Ingredient Transparency and Quality for Your Products?
Getting Transparent About Your Ingredients
We only sell organic and sustainable ingredients. It seems pretty dumb to do anything else (hello Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and the gang) – agriculture adds about 50% of all un-sequestered carbon to the atmosphere. Organic agriculture helps solve that problem. We want you to have full transparency about the ingredients you receive from us.
Over the past 20 years we’ve developed a group of people who call to find ingredients. The job tends to be split between two major types of inquiries:
1 – Chemists who have no idea or concern about where an ingredient comes from but “a customer (Cosmetic Brand) wants xyz in their product. Do you have it?” and,
2 – Brand Owners who are serious about their brand and work with us because they know we care and that we will not sell them something just to sell it. We are not a web sales site, we are people who work with ingredient manufacturers so we can give our customers as much information as possible.
Examples of Ingredient Requests
Here are a few examples of requests I’ve recently received for you all to think about over this hot, holiday weekend.
#1 – Recently a chemist with a private label lab wanted to purchase organic bergamot oil from fruit – not from the peel.
We know most of the legitimate EO suppliers and we couldn’t find anyone that offered this EO.
This implies a few things:
a) the brand developer bought something from a web site and did not ask for a certificate that disclosed what the oil was made from or
b) they assumed that they could get an organic version commercially but…they originally used a non-organic version or
c) they found a good product but it is so rare that it is NOT consistently & sustainably available.
#2 – A customer told me they had purchased oil from a web site. The site operator would not supply his organic certificate because “he did not want anyone to know who his supplier was” – this means he was not certified to re-package and re-label (handle) organic products. The oil lost it’s organic claim when he changed the package and label. If you bought it and used an organic claim on your product you would be in violation of Federal Law.
#3 – A large and reputable company offered to sell me some organic sunflower oil – I always look at production dates. It was a year old. I refused to buy it because it was expired – they probably could have re-tested the product and extended the life for 6 months, which can work with food. People use food far faster than they use up cosmetics. We won’t do that.
The Bottom Line on Ingredient Knowledge
Working with a supplier who will help you understand the ingredients you are buying and the documents that explain the quality of the ingredients is so important. “Transparency” tells you where they come from, what they are made from, and how they are made.
Ingredient quality is always on our mind. We throw product out when we don’t have enough shelf life, we test our oils for freshness and double-check our suppliers because we care and we are always transparent.
Happy Labor Day! Stay cool, stay safe, get out of your car. and walk on the planet
