Stakeholder engagement drivers – Part 2: Self-interested organisations

In the first part of this series of posts we looked at three levels of commitment to stakeholder engagement, self-interest, enlightened self-interest and altruism. This, and the following posts will expand on these and illustrate them with examples.

The antithesis of engagement

Lets start by looking at an extreme level of disengagement – methamphetamine (P) production and distribution. This example shows how the core business impacts negatively on a range of stakeholders.

The classic approach to stakeholder engagement is to look at categories of stakeholder engagement – owners, employees, suppliers, customers and the community. If we consider P production from a suppliers perspective, raw ingredients are sourced either in bulk from unscrupulous suppliers, or from chemists (drug stores). Chemist shops (in New Zealand) have collaborated with Police to restrict this source. As a consequence, medicines, once readily available for genuine consumers are now difficult to access. Chemist shop staff have additional layers of security checking to cope with when selling the product.

People that rent houses that are used to “cook” P are another unwitting supplier and therefore stakeholder. These houses are left drenched in toxic chemicals and require detox processes to prepare them for the next tenant.

A high proportion of users get addicted to P and their behaviour and priorities change. This might include resorting to gambling, stealing from employers, family and others. The families of P addicts often despair at the changes that the drug induces in the addict. The increase in crime, generated by the need to secure funds for the continued supply of the drug, diverts police resources as does the activity required to counter the drug production and distribution. Other crime fighting initiatives may well be under-resourced exposing citizens to more crime.

Without expanding further, we can see that in this case, the “commercial activity” has negatives that cascade through the community. The stakeholders of the illegal drug industry are many and varied and the impacts can reach deep into our communities.

Other examples

Sadly, examples of organisations disregarding the well-being of stakeholders in their pursuit of profit are all too common. Here are some examples:

• The tourist operators along the Gulf Coast became stakeholders of BP and Halliburton when oil washed on to their beaches.
• Those of us that carelessly discard plastic waste may well cause marine life to be consumers of the waste, and therefore stakeholders. Albatrosses in the Pacific consume plastic, thinking it to be food. Their gut can fill with plastic, leading to certain death.
• Alcohol companies and their marketing agents that target young people with promotions help to foster a binge-drinking culture with sometimes devastating social outcomes.

An unwitting stakeholder – a young albatross killed by plastic waste  

While the illegal drug industry is an extreme example, it illustrates that organisations that operate from self-interest, can generate significant unintended misfortune for stakeholders. We can expect that organisations that operate from higher motives can generate significant good, as we shall see in subsequent posts.

image credit: Science News for Kids

Stakeholder engagement – what are the drivers?

If you want your organisation to engage better with stakeholders take some time to understand why. This blog explores three levels of commitment to stakeholder engagement – self-interest, enlightened self-interest and altruism. As with any classification system, these levels are arbitrary and could be endlessly debated – they are simply offered to stimulate thinking about your motives and drivers.

Implementing an initiative, such as stakeholder engagement is more likely to be successful if there is congruence between your thoughts and your actions. According to Sue Knight, our behaviours (what we say and do) are driven by the sub-surface factors of purpose, identity, beliefs, values and capabilities (see The heart of sustainability for more detail). So, for example, if you are just desperate to make money, and for your business to survive, your behaviours will reflect this.

Self-interest, enlightened self-interest and altruism

Self-interest: These are businesses that want to make money and survive – and that includes most business. But those who pursue this solely, will use any means within their ethical and legal boundaries (most of the time). Broader considerations are sublimated to the profit motive.

Enlightened self-interest: Businesses that want to make money and be more sustainable attempt to operate in ways that are not just financially sustainable, but also factor in the well-being of others and care of the environment. They look for synergy in these aspirations.

Altruism: These organisations are either established with altruistic missions or develop those as their owners turn from business-success to deeper motivations.

In this diagram, these levels are presented in a matrix. Notice that the self-interested motive persists in the other two levels – all organisations want to survive. And enlightened self-interest is compatible with altruism – successful businesses have more resources to give. Following blogs will look at examples of each of these levels of business and the behaviours they engender.

What drives your organisation?

Here is a series of statements based on the factors in the diagram above. They can be used as discussion starters, or for a quick evaluation of your organisation. If you want to add numbers:

0 = my organisation is not like this
1 = my organisation is a little like this
2 = my organisation is like this
3 = my organisation is a lot like this

Singular focus on profit: Our primary motivation is to contribute to a better world.

