Change in the air for personal care

There's some pretty MAJOR stuff going down in the personal care industry right now.

First up, a bill called The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 has just been introduced in Congress. Here's an excerpt from The Campaign For Safe Cosmetics web site:

For the first time in 70 years, Congress is ready to close the gaping holes in the outdated federal law that allows chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, learning disabilities and other illnesses in the products we use on our bodies every day.

On July 21, Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (H.R.5786), which gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to ensure that personal care products are free of harmful ingredients.

This legislation will affect every American—everyone who puts on moisturizer or uses shampoo or deodorant. More and more people are concerned about unsafe chemicals in our everyday lives, and getting these toxics out of the stuff we rub on our bodies every day is just common sense. It will also help the cosmetics industry by fostering the development of the safer products American consumers are demanding.

 The legislation is waaay overdue in our opinion and is an encouraging sign that the US personal care industry is finally going to be held more accountable to the people it's meant to be serving.

Read more about it here - even better, tell your elected officials to pass this common-sense bill.

Also, this video about the sorry state of affairs in the Cosmetics Industry from The Story of Stuff and The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is creating quite a stir....

Take a few minutes to watch it!

Learn about the toxins in your personal care

Check out this brief video for a good primer on what may be lurking in your personal care. Environmental Working Group has become an awesome resource for consumers and is spearheading the movement towards a healthier, more accountable personal care industry. Bring it on!

We're incredibly excited to be working in this field right now, creating a robust natural alternative for people who know better and are actively rejecting impersonal, chemical-intensive "personal care". Pretty soon you'll be able to buy our initial products via our web site and at selected retailers nationwide :)

Brand awareness in Iceland

So Iceland was great... every time we travel we notice little brands we've never seen before, or see familiar ones in a new light. Here are some snaps from the trip. (The first one means Fish King and is a popular fish shop in Reykjavik - they were just closing when we pulled in but they stayed open for a few minutes when they heard I came all the way from Vermont to try their halibut :)

A few of these designs are inspirations for Ursa Major; we'll let you decide which!

No toxic deodorant for me thx

One half of the Great Bear team is traveling in Iceland at the moment (visiting a good friend and doing some consulting for a local natural body care company seeking to enter the US market) and I forgot our natural deodorant prototype back home in Vermont. Damn! (It's the only natural deo stick I've tried that actually works - I swear.) There don't appear to be ANY natural deodorant sticks in this country, so I'm going without, making sure I shower twice a day. Not ideal but - knowing what's in mass-marketed deodorants/antiperspirants - there's no way I'm going to resort to that crap. Actually, it's easy to stay super-clean here because every neighborhood has spotless, geothermal public swimming pools fed by clean, warm water and showers, etc. Good opportunity to get some swimming in. Btw, my host sent me this photo earlier this year - awesome scenery around here.