The Devil Wears Lip Balm
by Heather Burns-DeMelo
Who am I to scorn Treehugger for selling out to Discovery or look down my nose at Bear Naked and Kashi giving in to Kellogg? After all, I'm only a hard working mother of two whose hard earned money helped fatten their sacrificial lamb.
Sure I was bummed that I could no longer purchase my favorite cereal or Toms of Maine feeling good about voting for a greener economy with my dollars, but Clorox purchasing Burts Bees for $913 million in November has officially tipped my needle from mild disappointment to despair.
And just to add insult to injury, this article in the New York Times reports that Clorox plans to turn
Burt’s Bees into a mainstream American brand that's sold in big-box stores
like Wal-Mart.
HBD,
The question is: are we too far gone to back-pedal from the big-box-store, consumer-take-all lifestyle that we are entrenched in at the moment?
My gut says that at moments like this we have to keep on hopping down the bunny trail, and not get too despondant. I was devastated when L'Oreal bought out Body Shop, but I think in the end, owning it improved L'Oreal's product line as a whole.
Hey! why not try making your own lip balm at home? You could barter it with friends who are making something else wonderful and let those who haven't yet been initiated to Burt's Bees goodness be grateful for running across it in the Wal-Mart aisles.
You never know from whence THEIR subtle shift will come.
E
Posted by: Elizabeth | January 08, 2008 at 08:38 PM