Transactional relationships: The success of our organisation depends on our ability to create great relationships with our stakeholders.

Public relations focus: Good public relations are important to us, but more important is open and transparent engagement.

Engagement focus: We see engagement as a core organisational competency that underpins our success.

Value chain: We work with staff and suppliers to add value for both parties, valuing long-term relationships.

Sustainability aspirations: We are driven to maximise the triple-bottom line, for prosperity, people and the planet.

Values driven decision-making: Our values guide our decision-making – if an opportunity doesn’t sit well with our higher values, we won’t pursue it.

Driven by the greater-good: Our primary motivator is to contribute to the well-being of humanity.

Results:

0 to 8: At the low range, your organisation has a singular focus on profit, if you are at the higher, perhaps your organisation is on the cusp of enlightened self-interest.
8 to 16: Your organisation shows signs of enlightened self-interest and could well be on a trajectory towards sustainability.
16 to 24: Your organisation is manifesting altruism.

There are clear examples of organisations in each of these three categories. We will look at them more closely in following blog posts. And I would love to hear of your organisation’s journey towards altruism.

Sustainability depth – are you green from top to bottom?

Companies trumpet sustainability initiatives, but what is the significance of their sustainability initiatives? Another lens we can use to evaluate their efforts is a measure of sustainability depth. There are three levels of performance to consider:

• the company’s in-house sustainability performance
• the impact of the company’s products and services on society and the planet
• the company’s leadership role in sustainability in its industry or sector.

Lets look at examples of some industries to understand the significance of this approach.

Banking

You probably will have noticed banks that use advertising to announce their use of green cars. Or perhaps they have chosen to occupy green office space. While these initiatives are helpful, they are dwarfed by the impact the banks’ products and services have on the planet and society. The capital that they provide can support sustainable initiatives or more traditionally extractive initiatives. The flow of capital has tended to be more determined by risk analysis rather than an analysis of sustainability.

The practices and example of the Grameen Bank exemplify creative thinking and dedication to sustainable aspirations (in this case, the eradication of poverty). The achievements of the Grameen Bank leave most Western Banks looking homogenous and deficient in leadership. One notable exception (you may know of others) is Vancouver’s VanCity Bank. This statement from their Accountability report indicates their willingness to show leadership at all three levels.

Another evidence of their commitment to sustainability is their relative longevity – Citizens Bank, a subsidiary, was talking about sustainability before the turn of the century. Closer to home (New Zealand) the banks here were at least more conservative and responsible sheltering us from the worst of the financial crises.

In the banking industry, the impact of their in-house sustainability initiatives are miniscule, compared to the greater impact of their products and services and the banking industry’s huge influence on economies. The banks to support are, yes, those who run fleets of green cars, but more importantly are engaged in leadership discourse in their industries. The worst examples of banking were the junk-bond traders that were essentially corrupt and dishonest. Who are the banking leaders who will follow the example of Muhammad Yunus and position the industry to both serve and prosper?

Retail

As with banking, you can imagine retailers who focus on in-house sustainability, but are locked into the need to grow their business. They may be tempted to sell whatever they can to make a buck with little focus on the environment or wider society.

It appears that Walmart has become a very positive exemplar of deep sustainability. They have a long way to go – but are taking initiatives from in-house sustainability, through to industry leadership. Here are examples:

In-house sustainability – For Walmart, electricity is their number two operating expense. They are moving on two fronts. LED lights have been installed in freezer panels, providing a 70% reduction in energy consumption. LED lights will eventually be rolled out throughout stores and carparks. Walmart also have installations of solar panels underway. Over 30 stores are already installed with another 20 to 30 in the pipeline.

Another massive opportunity to improve in-house sustainability is with Walmart’s transport fleet. This video refers to a goal to increase transport efficiency by 100% from a 2005 baseline, by 2015. By the end of July 2011, they have achieved 65%.

Impact of products and services – Walmart aspire to improve the quality of food that their customers eat. Here is an extract from a recent article:

With more than 140 million customer visits each week, we have an opportunity to make a real difference in the nutritional quality of the food we sell, so we have a long-term goal to make food healthier and make healthier food more affordable.

First, we are reformulating thousands of our private brand packaged food items and working with branded products to do the same. By 2015, we will:

• reduce sodium by 25%
• reduce added sugars by 10%
• remove all remaining industrially produced trans fats in our packaged food.

