Hard work making life easier

By Hayley, Biome's Manager - Merchandise

We recently spent three days at the Melbourne gift fairs searching for useful, eco friendly and ethical choices to offer at Biome. The sheer quantity of low quality, synthetic, petrochemical, unethically-made products to wade through is incredible. It is like an exaggerated, intensified version of what eco-conscious shoppers deal with each day. Our criteria mean we need to ask many more questions than when a regular retail store selects products at these fairs.

There were many outrageous verbal answers, but I feel the written ones on the packaging are slightly more worrying. These printed messages will reach a bigger audience, and being printed on the product gives their claims more validity. Here are just a few examples:

• Labelled "organic" and "natural" without certification or justification and still containing synthetics or petrochemicals;
• Paper products promoting "recyclable" as an eco-benefit. This is environmentally misleading as almost all paper products can be recycled.
• Candles labelled as natural while still containing synthetics, or labelled as sustainable when containing 100% palm oil (at Biome we do not consider palm oil to ever be sustainably sourced due to the areas it typically comes from). See our Queen B beeswax candles for an alternative, and if you want a beautiful fragrant candle, add a few drops of our Tinderbox essential oils to the little wax pool at the top of the candle. Beware of fragranced candles touting themselves as natural as they will contain synthetic fragrances (natural essential oils cannot be mixed into candles without losing their scent very quickly).

Luckily there are some wonderful suppliers that answer our questions informatively and with empathy and integrity. We salute these amazing people and soon will be able to share the amazing products we discovered!

It's hard work, but at the end of the day we take so much satisfaction that we are making it easier:

• for our customers to choose genuine eco alternatives (without green washing);
• for those whose hands make the products (by supporting only those producers that fairly pay and treat their workers); and, ultimately
  
• for the earth.

Photo: Biome window display with a wonderful stick-light, hand made responsibly in Australia by Greg Hatton.

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Misleading claims hurt true greenies

The company that manufactures “Natural Instinct” has been found guilty of deliberately failing to list all ingredients such as Sodium Laureth Sulphate, listing some chemicals by incorrect names, and claiming that some products are "made from 100% pure oils and certified organic herbs" when in fact, only a very minor proportion of the product uses these. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has told it to publish corrective notices. Thank you to the Cleanlife blog for their story with all the details.

When I see a "natural" brand that is so low cost, it puzzles me how they can make the products so cheaply - either they contain a lot of fillers/bulking agents (like water and salt) or the ingredients are perhaps not as they say.
Not that a natural brand has to be expensive. There are some beautiful, reasonably priced natural beauty brands that use high quality ingredients to nourish your skin - like Bod and Sanctum.
Before I trust a company or its products, I like to know who are the people behind it, their story and their inspiration. With N.I., I was always concerned that I could not find any information about who they were. We all need to be sceptical consumers, try to garner as much information as we can to make an informed choice and, ultimately, rely on our own (dare I say) instinct.

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