organic skincare and personal care line.
And MiEssence, you can go to my website, and type in MiEssence in the search box, and a local distributor will come up. It’s on Debra’s List. Or you can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and there’s a link under Narelle’s shining, smiling face. And we’ll be right back after this.
DEBRA: Okay, let’s try this again. Here I was, announcing we were coming back, and there was no audio.
So, you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Narelle Chenery who is in Australia where it’s just past two in the morning. She’s the creator of MiEssence, the world’s first certified organic skincare and personal care line.
And if you’d like to go visit her website, you can just type in MiEssence on any search engine, or you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for the announcement of today’s show, you’ll see her picture there. And at the end of that, there’s a link to the MiEssence site that is on my website.
So, Narelle, I’ve been looking at your website. And there’s a tab for ingredients. I’ve been looking at that over the break, and I see that every single ingredient is a plant that I recognize or a mineral like aloe vera, amber essence, apple cider vinegar, avocado oil. I mean, you really have taken those kitchen kind of ingredients and put them in very wonderful products.
NARELLE CHENERY: Thank you! I love what I do, that’s for sure.
DEBRA: Well, I can tell. I’ve used a lot of your products, and I think they’re great.
So, tell us about your products. I know now you have a lot of different things even more than basic personal care. So why don’t you tell us about them and what’s special about them.
NARELLE CHENERY: Well, yes. I started out with skincare. I really fell in love with the natural ingredients. Actually, these books that I was telling you about, the one from Aubrey Hampton, he listed the amazing properties of the likes of shea butter and rose essential oil and horse chestnut extract.
And the more research I did into the cornucopia of the amazing ingredients available in nature, and how healing and regenerative and soothing and nourishing they are to the skin, I just thought, “Oh, my God! How amazing would it be if I could create a range of skincare products that could utilize a whole range of organic essential oils and herbs and plant butters and root extracts, citrus extracts that all have amazing properties for the skin?”
So, we have a whole range of skincare. We have a 10-step facial. And we have bathrooms, toothpaste, deodorants, shampoos, body washes. And that extended into cleaning products, home cleaning products and essential oils and perfumes.
And in the last few years, I’ve focused on health and well-being and actually creating superfood-based products or nutritional products out of the purest and most potent plant-based ingredients on the planet that I can find that has the greatest benefit for the body.
So, we have from an organic probiotic, an organic antioxidant, and an alkalizing green chlorophyll-rich super food.
So, we’ve got about a hundred products in our range now.
DEBRA: That’s a lot of product.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah! I just love what I do, and I just love creating. And I get inspired by finding—basically, I want to solve problems. I want to solve problems, and I want to create products that people love to use and fall in love with and actually work and are good for them. So that’s what drives me.
DEBRA: Well, I think you’ve certainly accomplished exactly that.
I’m just looking at different things here on your website. And here, I’m looking at the make-up page, and you have a video.
NARELLE CHENERY: Oh, yeah, cosmetics, yeah. I forgot to say we have cosmetics as well, yeah.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. This is great. So we’re going to need to take another break in about a minute here. So tell us a little bit more about your mineral makeup. Can you just tell us about are all mineral make-up the same or are there things that we should be looking for?
NARELLE CHENERY: No, all mineral makeups are not the same. There are chemicals that are described in mineral makeups.
And one particular ingredient, titanium dioxide, for example, is a mineral that’s used in many cosmetic bases. And titanium dioxide actually has been found to be very unstable in the presence of UV light, in sunlight, and it degrades to form free radicals which actually damage the skin.
So, the most stable mineral is zinc oxide. And that’s the mineral that I use as a base of all of my cosmetic products as opposed to the titanium dioxide which can break down to form free radicals which causes oxidation and free radical damage and aging of the skin; whereas zinc oxide is a very stable mineral. It’s stable in the presence of UV light. And it actually acts as a natural sunscreen that reflects the sun’s rays and protects the skin. So that’s the ideal ingredients to look for in a mineral cosmetic as the base.
DEBRA: Good, that’s good to know. There’s all these mineral makeups, all these different brands, and they all advertise how natural they are and what are the standards. This is what I’m always looking for as a consumer advocate, what can I tell consumers so that they can tell the difference and find the best products both in terms of how well they work and also how natural or organic or non-toxic that they are, what to be looking for. So thank you for that.
So, your products are sold through multilevel marketing. Can you tell me why you decided to do that? And what are the benefits of doing that?
NARELLE CHENERY: Actually, we got involved with network marketing or multilevel marketing because, originally, I was just selling direct and selling into health food stores. And I had a friend of a friend who basically wanted to become a business partner or wanted us to contract manufacture for him. And he had a really significant history in corporate network marketing.
