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Original Source Products
I basically think these are the best Shower Gel/Body Wash/Liquid Soap/Hair Stuff/Basically Everything products around, but like basically all other consumable items I have my concerns. They tell you exactly how much of an ingredient went into your product (And they have nice intense/concentrated identifiable fragrances), but that makes (paraphrased) "FOURTY ENTIRE LIMES WENT INTO THIS" feel really, really un-environmentally friendly for a company that bills itself as being environmentally friendly (They've even switched from bottles to bags for most of their products to get rid of the unnecessary plastic).
Also I'm pretty sure their men's range is entirely against the message of their products as a whole and they just secretly use the same scents as the normal range WITH MANLY WORDS like SPORTS. Plus the main range looks pretty gender neutral and even skews towards masculine designs!
Though if this thread is really about environmental issues I guess it should be about how I'm supporting the company that imports these products from the UK (Though I think it's New Zealand now?).
Comments
Well, it's possible that a product that involved transporting goods from overseas factories that used environmentally-unfriendly production methods (for acquiring and/or processing the raw ingredients and packaging) switched to environmentally-friendly production methods without changing their transport methods, which would technically make the product more environmentally-friendly.
That said, yeah, I've had the hunch that the worldwide development of relatively cheap and/or fast transportation has made a lot of products (and consequently, lifestyles) a lot more possible in a lot more places where they probably might not have been possible. I'm not sure what local resources are available in your area for making body wash products, but apparently the combined cost of raw materials, processing, and transportation with stuff made in the UK or New Zealand and shipped to you is less than the cost of making the products locally. This is of course related to the cost of shipping, though it could also be related to economies of scale in production and decisions on whether to locally source raw materials and build processing plants.
One could even say it has to do with the fact that, as consumers participating in a market economy, we've become accustomed to thinking only about the immediate price of an item, and comparing substitutable items on and only on that basis...but what other bases should we use, and will the considerations be too combinatorially complex to be practical? Alternatively, an economics-based perspective says that the immediate price of an item ought to be tweaked to match the true social cost of an item...though that's similarly difficult to determine.
Ideally, of course, everything would be locally-sourced and cheap.
Y'know, all this cheap transportation has contributed to the gradual homogenization of culture and practices across the world. This has upsides and downsides, of course. Specific to this topic is sourcing of raw materials; a lot of cultural practices are strongly based on what local resources (food, water, building and clothing materials, personal and health care resources) were available, but the availability (or relative cheapness compared to historical context) of transportation has made it possible to export whole lifestyles to different places. I recently read a comment somewhere about how certain building styles are more suited for, say, tropical climates but people continue to build less efficient buildings and cool them with AC, or something like that.
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lol, product differentiation
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Well, to be fair to them, being aware of cradle-to-grave resource use is key to understanding the environmental impact of a product. Though I know what you mean, it feels less bad to not know sometimes.
Though I guess you could ask them, what do they do with the rest of the limes? They obviously don't use the whole mass of the lime. Are the other parts just trashed? Composted? What?
Quick question: How are their bags designed -- are they made such that it's easy to get the last drop out of them?
This is probably not right. In general it is, but Original Source products are fair trade (Which means they pay their employees like, decent wages and I have to pay for that). But there's an immense price-drop from something by Original Source to anything by Unilever (Including their premium brands like Dove that use foreign milk products). Actually, we've got a few Unilever factories here and the stuff they make is noticeably closer to the price of Original Source than the Unilever products made in other countries (Weirdly enough those come from Mozambique usually).
Pretty much, SA factories do a lot well ie tea, mechanical stuff and precious stone processing (So basically we should start making Rooibos, Oil and Diamond scented bodywashes or something) but I don't think this is one of them.
This is terrible because in a disproportionate society like this one basically everything above basic level would skyrocket.
I guess? Buuut the real challenge for any company that wants to be successful in specific markets is to intergrate the culture into their products (ie how basically every company that does make bodywashes here actually makes at least half of the line with Rooibos tea because the danged stuff grows everywhere and how we actually have Pap on our KFC and McDonald's menus).
This is probably about Dubai, where they actually once considered building an island using land reclamation with built-in ACs and they will probably air-condition stadiums for the upcoming world cup.
This one is more about attracting an international customer base. Attracting big tycoons is easier without having to justify why the buildings are not Western-style.
I should really call their customer care line to find out.
Yes actually, even the bottles had the cap on the bottom so that you could get the most out of them (Unlike other lines that have the stylish cap on the top so you could never turn the bottle upside down to get the last drop).