Selling Out?

An article in the NY times caught my eye the other day. It was about the product line Burt's Bees being bought out by Clorox. For those of you not familiar with Burt's it's a line of beauty and care products made from natural ingredients especially bee's wax (one of my favorite brands of chapstick). The company was sold for $913 million in November. After doing a little research, I found out similar product lines, the Body Shop and Tom's of Maine (84% 0f) had also been bought by L'Oreal and Colgate Palmolive respectively. I wasn't quite sure how to feel about this news. Are theses companies selling out and abandoning original environmentally friendly policies or is some good going to come from this? Well there were a few positives I could see from this. First of all, these larger companies could help promote these products to a more main stream audience and therefore get more people switching to more environmentally friendly products. However, in recent years these products are becoming much more affordable and available at grocery stores and places like Target as good alternatives to less eco-friendly or healthy products. These large companies could, however, bring down the price and create better marketing/advertising. A second positive is that this merger could make these large companies "greener". If these product lines are going to keep their environmental integrity, some things within companies like Clorox, L'Oreal, and Colgate Palmolive will have to change. Interestingly, Tom's of Maine was the only company who mentioned the change on their website (at least that I could find). They say this new partnership will help them meet the growing demand and provide their products in more places. They also said they will "continue to make [their] products without artificial preservatives, sweeteners, or dyes and without animal testing or animal ingredients ...and will continue our Common Good Partnerships, and to give 10% of what we earn to community efforts, and to support 5% of employee time for volunteering". So all in all it's hard to tell if this is a good thing or not. For me I will probably stick with more local brands that the Bozeman Co-op carries, but I think for the rest of Americans who are new to the eco-lines this could be a good way reach a new audience.