And here is a video about organic lettuce production at Walmart.

Leadership role in sustainability – Because of its size, Walmart can be particularly effective as a leader in the retail industry. When they get interested in initiatives such as LED lighting, solar panels and transport efficiency, they indirectly accelerate the mass adoption of better technology by consequence of their size in the market place. Recently Walmart has turned its focus on food-waste, reacting to the news that approximately one-third of food produced globally is wasted and are working with the USDA on projects to reduce waste. They also are working to access produce closer to the point of sale.

The examples here are a sample of the great work that Walmart is doing and provide a great illustration of a company engaging with sustainability across the three dimensions identified here.

Drive and imagination is the key

In the positive examples here, including Professor Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank and Walmart, we see clear evidence of a desire to create a better world. This drive in turn generates the cognitive resources of imagination and breadth of vision that create new possibilities and transform industries from the top to the bottom.

I would love to hear of more examples.

The heart of sustainability

Ultimately, sustainability can only be built on the transformation of human character. The brilliant John Elkington did a great job by presenting three dimensions of sustainability – economic, environmental and social (people, planet and profit). Its becoming ever more clear, that the myopic pursuit of economic sustainability alone, is ironically, unsustainable. Or to put it another way, its getting hard and harder to make a buck for most people. Our economic systems are getting more and more complex and encumbered by their own dysfunction. And consequent erosions of social and environmental systems compound the dysfunction.

The iceberg model

Sue Knight’s iceberg principle indicates that the behaviours we get (what people say and do) is determined by what is below the surface (purpose, identity, beliefs, values and capabilities). You can’t change behaviour sustainably without changing the sub-surface drivers. I have road-tested this model over the years with observation of human behaviour (including my own) and I find it it be very useful. The remainder of this blog is predicated on the iceberg as an excellent model of human behaviour. It is applied here not just for explaining individual behaviour, but also for the behaviour of collectives, such as corporates. If your not convinced, you can exit here or maybe comment on the validity of the model.

The fractured iceberg

Where sustainability behaviours artificially overlay a conventional culture of myopic profit pursuit, the iceberg is fractured. The old “beneath the surface factors” aren’t compatible with true sustainability and the resulting behaviours include green washing and reputation-mending. I suspect that even overlaying the more enlightened strategy of sustainability as a competitive advantage will not be truly sustainable until the sub-surface drivers change. Internal forces will continue to generate company behaviours compatible with the old drivers.

The sustainability iceberg and transformation of character

True sustainability will naturally emanate from below the surface sustainability drivers such as those in the diagram below. Motives of extraction and exploitation will be supplanted by those of contribution and service. (The examples of purpose, identity, values, beliefs and capabilities used here are arbitrary and could be replaced by others.)

The drivers that underpin sustainability will translate, over time, to the transformation of character. But can we change? We definitely can! For eons, humanity has been driven mostly by survival drives (see my blog on The End of Empires). When the survival drive is our default mode, more elevated and altruistic expressions of character, innate in humans, are suppressed.

As more of us begin to see that our ancient embedded drives are actually counter-productive, and compromising our survival, I believe we will refine our character and generate sustainability drivers for the benefit of our businesses and communities. An exciting prospect is the reinforcing nature of this virtuous cycle. As we improve character, a more sustainable environment is a more compatible ecosystem to work and live in. Over time, we learn that sustainability is in our self-interest. As we reach a tipping-point where these drivers become more common, there will be multiple unintended beneficial outcomes.

The evidence.

So does this sound too optimistic? I believe there is strong evidence to support this position. In the interests of brevity, here are two examples.

Jeremy Riftkin’s RSA Animate video anticipates “the empathic civilisation”. He argues that we are wired more for empathy than competition.

There is a rich vein of evidence that a more human focussed approach to running business generates better outcomes than older command and control models. A recent paper from the Maritz Institute posits that “Outdated beliefs about human action and interaction hold us in a transactional model of engagement.” Their paper links “the new normal” to a enlightened understanding of human drivers and interaction. These support better stakeholder engagement and (I would add) sustainability.

“A new framework for stakeholder engagement is needed … a framework anchored in the latest research relative to human drives and behavior. The goal of this framework is to create better business results that, at the same time, enrich stakeholders in ways that are most meaningful to them. It is about building a win-win proposition … Better Business. Better Lives”. (from The Game Has Changed, Maritz Institute)

Let me know if you think we are on the road to achieving this – or not.