He’s been involved in some companies from the States. And he wanted to create his own network marketing company out of organic skincare.
And my experience with network marketing hadn’t been entirely positive in terms of over-promising and under-delivering and being very hype-based.
DEBRA: Why do people feel that way? This is why I’m asking you this question because a lot of people say, “Oh, I don’t want to have anything to do with MLM because of past experiences.” Yet there’s a lot of really great companies like yourself. So go on because I want people to hear this.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. It does have a bad name. There’s no doubt about it. And I absolutely didn’t like the idea, the hype around the promises, the get-rich-quick scheme. Actually, network marketing, for our purposes, especially because we create—
Our products are made fresh. One of our unique qualities is that we make our products monthly. We make fresh, and we ship direct to our consumers. So, the best way for us—I mean, it used to break my heart because I was originally selling in health food stores. And once it goes into a retail product, once your product goes into a retail store, there’s no guarantee how long it’s going to sit there for.
DEBRA: And you have to be concerned about shelf life. And when you have to be concerned about shelf life, you have to design the product differently. I mean, we’re talking about all these fabulous benefits of the natural ingredients, but if it sits on the shelf…
NARELLE CHENERY: it loses its vitality.
DEBRA: It loses its vitality, yeah.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yes. Our products are really unique in that they’re cold-formulated, high vitality, certified organic, raw, beneficial, active, no chemical emulsifiers and preservatives, and antioxidants. Nothing is synthetic in them. So the freshness is a really unique quality. And it’s actually highly beneficial to get the products fresh so you get the most benefit.
That’s one of my pillars, is that the products have to be good for you and actually make a difference.
So, network marketing is actually wonderful for us because it means that we can ship direct to the consumer, to the end user, directly from our factory. And it also enables us to share what would have been the marketing budget that goes to exporters and distributors and wholesalers and retailers…
DEBRA: And let me just say this about the fees. If you go into stores, retail stores, a lot of retail stores, you have to fees to be on the shelf.
NARELLE CHENERY: That’s right, yes. Not to mention that the margins that they need. So, we have to make a margin, the wholesalers need a margin, the distributors need a margin, the exporters need a margin. So there’s quite a significant chunk of money from the retail price down to what would be the manufacturing cost. There’s a significant chunk of money that is a valuable and is used up in that normal supply chain.
So, what we do is we put that chunk of money into our people who actually share our vision and mission and passion for the beautiful products that we make, and they share our story. It’s quite a unique story. The way our products are made were quite different.
So, our products work well with word-of-mouth and presenting, home presentations, and actually experiential moments in the home so you can actually try the products before you buy.
So, networking marketing is actually perfect for us because it means that we get to share our prosperity with people who love our products and want to talk about our products. And it also means we get to ship fresh directly to the consumer, so the end user gets the best, most potent, as pure as possible, freshest products that’s possible.
DEBRA: And also too, one of the things that I found with network marketing is that if you’re a user these products—as most people are who are wanting to then sell them—you can make enough commissions and more. You can make at least enough commissions to pay for your use of the product. Plus, more profit on top of that. And so, I think it’s a very good way for people who want to use a particular product to be able to earn at least a little extra income to be able to pay for it. It’s such a benefit of this marketing.
It really is, I think, a good marketing structure. It’s an excellent marketing structure that’s just has a bad reputation.
NARELLE CHENERY: It has a bad name.
DEBRA: It’s how it’s been used. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with the structure. It’s just that it has a bad reputation.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah, yeah. And we have a monthly order that you can get your products monthly. And if you get three people doing the same thing, you actually get your products for free.
DEBRA: It’s only three people.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah, I know. It’s really cool.
DEBRA: Yeah. So, I said a little earlier—we’re needing to go to break, but I got a little note from my producer that we could skip the break because we had our little technical difficulty. So we just have to skip the break.
So, let’s just move on to talking about the power of consumers and how much difference we can make in the world. What do you want to say about that?
NARELLE CHENERY: Oh, I’d love to refer to the quote by Margaret Mead which is, “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.” And that speaks volumes to me.
So, from my perspective, being an informed consumer is the most powerful thing we can do, to not be fooled. Being informed means that you can look beyond. You have the capacity to look beyond the greenwashing and slick marketing that is rife in the world today. There’s very much rubbish that you have to sift through to get to the real deal.
