Green Beauty Manufacturer Investigated for Using Child Labor
For many green beauty brands, a retail launch means initially putting forth products that have been formulated by the founder’s own hands. As the brand grows, manufacturing may be outsourced, making transparency and accountability further removed and murkier to navigate. This appears to be the case for Acure Organics and Savannah Bee, green beauty brands who recently found their names tied to a child labor investigation involving their manufacturing facility.
Greener Formulas, located in Cambridge, New York, is a certified organic manufacturing facility that recently came under scrutiny from a larger investigation surrounding the Twelve Tribes religious sect. Accusations of children as young as nine years old working on assembly lines have come to light, with the mention of 12 other minors working in the facility.
For their parts, both Acure and Savannah Bee have come out strongly against Greener Formulas and have since parted ways with the manufacturer. An Acure spokesperson has said, “The serious allegations raised against the facility in Cambridge, New York, are abhorrent and go against our values as a company.”
Ted Dennard, founder of Savannah Bee, said, “We take great pride in our products, from the ingredients we use to the way they are produced. Our company values and policies do not tolerate child labor. Our contracts with all of our manufacturing vendors explicitly prohibit any child labor. Any manufacturing vendor found to be violating our contract in this manner is also violating our company values and standards.”
Acure went on to tell green beauty retailer Credo, which sells their products, “While we are no longer working with Greener Formulas, we have previously used them to produce a small amount of select certified organic products. This contract was based on our confidence in the facility’s USDA Organic Certification, which requires manufacturers to meet rigorous standards and undergo an annual review and inspection process. We never knowingly had a contract with the Twelve Tribes organization. As part of our commitment to supply chain transparency, we are currently working with a third-party auditor to review all of our manufacturing facilities and will be publishing the audits as soon as they become available.”
As the demand for transparency by consumers continues to grow, third party manufacturers will need to be held to the same high standards as the founders who are using them. Knowing where ingredients come from, how they are sourced, what an ethical supply chain looks like and how and where products are formulated will help keep the green beauty community accountable on every level.
