Eye | America Throws Away 40% of Food | Fair Trade Scandals | Avalon Organics 1st in Skin Care
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Organic Skin Care Labeling
Avalon Organics has upgraded more than 90 formulas for 100 SKUs in its line of personal care products, making it the first company offering everything from shampoo to body lotion that is totally organic. In executing the overhaul, Avalon turned to the NSF/ANSI 305 standard for personal care products, one that closely mirrors the USDA guidelines for natural and organic food.
WWD reports that Avalon’s new products are now shipping to Whole Foods, Target, Walmart and drugstores across the country.
Whole Foods is leading the charge to develop standards for personal care products that are standardized around the term ‘organic’ and will begin educating customers with in-store endcaps in March. The company has removed products that don’t qualify as organic.
Is Fair Trade Movement Fair?
Bloomberg moves from their in-depth reporting on the Victoria’s Secret fair trade cotton scandal in Burkina Faso to a larger review of fissures and pressures in the fair trade movement.
As consumers try to do the right thing by supporting fair trade products at higher prices, the push for fair trade products is strong.
New research has quantified the benefits to the bottom line: In a study released earlier this year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the London School of Economics found they could boost bulk coffee sales by 10 percent just by adding a fair-trade label on the packages. Sales of goods approved by Fairtrade International, the world’s largest certifier of such products, soared 27 percent in 2010 to more than $5.7 billion.
In the case of Victoria’s Secret, Bonn-based Fairtrade International certified the cotton that apparently comes from child labor. Bloomberg writes that the organization “took a year and a half to commission an independent review after BBC disclosures in March 2010 that children harvested Ghanaian cocoa certified by the group for suppliers to Cadbury and other companies.” Read on at Bloomberg News.
Food Waste in America
About 40% of all the food produced in America is tossed out every year writes Forbes. This, according to a study published by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Our throwaways are part of a total 150 trillion calories of food waste a year, or, $43 billion squandered annually. Along with overproduction or surplus and unwanted food scraps, spoilage is a key problem in food waste. Forbes shares produce that lasts the longest.