Sustainability – what’s real?

There are a belwildering array of sustainability ratings – but what do we believe? How do we know they are measuring and evaluating the right things?

In their Rate the Raters documents, SustainAbility identified over 50 sustainability rating agencies. SustainAbility will offer insights into how credible each rating system is, but I suspect that many imponderables will remain.  For example, in part two of the study, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index was ranked highest in credibility by the study’s participants. But in his article titled, When Pigs Fly, RP Siegal noted with incredulity that Haliburton is now listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Here are two reasons that determining a company’s sustainability will remain problematic:

• the bureaucratisation and commercialisation of quality processes
• determining sustainability

 The bureaucratisation and commercialisation of quality processes

In the galaxy of organisation endeavour, sustainability reporting can be regarded as a quality measure. For example, while the ISO 9000 series deals with operational quality matters, the ISO 14000 series deals with environmental management. While ISO 14,000 may not be classified as sustainability reporting, it serves the same purpose, in that it provides third party assurance of a quality measure.

I like Tom Peters perspective on quality. He quotes Richard Buetow, a Motorola executive.

With ISO 9000 you can still have terrible processes and products. You can certify a manufacturer that makes life jackets from concrete, as long as those jackets are made according to the documented procedures and the company provides next of kin with instructions on how to complain about defects. That’s absurd.

Where quality processes are formalised, they can divert resources from the product or service itself. Any product or service will justify a finite amount of resource input, so ideally, any quality process will add value equal to or greater than its cost. Too often, compliance-driven quality processes militate against quality as they divert resources away from product or service delivery. This is a big issue in service delivery sectors such as education and health. When teachers spend more time on quality assurance processes, they spend less time on preparation for delivery. It may be that, unless there is a compelling reason to get third party assurance, that resource is best invested in enacting sustainability aspirations, rather than measuring them.

 

I’m not arguing against quality processes – but I am stressing that they have to add value. Sustainability reporting processes will add value to the economic bottom line where there are game-changing benefits. For example:

• a supplier demonstrating conformance with a client’s ESG (environmental, social, governance) standards to ensure continuance of business
• securing a listing in a sustainability index
• remediating reputation losses.

But unless there are clear benefits from quality process third party assurance, why bother?

BP’s gulf oil spill illustrates this issue. Along with Shell, BP scored consistently highly in GRI (Global Reporting Initative) reports, and I believe the company’s leaders had, and have, genuine sustainability aspirations. BP invested a lot in rebranding as “beyond petroleum.” But the gulf oil spill incident has undone a lot of the energy BP had invested in sustainability initiatives. What the GRI couldn’t assess, were complex embedded processes, such as the quality of engagement between BP and its suppliers, and the impact of budgets and deadlines on safety and operations.

Commercialisation

No doubt ratings agencies are also well motivated, but budget pressures will typically create pressure to grow the business and perhaps make processes than they need be. SustainAbility’s Rating the Raters cites commercial pressures as an impediment to more transparent report, partly because the raters are paid by those being rated.

Determining sustainability

Part two of this blog will explore what sustainability means in different industries, and from whose perspective.

Sustainability, engagement and the end of empires – the big picture

Here is a first in a series of blogs offering a interpretation of human history positioning the times we are in now as the end of a long historical saga of empire building, and the dawn of a new global civilisation. In later posts I will explore the parallel shift from economies of exploitation and extraction to sustainable economies. And the agency of civilisation becomes communication, rather than conquest.

Rift valley refugees

We are all descendents of Rift Valley refugees  – our ancestors left Africa thousands of years ago and dispersed across the planet. Thus began the long migration, with humans constantly expanding into new territory. My country, New Zealand, was the end of the line, first colonised only about a thousand years ago by my wife’s Mäori ancestors, and further colonised by my European ancestors in the last 200 years.

This grand human saga has been civilisation by conquest. One group of humans would establish a foothold in a locality, but never for too long before being displaced by another, usually violently. Alternately, a sub-group, motivated by aversion to the status quo and/or the lure of new horizons would move on to establish a new colony. For years, the planet had abundant resources to fuel humanity’s relentless expansion. There were brief periods of peace and stability, but few lives were untouched by conflict.