So, being informed enables you to look beyond that greenwashing, protects your family from toxic ingredients disguised as natural ingredients. It’s what you mentioned before, Debra, the practice of listing toxic chemical ingredients, and then putting graphics of coconuts, is so deceptive. Those ingredients that are stated to be from coconuts, they always involve a chemical process, as you mentioned. And some of those…
DEBRA: They do!
NARELLE CHENERY: And there’s processing impurities in the chemicals in the manufacturing process that’s being linked to all sorts of health effects like learning disabilities and infertility, birth defects, asthma, cancer. It’s horrific that it is right there.
DEBRA: It is horrific. But you know, I just want to say that I don’t think that most manufacturers are being intentionally deceptive. There was a film some years ago called Absence of Malice. I think that’s maybe even a legal term. I think that it is more that we live in an industrial culture and that everything we do is informed by industrialism, and that people like you and I before we had our realizations…
NARELLE CHENERY: [inaudible 34:13]
DEBRA: Yeah! I mean, everybody, unless we have parents that had changed their minds about industrialism, we all start out in the industrial mindset. And so, we go to the store, and we buy whatever is on the shelf. We eat packaged food and all those kinds of things assuming that everything is fine. And then, we have something happen in our lives, and we see the folly of that, and that our lives could be much better if we weren’t exposed to all those chemicals.
Well, I think that a lot of the manufacturers who are still using those chemicals, I think that they put things like “sodium lauryl sodium (coconut)” on the label to make it look like it’s from coconut because that’s what the suppliers are telling them.
A chemist who’s only thinking in terms of the normal, industrial model, someone goes to them and says, “Well, we want to make a natural formula.” He doesn’t think like you do to use apple cider vinegar. He thinks, “Let’s put together this industrial chemical with this industrial chemical. And it’s from coconut, so it’s natural.”
When I started out 30 years ago, that was considered natural. And there were no products like yours at that time. And if you wanted to have something that was like yours, people had to do like I did…
NARELLE CHENERY: Make it themselves.
DEBRA: You have to make it yourself in your kitchen. I mean, the quality and purity of products has just increased tremendous in the right direction over the past 30 years. It’s a huge difference.
But I think that there are still people who aren’t with the program. They haven’t recognized what it is that we need to do. And so we still have—we now have this choice between the toxic chemical or the toxic natural chemical or pure ingredients like yours where you’re using the whole ingredient.
And I think that’s a context that we need to be thinking in now in terms of personal care, those three categories, which category does it fall in? And it certainly is a step in the right direction to get out of the toxic petroleum ingredients into the natural industrial ingredients. But where we really want to go is where your products are.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah, I agree. I agree, it’s not malicious. It’s just born of ignorance and not questioning and having the knowledge to question, not sort of not really even thinking about it, just assuming that it’s safe because it’s in existence. If it’s being made, it must be safe.
DEBRA: It’s in existence. The government isn’t telling us not to use it.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah.
DEBRA: The government is still allowing it on the shelf, so it must be safe.
NARELLE CHENERY: That’s right. If it’s on the market, it won’t hurt me.
DEBRA: Yeah, we live in interesting times.
Well, now we really do have only two minutes left. So, is there anything that you’d like to say that we haven’t covered? Any final words?
NARELLE CHENERY: Oh, my gosh!
DEBRA: It’s over! Isn’t that quick?
NARELLE CHENERY: That was really quick.
Well, from your listeners’ perspective, the best way as a tool for them—because they’re going to be now looking at their bathroom products and going, “Well, is this product natural? How do I know now?” So, the best way or, really, the only way to assess the integrity of a product—and it’s available these days, all the personal care products and the food products. The only way to guarantee the organic integrity of any product is to look for the logo.
Look for the logo of certification. And that guarantees the organic integrity of that products. It’s an independent third-party guarantee of the authenticity and integrity of every single ingredient. And only certified organic products can bear the certified logo.
So basically, if you have a product that’s claiming “made with organic”—
The big thing is there’s so much greenwashing in the personal care/skincare industry. And unfortunately, it is intentional. It’s intentionally misleading consumers, this greenwashing, by hiding those synthetic surfactants ingredients that we just talked about in the substantial water components of shampoos for example.
A shampoo is about 70% water from a formulation perspective. So what companies do to mislead consumers and give people the idea that their product is greener than it actually is, they list weak botanical extracts or “aqueous infusions,” they call it. So you’ll see things like…
DEBRA: I’m sorry. I have to interrupt you because, if I don’t, then the music is going to interrupt you.
NARELLE CHENERY: Yeah, sure.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Talk Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out more about my guest Narelle Chenery. Go to her website and see about Narelle’s products. Thanks for being with me!
