Tribal council: Beauty products that make a green difference

If today's consumers can tap into the beauty secrets of indigenous communities, they have ethnobotanists to thank for it. Ethnobotanists are trained to study the medi-cinal properties of plants and work collaboratively with locals (whether tribal elders or native doctors) and scientists employed by beauty manufacturers. Their goal is to harness botanical healing powers without sacrificing the performance we've come to expect from synthetic ingredi-ents. "[They research] cultures to source indigenous plants and remedies and bring them in-house to see if they're viable in a formulation," says Mazzella. "For example, there's a plant called Rhodiola [used in Origins' Youthtopia Skin Firming Lotion] that grows in polar climates. Our ethnobotanists studied it to learn how it adapts and survives in such harsh climates and how we can harness that adaptive plant power in skin care."

Ensuring sustainability
Once plants like Rhodiola are brought into the lab and their efficacy is validated, manufacturers set out to secure vast quantities through local suppliers. And that's where the danger comes in: Although companies like Origins and The Body Shop have entire departments devoted to ensuring the sustainability of farming practices, lack of policing deep in the rainforests and oceans may prove to be an inconvenient truth. As the appetite for natural ingredients skyrockets, it's not hard to foresee a day when unscrupulous farmers will strip fertile lands and bio-pirates will pillage the seas. Over the past dec-ade, for example, Indian sandalwood has been so overfarmed that it's now considered endangered, and the government of India has issued stiff penalties to curb
its exportation.

Caution will protect not only profits but also natural habitats and the people who inhabit them, says Denis Simioni, founder and president of Ojon, a Canadian line of hair- and body-care products that uses oil from the Ojon trees of Central America. "With this sort of partnership comes responsibility," adds Lay. "Our products contain scarce ingredients that are only collected
during peak harvesting periods to limit their availability," says Simioni. "Sometimes the supply isn't able to meet consumer demand, so certain products won't be available until the next harvest. We control annual harvests to help protect the natural resource." Protecting the income of indigenous peoples is another priority. "We try to choose ingredients that can be used in a lot of products," says Lay. "That way, if the demand for one product wanes, the entire community's income isn't jeopardized."

Some companies, such as Toronto-based Isomers Laboratories, have other methods for dealing with ingredient scarcities. "We can take something from nature [and] isolate its effective properties," says co-founder Manuella Marcheggiani. "Then we can mass-produce it in quantities that nature might not have allowed for." But trying to outperform Mother Nature with lab-synthesized ingredients doesn't always succeed. "We tried to recreate goji berries-an antioxidant-rich plant-in the lab, but they worked better in their natural form," says Marcheggiani.

So far, there's little risk that the craze for natural in-gredients will outstrip the planet's biodiversity. According to Ross, ethnobotanists have barely put a dent in the plant world, and countries like Brazil-whose cosmetics and toiletries sector grew by more than 16.5 percent in 2005-are reaping the economic benefits. Besides the Amazon rainforest, ethnobotanists have been spotted in rural China, the Australian outback and Africa. The latter is one area where The Body Shop has been harvesting in-gredients for its Moringa Bath and Body line. Along with organic honey from Zambia and cocoa butter from Ghana, the products include oil from the moringa tree, whose vivid-green leaves contain more iron than spinach and more vitamin C than oranges. The tree is also abundant in nations where employment isn't. If the Moringa Bath and Body line is a metaphor for the future of beauty, that future looks bright green.

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