Part of Vivesana’s vision, from the outset, was that companies could both work to generate profits while working to be agents of positive change.

We decided that one of our core values was to contribute a portion of our profits to organizations who shared our values.

Supporting AMHI was a no brainer for us.  For me, personally, support of organizations in less-developed countries hits home.  I had been to Kenya in 1999, on a photo safari, and I was largely insulated from the day-to-day lives of Kenyans.  My sister, in 2003, was working in Child Protection in Northern Uganda. I had the incredibly rare opportunity to visit Northern Uganda, where she showed me first-hand how grassroots organizations in Africa could have a profound impact. 

AMHI’s impact on the lives of women and children in Malawi cannot be overstated.  In fact, I think that their accomplishments and stories stand on their own and we at Sana hope you’ll read more and support this worthwhile cause.   

www.africanmothers.org

We’re truly honored to be able to help.

Webster’s dictionary defines “natural” as “being in accordance with or determined by nature.” Ok, pretty straightforward.

Of course, nothing’s ever simple. This is an oxymoronic world we live in, where the Environmental Protection Agency takes the side of corporations and sues states for protecting the environment, and coal calls itself clean. The trick to finding natural products is resisting natural self-descriptions, branding and marketing…even when they put trees and bushes in their logo.

The proof is in the pudding. Just look at the ingredients. Products must list ingredients in descending order by volume and must provide specific terminology. Exceptions include ingredients present in very small amounts and fragrances, which may be described as “fragrances”. Helpful. We simply don’t buy products that say “fragrances”, and opt for those that spell out what that means.

So, if you see octyl dodecanol or dimethicone silicone on there, we suggest that you put that product right back on the shelf. Instead, look for a products with labels that start and finish with ingredients like sunflower, green tea, and avocado. Ingredients you can pronounce. Ingredients you can cook with!

We see it everywhere. Our friends going green. The local dry cleaner going green. Celebrities going green. Even some unlikely converts…oil companies going green? Really? What’s next, the coal industry goes green? Actually, there is the clean coal campaign…

It’s a great thing to see a trend toward something positive. It’s empowering that we can make dirty companies do their best to look clean and green. But it’s crucial that the movement doesn’t let up. And it’s important to be sure that clean and green is more than a tagline.

Quotes like (do your best Pepe Le Pew accent for this) “If the consumer wants organic products, we will give them organic products…” leave one to wonder how deep the commitment lies.

Are these companies that are built on sustainable, green principles? Who knows. But we say keep up the pressure. Use your purchasing power. Eventually, sustainable, responsible corporate practices will be the normal course of business. Some day, it’ll be “we give them organic because it’s better for people and better for the planet.”

You are what you eat. And what you put on your skin. Many skin care products are designed to permeate the deeper layers of the skin, meaning they can have not just topical effect, but also systemic impact. This is especially worrisome for infants and fetuses.

The EPA recently found that babies are 10 times more vulnerable to carcinogens, and up to 65 times more vulnerable to some synthetics. Why? In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences listed the main reasons children are more vulnerable to synthetics than adults:

(1) more exposure pound for pound (literally, more surface area to volume)
(2) immature, porous blood-brain barrier allows greater chemical exposure to the developing brain
(3) lower levels of chemical binding proteins (chelating agents) – again meaning chemicals have a clearer path to the brain
(4) organs in the development stage
(5) processing, filtering and disposal systems (like livers and kidneys) that are less developed. Babies, therefore, can’t flush their systems and detoxify as well as adults
(6) longer future life span.

Newer research also points to the fact that babies and children have far thinner, more sensitive skin, and that they are more prone to chemical absorption.

Unfortunately, not only is impact to infants and fetuses more likely, it can also be more permanent. There is evidence that exposure to various synthetics (like various endocrine disrupters commonly found in skin care) and even some naturals (like lavender and tea tree oil) can have permanent systemic impact. The Environmental Working Group has found that 82% of children are exposed to neurotoxins every week and 68% are exposed to endocrine disrupters. Meanwhile, rates of breast cancer are increasing and the age of menstruation and breast growth is decreasing. Even common packaging poses risks to babies.

What you put on your skin, and your child’s skin, might have lasting effects. Don’t be scared, just be aware. Don’t rely on marketing campaigns – read ingredient labels top to bottom. There are good guys out there, too…

We love it when restaurants open their kitchens up. Not only is it fun to watch the pros in action, it’s a good sign when a place feels confident enough in their ingredients and practices to pull back the curtain. No corner cutting, no unswept corners, no dirty tricks!

Skin care is not so different. You feed your skin the same way fill your stomach. But when it comes to skin care, as consumers, we always felt like we were flying blind. Who knows what’s inside the pretty packages. Is it all made in an industrial vat somewhere? Maybe we’d read too many scary headlines.So, we pulled back our own curtain. Our products are our babies – we couldn’t be prouder of them, and we’re more than happy to share every last detail! Skin care consumers finally get an open kitchen of their own…What does all this mean? It means we’ll tell you not just what are ingredients are and what they do, we’ll tell where they came from. We’ll tell you where our packaging is made and how. We welcome comments. No more guessing…

Good question. Better answer. Sana removed water from its formulations for two giant reasons. First, topically applied water as a skin care treatment is a red herring…see how long it lasts on your skin without a proper barrier. Fact is, topically applied water does not provide any lasting benefit to your skin. But practically every other skin care product out there is mostly water. What gives? Not our business, but here’s a tip: check the latest price for water. Sana does not believe in cutting corners with fillers. Water needs to be in your skin, not on it.