This became the default human experience and patterned behaviours such as displays of dominance, disputes over resources, and ingrained insecurity predominated. Edgar Schein’s model of culture can be applied to this pervasive human culture. At the top level of Schein’s model are artefacts – the artefacts of the age of conquest changed over time, along with the characters in the war stories, but the essence of the stories was the same. As our ancestors replayed the stories over time they ingrained underlying assumptions of what life is all about and reinforced enduring drivers of human behaviour – “growth is good”, “extracting value” and “us and them”. Occasionally, enlightened individuals and movements would emerge but they would typically be usurped by those possibly influenced by the new, but reverting to the old patterns of behaviour.

Schein's model and the age of empires

 

 

Schein’s classic definition of culture indicates how these patterns of behaviour are reinforced as the right way.

A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (Schein, 2010 page 18)

Course correction and the end of empires

This pattern of behaviour caused great injustices, but our species thrived. As we learned to further develop our intelligence we arrived at a point in our development, 250 years ago, to use machines to further accelerate our expansion and extraction of the world’s resources. But in the last few decades the combination of this new technology and the old patterns of thinking have manifested a set of problems dwarfing any that humanity has faced before. Its time for a course correction.

We also appear to be at the end of the age of empires. The social evolution of humanity has seen us aggregate into larger and larger groups and embracing wider loyalties. What we loosely call “Western civilisation” is the last of the empires, or perhaps more correctly, a cluster of empires. The centre of power has shifted from Europe to the United States and colonisation has been more by commerce than by occupation, but it can be seen as an extension of the processes begun by Europeans for over a millennia.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, in his book Commonwealth, describes the process of convergence, whereby the United States position of a superpower is waning, and major economies head towards a state of convergence, where no single economy can dominate.

A new kind of global politics must take shape, built not on U.S. or Chinese preeminence, but on global cooperation across regions. Despite the reveries and fantasies of some, the age of empire is over, and certainly the age of a U.S. empire. We are now in the age of convergence.

Any thoughts so far. Part 2 of this series of posts looks at Civilisation by Engagement and Community Building.

 

Sustainability leadership report

How do you know if a company is green-washing, or over-promoting its sustainability performance? Brand Logic’s recently released Sustainability Leadership Report compares the perceptions of sustainability of 100 prominent brands, with their sustainability reality.

Their matrix, sorts the brands into 4 categories:

• leaders – those who perform well in environmental, social and governance (ESG) dimensions of sustainability and successfully communicate their achievements
• challengers  – who are performing well, but not getting enough credit
• promoters – who are credited with ESG performance ahead of their actual performance
• laggards – who are low in both dimensions

brandlogic’s Sustainability Leadership Report matrix

Notice that IBM hits the sweet spot of high sustainability performance and high sustainability perceptions.

The great news

This report surveyed three groups, purchasing/supply management professionals, investment professionals and graduating students.  They were asked :

When evaluating a company as a potential:

• investment or investment recommendation
• supply chain partner
• employer

how important is it to you that the company act as a good corporate citizen, operating in a socially and environmentally responsible manner?

An impressive 88% felt that this was somewhat important or extremely important –  45% responding that it was extremely important.

Here is a link to the BrandLogic website and report.

Steps: certified coffee

There is a major disconnect between those of us who enjoy $4.00 cups of coffee and the farmers, often living impoverished lives, who produce the beans. Thankfully, there are actions we can take to bridge the gap.

Coffee is grown in tropical climates often by subsistence farmers. Market systems, including endemic corruption, somehow conspire to ensure only minimal returns go to coffee growers. You can imagine that poorly resourced farms generate an unsafe working environment, including exposure to agrichemicals.

Certified coffee

Certification schemes for coffee production include Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, Organic certifications and Trade Aid Coffee. These improve the lot of growers, their families and communities by ensuring better prices for coffee beans, investment in local facilities and range of other benefits. Farmers participating in certification schemes experience benefits that can generate a virtuous spiral of improvements. For example, the provision of schools makes education available, possibly for the first time in some families. This video outlines some of the benefits.

