Product Creation is a Moral Act

“Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness!” Father Maple, Moby Dick “I hate that man like the gates of hell who says one thing and hides another thing in his heart!” - Achillês railing at Agamemnon, The Iliad “Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.” - Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

Drew’s Honeybees cares to realize better outcomes. We care to align our values and actions. We eagerly invite others to use our tube and all the particulars–point of sale packaging, means of fill manufacture, shrink wraps, expertise and anything else. We give away our most valuable thing. We mean it when we say we’ll broaden the good for the benefit of all. 🤷

People say I’m crazy. People want an explanation. This is that explanation.

Product creation is a moral act. Predictable outcomes follow product creation, use, and disposal. These outcomes affect people. They can be good, bad, mixed, and anywhere in between. In this way, product creation is the treatment of other people, scaled. Any one piece of packaging is small, sure. But packaging is used millions, billions of times. A small thing multiplied by 100 million is no longer a small thing. Packaging has a geological footprint. It’s everywhere. Harmful compounds from packaging are in your blood, brain, and womb. That was never the deal. Had it been the deal we would have rioted.

If product creation is a moral act then there are moral deliberations. How do you consider others? Do you cultivate empathy or hide from it? What is the life cycle of your materials? Do you hide the worst aspects of your products? Are you honest about recyclability? Do you search for your personal connection to what is wrong? If so, do you ready your body, mind, and mettle to right the wrong?

Plastic recycling is designed to lull you with a performative lie. In 2015, our best year on record, we recycled 9% of plastic once. Investigations revealed we exported much of that 9% to poor countries for “recycling.” Plastic recycling was never designed to work. Plastic is made from oil. If plastic recycling worked, Big Oil wouldn't be keen–we’d need a little more. But we don’t recycle plastic in meaningful amounts. Big Oil sees growing demand. Lord knows Big Oil loves a Big Lie.

If product creation is a moral act with moral deliberations then there are morally good outcomes, morally bad outcomes and everything in between. Let’s look at a bad, but illustrative, example that the packaging industry repeats like it has a love of farce.

Plastisol is a spongy polyvinyl chloride (PVC) compound. In packaging it commonly forms a seal between two hard surfaces, like a cap and a jar.

Plastisol gives off volatile organic gasses^[1] harmful to your health. By law, manufacturers are responsible for putting a Prop 65 warning on products containing PVC^[2] sold in California. Uncle Sam may not be far behind.^[3] Given the risk, why use PVC where it touches food and gives off harmful gasses into a contained space, like a jar of honey? There are other ways to create a seal, like fit. A controlled crystallization process for a velvety honey increases desirability and makes the honey a soft, non-leaking solid. We don’t use a compounding human harm to hold your food.^[4] I’m surprised I have to say this.

The first honey company to go plastisol-free is–no joke–led by “the dumb beekeeper.” Even more damning for our competitors, it’s a good description. What’s their excuse?

If you want to smell PVC gases, find a jar with a spongy seal. Wash the lid and jar. Allow them to dry. Secure the lid on the jar. After a day or two open the lid and smell the air in the jar. Does it smell foul?

There are newer compounds to replace PVC-derived plastisol. Looking upon the packaging industry's past conduct, I do not trust them.

Bisphenols are a class of synthetic petrochemical compounds used to give plastics certain characteristics. Around 2007, studies began linking Bisphenol A (BPA)^[5] to interference in human hormones. Interference in hormones leads to increased risk of reproductive harm, metabolic disease and cancer. Because of awakening customer wariness, companies made a big hullabaloo about removing BPA from their products (BPA Free!). But many simply swapped in Bisphenol S (BPS). They swapped out a known danger for a likely dangerous but technically unknown. And lo! A compound from the same class of compounds has similar risks!^[6] Who coulda seen that one coming? This happens again and again and again and again. When science identifies a harm, industry swaps in an unknown. It’s a game of musical chairs, except the person who doesn’t get a chair gets a chronic illness.

I do not know why we so routinely hide from the reality of moral deliberations, acts, and consequences. In business, we have dim absolving sayings and whinings, “it’s just business.” Or “this is how we do it.” Or, “it’d be hard.” My business is a big part of my acts while I’m blessed to be on this earth. I refuse to pretend business is an amoral space, especially when amorality is used to justify lack of good innovation.

You can pretend to hide behind not knowing, but the ruse is up. A manufacturer may claim ignorance of plastic and plasticizer harm. But ignorance at this juncture is either willful or really dim. How someone navigates these decisions, how they wrestle with painful realities, says much about them. What they will try to get away with. How deeply they are able to deceive themselves and their capacity to care. How they’ll put their profit over the wellbeing of others. It also says a good deal about the capacity to dream and their mettle to posse up and create the dream.

The failings I allege are my own. Our first lip balms were plastic. That is my failing. Our second tubes were going to be PFAS-cardboard. But, praise be, I decided I’d rather fail than pass the predictable harm of PFAS to anyone. Acknowledging my personal connection to what is wrong was the first step in remedy.

Some say I’m naive. This is true, but they miss the point. I don’t expect to greatly alter the ecological burden of packaging, much less the blithe acceptance of harm unto others common in business. I don’t make decisions based upon such probabilities. I feel a responsibility, a moral imperative, to work toward things that are good and just. You may call this simple, dumb, naive, or stupid. You’ll find more agreement here than you might guess. To borrow from the great and gone Vaclav Havel, “There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.” Or, if Atticus Finch is more your speed, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” This is why we call it “the good fight.” Good people take it up in defiance of the likely outcome.

The convention in packaging does not serve us. It treads upon generations to follow.

Some people say, “why care?” We screwed the pooch long ago. I’ll give you four reasons-

Why are we so slow to act and deliver good, healthier innovation? Our problem isn’t that we don’t know. Our problem is not that innovation is impossible. Our problem is not that we lack the money/ability/evidence to act. Our problem is that we lack the courage to look at a problem and not flinch. Our problem is that we lack the moral mettle to stop problems with us. We lack the character to align our views and our actions. Our problem is we lack a culture of looking at an intractable problem, getting sharkish, and solving it. Our problem is that “do no harm” is just a quaint ethic of no real application. It may seem odd to apply moral considerations to consumer goods and their packaging, but it is fitting given the known, predictable, and growing harms of classes of compounds, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, plastic styrenes, bisphenols, and phthalates that are shamefully common in consumer goods.

[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Volatile organic compounds' impact on indoor air quality. EPA. https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/volatile-organic-compounds-impact-indoor-air-quality

[2] Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. (n.d.). Vinyl chloride. California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/vinyl-chloride

[3] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2024, April 16). EPA begins process to prioritize five chemicals for risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-begins-process-prioritize-five-chemicals-risk-evaluation-under-toxic-substances

[4] Rochman, C. M., Browne, M. A., Halpern, B. S., Hentschel, B. T., Hoh, E., Karapanagioti, H. K., Rios-Mendoza, L. M., Takada, H., Teh, S., & Thompson, R. C. (2013). Classify plastic waste as hazardous. Nature, 494(7436), 169–171. https://doi.org/10.1038/494169a

[5] Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. (n.d.). Bisphenol A (BPA). California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/bisphenol-bpa

[6] Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. (n.d.). Bisphenol S (BPS). California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/bisphenol-s-bps