Second, water is where microbes live. It’s true. Water is a wonderful, vital element that we would not last long without. But it’s filled with bacteria, germs and other critters. Especially standing water. Anytime it sits for a period of time, the little guys are going to find it. It’s not so different in skin care. Water may be an excellent way to stretch a product, but it’s also the main reason synthetic preservatives (and synthetic emulsifiers) are necessary. Take the filler out, and suddenly there’s nowhere for microbes to grow.didn’t stop there, but removing water is the single biggest leap.

It’s just like cooking – once you start cutting corners with unnecessary ingredients, you need to start balancing them, and before you know it, the “recipe” has gotten away from you. It’s first principles for Sana: stick with ingredients that directly benefit skin. What does it mean for you? 100% natural, synthetic-free products that go all the way toward beautiful, healthy skin.

So where does the Bisphenol A tree grow? Watered your phthalate plant recently? We’ve been scratching our heads too. Too many supposedly ‘all natural’ or ‘organic’ skin care products are filled with multi-syllabic preservatives, emulsifiers, thickeners…etc. that sound suspiciously unnatural to us. Unfortunately, slippery sloganeering is so widespread these days, no one bats an eye. The Government has usually left it to companies to police themselves – or more accurately, each other. Problem is, larger competing companies – with a few exceptions – apparently figure it’s better to live and let live, allowing each other to carry out mutual deceit.

It’s not just the ingredients that are being mislabeled. In fact, the Environmental Working Group recently concluded that over half of the sunscreen products on the market make claims about effectiveness that are unacceptable or misleading under the FDA’s draft sunscreen safety standards. Think back to the “all-day protection” that couldn’t last until lunch, or the “water-proof” sunscreen that washed off with your first dip, or the “mild as water” lotion that warned you to avoid contact with your eyes.

Plans to tighten up labeling standards are in the works, but we think companies have a responsibility to be honest. It’s one of the reasons Sana was born. We’ll do our part to push the envelope and to pull back the curtain. And we can all do what we can to demand clear honest labels. Is that too much to ask?

And hey, if there’s a Bisphenol A tree growing out there somewhere, we’ll eat our words!

Why? Because sun does more than create free radicals, cause painful reddening, and attack collagen and internectin (causing skin to age)…it also degrades NMF, the humectant water magnet that draws water to the skin’s surface. When that natural humectant is impaired, the skin starts to dry out.

Avoid the double whammy of burning and drying. Look for a sunscreen that has moisturizing impact, ideally with glycerin or another humectant, and keep moisturizing after you come out of the sun.

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Grandma’s Sunday lasagna. A crayon-smeared birthday card from your son. The best stuff is homemade.

Sana began in a kitchen in upstate New York. First, just friends: farmers, teachers, chefs, parents — all reading, studying, mixing, and testing. Then the pros: chemists, doctors, pediatricians, checking the science and improving the formulas. The kitchen grew into sophisticated labs. The testing started in the bathroom, the tennis court, the ski lift, and the waves, and then moved to formal testing. But it was in our hands the whole time.

It was a leap of faith. The chemists wondered why we were re-inventing the wheel. It’s so much easier to do it the same way as everyone else, they said. Friends, family and co-workers scratched their heads skeptically. A few warned we were crazy. Isn’t that how all great movements start?

Creating from scratch forces one to understand everything, to examine assumptions, and to take full ownership of the final product. We did it because we weren’t comfortable with mass-produced alternatives. We’ll take a home-cooked meal over something processed in a mysterious vat, any day. We like our fresh, local, carefully chosen ingredients. Skin deserves a touch of homemade care, too.

And it’s not just the crème you rub into your skin. The company is homemade, too. We’re made up of families. We care about the same things you do.

It’s easy to trumpet a couple of fancy naturals or organics, while packing a product with the same old chemicals. Sana is different. It wasn’t born on Madison Avenue or cooked up in a vat in New Jersey. Why? Because it’s important to us, and we figure it’s important to you, that products are safe and healthy, top to bottom. Between bio-accumulation, slippery labeling, and the lack of adequate research regarding certain technologies or synthetics, deciding to find a way to remove all synthetics was not a tough call.

But what about that extra step from natural to organic. Necessary, or just branding?

Let’s look at the four legs of the table (we love our food imagery!):

Safety: In order to be certified organic by the USDA, an ingredient must comply with a whole range of safety and sustainability standards far above conventional standards. Common pesticides with documented toxic or carcinogenic properties frequently make their way into our food and personal care products. A recent study showed the average baby has over 200 industrial synthetics in their system at birth. Even where present in trace amounts, many of these pesticides bio-accumulate , meaning they can add up to cause more serious problems. Organic ingredients are, by definition, produced without dangerous pesticides.

Quality: Greater care is taken in organic farming and it generally shows in the quality. There is not a separate certification process for skin care, so in order to be used in Sana’s products, ingredients must meet food grade organic quality. Which, frankly, is how it should be. Skin care and food both become part of you!

Environment: Organics are grown in a far more environmentally friendly manner. Agro-business is a major contributor to soil, water and air contamination, as well as to global warming. Studies have shown people growing up near agro-farms have far greater concentrations of toxic industrial synthetics. The energy used to produce pesticides and conduct large scale conventional farming consumes as much energy each year as all the cars in America. Organics are another way.

Philosophy: Supporting organic farming means supporting small family-based farms rather than huge conglomerates. It means healthier products and a healthier Earth. It promotes a culture of sustainability and respect for the land. It’s what Sana chooses.