Certified coffee has been with us for less than 2 decades. According to the Coffee and Conservation website, in 2010 it accounted for 8% of the global coffee market. When coffee is treated as a commodity, market forces will seek to reduce costs to maximise returns at the bottom end of the market, but cheap coffee typically translates to poor returns to growers. Coffee drinkers can make a difference by selecting a certified coffee. Sometimes certified coffee is more expensive, and it will get more expensive as demand increases. But that is good news as more and more producers will want to take advantage of the benefits of certification. For many tropical rural economies, certification of agricultural products, including coffee, could be the start of beneficial social transformations.

Environmental considerations

Certified organic coffee ensures coffee is grown more sustainably. Toxic agrichemicals are not used, and the trees are more likely to be grown in shade, in forest understory. Biodiversity is enhanced. This video contrasts shade and sun coffee.

Another small step is the packaging you choose. Aluminium foil packaging may be more likely to be recycled than aluminium plastic laminates.

If you can afford to buy a $3 or $4 cup of coffee, you can afford to help out growers by growing certified coffee. Where is good certified coffee sold and served in your community?

 

Engagement stories: Kaipara tidal power

Crest Energy has won approval to install turbines in the entrance to the Kaipara Harbour in northern New Zealand. But when lengthy compliance and court processes position stakeholders as adversaries, there will inevitably be losers. How might we find a win-win?

Crest Energy plans to install up to 200 turbines in the mouth of the harbour, to generate up to 200 mw of electricity. The Kaipara harbour is the largest harbour in the southern hemisphere of 947 km² with a 800 kilometre shoreline. About 8 billion cubic metres of water flow through the harbour entrance daily.

Looking from the dunes to the  wild and magnificent Kaipara Harbour entrance

The Minister of Conservation, Kate Wilkinson, announced on 17 March 2011, approval for Crest Energy’s turbines. Local stakeholders, including local Mäori, farmers and fishers responded by organising further meetings in protest. The Indigenous people of the area are Te Uri o Hau, a hapu (subtribe) of Ngati Whatua. Along with local farmers and fishers, Te Uri o Hau are concerned about the environmental impacts of the turbines.

Stakeholder engagement?

Projects such as this have multiple community stakeholders. The people of Northland and Auckland will benefit from a renewable energy supply, and New Zealand’s supply of electricity of renewables will be further enhanced from the current 74%. But the big unknown is the environmental impact of 200 turbines spinning in the depths of the harbour entrance. The Environmental Court supported Te Uri o Hau’s request for environmental monitoring – but the hapu is still concerned.

When engagement processes get to court, it can hardly be called engagement. Positions tend to become entrenched on both sides. Is there a third way? Is there will to explore a third way?

Riparian planting at Whaingaroa Harbour

The good people at Whaingaroa harbour near Raglan further down the west coast of New Zealand have planted over a million trees on the margins of the harbour and the rivers and streams that feed it. After a decade, the result has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of silt and animal waste entering the harbour. Seagrasses have returned to the intertidal zones and marine life, from tiny invertebrates to fish species, have a better environment and populations are rapidly increasing.

A win-win?

What’s the connection? I’m guessing that any negative environmental impact of the turbines would be dwarfed by the positive impact of environmental improvements resulting from a riparian planting project on the Kaipara. Of course, the massive Kaipara dwarfs the Whaingaroa harbour – but over time, replanting is achievable. Crest Energy has a great opportunity to divert a small percentage of power revenue to support replanting projects, and create a positive association between the company’s renewable energy production and harbour restoration.

It will be interesting to see if the various stakeholder aspirations can be achieved to create a win-win.

More links

• Here is a link to a YouTube video about the eco-auger – the turbine design that will be used in the Kaipara.
• The Whaingaroa Harbour Care website (the before and after shots are impressive).

Steps – use soap in the shower

Not that long ago, we used to wash ourselves in the shower with soap. But now liquid body washes dominate the supermarket shelves. I use soap from Eco-store. The lemongrass bar smells great. Fortunately the ingredients in the body washes I checked out on the Skin Deep Cosmetics database commonly rated in the low risk range of 0 to 3 (on a 0 to 10 scale).

However the Ecostore package claims that the product has, among other things, no sodium lauryl sulphate. The natural health information website claims that sodium lauryl sulphate damages the skin and is a causal factor in health problems.  As a comnsumer, it is hard to get to the truth about these products, but my instincts tell me to go with products are more natural – so its back to bars of soap,

Another major advantage of soap is that the packaging is cardboard, whereas the bodywashes come in solid plastic packaging.

Ecostore products are available in New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Hong Kong. Do you know of good alternatives for other countries?