The best part about having new staff in our Thai herbal products business is the training curve - it gets me excited over and over again, every time, not just about what we do, but the WHY.
This morning I found myself not even in the office 10 mins, and I was having a complex discussion with one of our Thai staff about what the heck I had just carried in from the car, and what it was for.
"They're Cacao skins - from the Cacao fruit used to make chocolate. For the body scrubs. We use them as one of the scrubbing agents."
A blank look came over his face, and so I explained to him that MANY commercial products like toothpastes and body scrubs actually use MICROPLASTIC as the scrubbing-polishing agent. And that it's TERRIBLE for the environment, and for our health. And I realized all over again that most people really don't question what's in the products they buy.
This last week there was a scary piece of information shared on the global "news". Arched eyebrows and sarcastic expression intended when I use the word "news".
The impact on health is as yet unknown. But researchers are concerned as microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of early deaths a year.
People were already known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in, and they have been found in the faeces of babies and adults.
The scientists analysed blood samples from 22 anonymous donors, all healthy adults and found plastic particles in 17. Half the samples contained PET plastic, which is commonly used in drinks bottles, while a third contained polystyrene, used for packaging food and other products. A quarter of the blood samples contained polyethylene, from which plastic carrier bags are made.Source
Dunzhu Li used to microwave his lunch each day in a plastic container. But Li, an environmental engineer, stopped when he and his colleagues made a disturbing discovery: plastic food containers shed huge numbers of tiny specks — called microplastics — into hot water. “We were shocked,” Li says. Kettles and baby bottles also shed microplastics, Li and other researchers, at Trinity College Dublin, reported last October1. If parents prepare baby formula by shaking it up in hot water inside a plastic bottle, their infant might end up swallowing more than one million microplastic particles each day, the team calculated. Source
The biggest risks and issues are at the smallest end of the food chain - tiny creatures who exist in massive numbers in our water and soil and are the basis of the food chain which gives life to a myriad of species, including humans.
“If we knock out something like zooplankton, the base of our marine food web, we’d be more worried about impacts on fish stocks and the ability to feed the world’s population.” Source
Easy, just Go vegan, I hear you say. But you need to appreciate that plants need decomposing animal life for THEIR food, and the health of our oceans is pivotal to, and interconnected with, health on land.
And so we make personal choices for no plastic dishes or cups in the office or at home, no plastic cutlery and no tupperware!! We choose to produce products packaged as sustainably and plastic free as is legally & practically possible.
So what do we use? We choose NO NUT SHELLS. Why? They're too hard and too abrasive and cause damage to the skin surface if used vigorously. Most dermatologists call it "micro-dermal-injury" and advise against products using scrubbing ingredients like crushed walnut shells. Sugar scrubs? Err no. This is why.
Our choice?? We use 3 scrubbing ingredients, locally available and sustainably sourced:
What we love about the black rice is that clinical studies have shown the rice starch enhances skin moisture. Source. The natural mineral salt? Apart from scrubbing and exfoliating, it acts as a natural antibacterial agent and helps restore and balance natural skin pH. We choose natural Thai salt since we remain unconvinced about the fair trade and environmental aspects of Himalayan salt mining in Pakistan. Cacao skins?? WE LOVE that we can help support Siamaya Chocolate, a local organic & fair trade boutique chocolatier, by buying their waste - the organic cacao skins. And we LOVE that cacao skins are naturally rich in anti-oxidants for the skin and contain traces of cacao butter, which help to make our scrubs softer, gentler and not drying.
In the end, environmental sustainability is about not only knowledge and activism, but about better, affordable purchasing choices. And so we beaver away at a massive global problem, doing our little bit, where we can.
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