A Nice Clean Garden

Your herbs will be squeaky clean if they grow from a Pangea Organics wrapper for a bar of soap. That's just one of the green, or eco-friendly, packaging designs taking the cosmetics world by storm.

The NYT has a neat little article in Thursday's Style section on the phenomena, which includes slimming or lightening packaging which just means using a thinner container and corn starch based packaging (just like those new "plastic" forks and spoons), in addition to the plantable wrappers.

Given that you see plenty of natural and organic labels jumping off of the cosmetic and skin care aisle shelves these days, the move to more sustainable packaging isn't surprising. The cynics among us (count me in) may well argue that its just a marketing ploy. While they may have a point, I say who cares why Estee Lauder (who runs 28 cosmetic brands, really?! Does that seem nuts to anyone else?) has a chief environmental officer for corporate packaging, every step towards greater sustainability is a step in the right direction and helps build momentum.

Which is terribly important given that the biggest obstacle in the path of fighting climate change is inertia, folks like things the way they are, change isn't as easy as business as usual...