With the launch of our new organic cotton dish towels and bamboo dish brush, many people are asking why these newest additions to our product line are manufactured in the People’s Republic of China. (And it just so happens that when we were upgrading our wipes, we address similar questions – read that post here.) We respect that you’re savvy enough to care (we’d ask, too!) and appreciate the opportunity to explain and educate you about our decision-making process and what it all means. So, let’s get honest!

1. We believe in providing our customers with the very best.  That’s why we carefully select premier manufacturing partners with pristine safety records, who not only have the capabilities to meticulously craft the exceptional products we create, but also share our vision of creating a better world. We’ve learned very quickly that having these very comprehensive, high standards means exploring within and beyond our borders to find best-in-class partners.

2. You may already know, but bamboo is an amazing natural resource that is one of the fastest growing grasses on Earth.  It’s actually been clocked growing as fast as 47.6 inches in a 24-hour period. It’s naturally anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. These features, along with the fact that it’s durable and biodegradable, made it an ideal choice for our dish brushes. There is an abundance of bamboo growing in China, as our bamboo is sourced on the managed farms/plantations in southern China.  And, while some U.S. farmers are exploring bamboo as an agricultural product domestically, it’s actually an invasive plant species for the U.S. and could potentially harm local ecosystems. So, getting it from its natural, native source made the most sense to us.

Here are some great bamboo facts:

• Bamboo is grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
• Bamboo requires no irrigation.
• Bamboo rarely needs replanting.
• Bamboo grows rapidly and can be harvested in 3-5 years.
• Bamboo produces 35% more oxygen that an equivalent stand of trees.
• Bamboo is an excellent soil erosion inhibitor.

And quick tip: To keep your bamboo products looking beautiful avoid prolonged soaking and try applying a cooking oil every once in awhile to renew its luster.

3. While bamboo is great for hard products like our dish brush, the exhaustive processing it has to undergo to become a textile can be energy and chemical intensive—that’s why we opted for organic cotton for our dish towels. And, while we could certainly be manufacturing those in the U.S., it just so happened that the facility we chose for making the bamboo brushes was already equipped to do the towels too. We decided to streamline things and have the whole suite of products made by the same team because efficiency equals reductions in environmental impacts AND lower prices for you.

Moreover, if we were to make this domestically, they would be far more expensive (for us both), and while we take our commitment to local jobs and carbon emissions very seriously, at the end of the day, we have an equal commitment to ensure that these types of eco-friendly, healthy products aren’t prohibitively expensive for you. In this case,  we decided that lower cost would mean greater access, and a larger overall environmental benefit from more people being able to purchase an organic towel versus one whose fibers were grown using pesticides. (Did you know conventionally grown cotton accounts for 25% of all agricultural pesticides used in the U.S.?)

4. As mentioned above, we ask A LOT from our partners. They, like us, have to go the extra mile when it comes to things like safety, sustainability, labor practices, and more. Our team on the ground in China is VERY hands-on to ensure every part of the process lives up to Honest standards. For example:

• They source the raw materials from farms close to the factories to minimize transportation.
• They personally meet with the farmers and discuss sustainability best practices.
• They recycle all scraps and waste materials.
• They treat the entire team like family (that’s the Honest way!).

Also, they have a comprehensive audit system in place to closely monitor quality control, fair labor practices, health and safety, compensation and work hours, environmental impacts, and more.

The final piece of the puzzle we’re working on is fulfilling our own commitment to sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint of importing goods that have to travel longer distances. To bridge that gap, we’re hard at work currently reviewing efforts for fully off-setting our impact…and we’ll keep you posted.

Is it the perfect system? No, but we don’t ever claim to be perfect — just to try our best to do things better. And, after weighing all of the attributes we are committed to (health, design, performance, affordability, and sustainability) and examining our options for manufacturing this product line, these partners and this process rose to the top as the obvious choice.

We don’t make any of these decisions lightly — our responsibility to you, your children, our children, and our children’s children is at the heart of everything we do and we take that very seriously.

Want to know anything else about these new products?  Please let us know!  And we promise to further demonstrate our commitment to deeply showcase our efforts and product innovation approach, and be utterly transparent.

Thank you for asking!