Natural Products

The sixth (if I have counted correctly!) Eco Icon on http://www.yourtomorrow.co.uk/ encourages Natural Products. I am not an expert in the medical particulars of "natural" products; my business partner and nephew Nick knows far more about harmful ingredients than I do. He knows about things like SLS and SLES and the health dangers to your body of using products containing suchlike ingredients. I have also just read "Not on the Label" by Felicity Lambert and this book describes, in sickening detail, the chemicals that are put into our food.
My concern is less medical, more economic. I know that people are very tempted to put short term profit before long term health and well-being. I know that business motivations can drive people to produce things that make money in the short term, even though they have long term damaging effects on our health, the environment and social equity. How do we stop this?
This is the $64,000 question. Not everyone can have a second chance at life and a BGO (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious) like me. But it seems to me that, as a society, we can change things just by using our spending power. If a business will sell more if it is run "ethically" and produces "natural" products, then we need do no more! Business peope and managers will just follow the market. As consumers we only need to build "ethics" and "natural" into our purchasing decisions. Why not put aside a maneagable fraction of your budget to be spent on "natural" products? This is the reason we have tried to summarise all the factors that will, hopefully, lead to a better future with our Eco-Icons.
Use these, or similar, principles to help you make your own purchasing choices. Buy cosmetics and "smellies" that are natural and do not contain unnecessary, and potentially harmful, ingredients. There are plenty of natural products available and they are just as good to use, albeit they may not have the same shelf life and may even cost a bit more. We feature natural products from Holistic Tree on Yourtomorrow. These products are available on the site, such as http://www.yourtomorrow.co.uk/product/18/bath-gift-basket.php and they are made by a small company in Halifax. The products are carefully hand-made by Julie and her team, she is a qualified pharmacist who really does care about her products being "natural" and not harmful; they smell good too!
Be careful what you eat too! After my heart surgery I have learned a lot about what food is good for me but, far more importantly, what is not! I am not involved in selling food, but if I were I would have a lot to say about the ingredients that we put into food in order to make it look nicer, last longer, cost less. The result is that we are too fat and unhealthy. This is yet another example of short term profits driving us towards long term adverse consequences.