Month: December 2014

Haircare – a month in review

I’ve reached the end of the first month of my challenge. 

The Body Shop’s hair range has been our product of choice for a few weeks and I have no complaints so far. It’s noticeable that it definitely doesn’t lather up quite so well but that seems like a small price to pay.

Last week I shared the fact that I’d discovered that Body Shop was not particularly highly rated in the ethical world having being bought by L’Oreal back in 2006. One of the main issues is animal testing. Now illegal in Britain animal testing is still relied on heavily in other countries, notably it’s illegal not to test on animals in China. L’Oreal states that they don’t test on animals anywhere in the world, get this, except where it’s law, meaning except in that tiny country called China. Which since they bought a huge Chinese beauty brand in 2013 means that they are almost certainly not ‘cruelty free’. Body Shop itself still claims to be cruelty free despite the work of it’s evil step mother!

I really believe that Anita Roddick sold Body Shop to L’Oreal with the intention that being part of one of the biggest beauty brands in the world would give her a unique position to influence. She describes their presence as being akin to a Trojan horse in a Guardian interview here. Sure I know being offered £652m for your company must have had some influence. However Anita’s whole life was marked by a commitment to ethical living and challenging consumerist patterns and practices so I don’t feel like I’m totally being duped by believing she really felt she could make a difference to L’Oreal.

And that’s the thought this month has left me with. Anita Roddick believed that by being part of the very system she’d spent her whole career fighting she could make lasting change. Maybe we shouldn’t lampoon those who choose to fight the system from the inside. Convincing people to make real and lasting change (especially when profit is at stake) can surely be achieved more effectively through nurturing real conviction rather than heaping on piles of shame.

And that’s true for me too, the only way I’ll making lasting change in my quest to be more ethical is if I have a new conviction that this is the right way to go rather than feeling shame and being guilt-tripped into changing my lifestyle.

Hmm, this got deep…next month I’m tackling the milk market! 

Is ethical really ethical?!

I’m a week into my first challenge, this month the change I’m making is to switch my shampoo and conditioner (check out my last post). 

I decided to go for The Body Shop’s offering and so far it is working out great, both products smell amazing and are quite light so I don’t feeling I’m weighing down my hair.

Each month as I make a change I want to do some research to try and get to the bottom of what makes something ethical. My investigations into what makes a shampoo ethical highlighted three main areas that I want to explore;

1. Fairly traded ingredients

2. Use of harmful chemicals 

3. No ingredients (or the final product) tested on animals

At first glance The Body Shop ticks all the right boxes, they have their own initiative Community Fair Trade (launched in 1987), they have campaigned against animal testing and highlight the fact their shampoo has no silicones, no parabens and no colorants (paragons are the particularly nasty ones). They also campaign for human rights amongst other things.

Sounds prefect right? I though so, I assumed I had this one tied up, a successful change in my first month. You can imagine my surprise when I found The Body Shop languishing at the bottom of the Good Shopping Guides’ list of ethical shampoo and conditioner.

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(This grid is the bottom half of the list, the top half is here.)

It seems that things got a bit tricky when beauty giant L’Oreal bought The Body Shop. The complications of the L’Oreal buy out is explained really well here but basically their record and links to Nestle (even I know they aren’t exactly top of the list with human rights activists!) mean lots of people boycotted The Body Shop accusing them of selling out. 

So my question I’ll be pandering this week is whether a company can stay good even when it’s new Mum and Dad, shall we say, a little bit dubious?

Haircare

This month I thought I’d start with something relatively straight forward and look at switching my shampoo and conditioner.

This seems like a relatively easy switch, all I need to do is buy something which is kind to the environment ( i.e no nasty chemicals going down the drain), isn’t tested on animals and doesn’t use ingredients from non-fairly-traded sources … turns out it’s more complicated than that!

Looking on the British high-street I can see two options, Lush and The Body Shop. I’m sticking to products that are easy to buy on the high-street because I want to test the theory that anyone can be ethical without having to find niche products.

I’ve always loved the Lush model of business, they are really clear about their fresh natural ingredients and where they come from, they fight animal testing and have the best customer service around (seriously, how can their shop assistants be so happy all the time!?). My only problem is that my husband can’t stand the smell of Lush, he informs me it makes him feel physically sick so slight spanner in the works since this experiment involves my whole family getting on board. 

Body Shop it is! A quick search on their website helped my find a few shampoo and conditioner options. A 250ml bottle of Rainforest Shine should be £4.50 so it’s probably at the more expensive end of what I would normal spend but luckily there was a half price sale on meaning they were a bit of a bargain. I bought this one because the other option was a banana shampoo which was quickly vetoed by my previously mentioned husband!

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I’ll pop the bottles open this week and report back, I’ve also started looking into the ethics of haircare so will be much more well informed next week 🙂

Getting started

I think if we’re honest most of us want to live lives that are more ethical, more conscious of the world around. However growing in the 90’s gave me the impression that it was only the eco-warriors or the girls who wore tie-dye who could live up to this ideal. Over the years I know I’ve used lots of excuses as to why I’m not living a more ethical life, ‘it’s too expensive to go green’,’I haven’t had the time to research the options’, ‘ethically sourced clothes just don’t look good’ are just a few of the things I’ve thought.

However someone once asked me a question that has kept coming back to me ‘how do your choices oppress others?’. This for me is the crux of the thing, living ethically is asking ‘how do the decision I make about my purchases and lifestyle oppress others, both people and the environment?’. As a Christian I believe this is the kind of thing God cares about, deeply, so I’ve got a niggling feeling that I should starting working this out.

I don’t think my excuses cut it any more, I need to look at the choices I make especially because I want to present to my children a less confusing way to live. 

So here’s the challenge I will make one change a month, every month. They say it takes 6 weeks to make a habit so I figure introducing one change a month gives me a chance of actually making lasting change. Also one thing a month seems slightly more manageable than trying to change everything all at once!

In this blog I will record how I get on and try to answer my own questions along the way, questions like ‘does ethical living cost more?’ ‘can I still buy comfy jeans’  and ‘does it really make a difference’? I promise to be honest, to share the successes and failures. My blog is definitely not a ‘look at how good I’m being’ record but rather a way of making sure I stick to the plan, there’s nothing like group accountability!

I hope you have fun journeying with me, do give me your suggestions or let me know how you’ve found trying to engage with these questions.

I should probably start…