The Story of Stuff Project

If you have trouble watching the video below, try watching it at http://video.kcts9.org/video/1560891823.  Thanks!

Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.

Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.

Excerpt of article written by Annie Leonard & Stacy Malkan for the Huffington Post

What a couple of weeks it’s been! More than 200,000 of you have watched the Story of Cosmetics since its launch July 21, and we’ve received an outpouring of support — from cancer survivors, salon workers who’ve been harmed by chemical exposures on the job, green business owners and people around the world who are thanking us for raising the debate about toxic chemicals in the shampoos, deodorants and lotions we rub on our bodies every day.

The introduction of the Safe Cosmetics Act on the same day as the film premiere provides a vehicle to organize this energy into action. There are real opportunities ahead to shift the $50 billion beauty industry in a safer, more sustainable direction‘

Surprise, surprise:  the big cosmetics companies aren’t such big fans of the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010—legislation introduced yesterday to more strictly regulate their business—or of our new movie. The Personal Care Products Council went so far as to issue a statement calling The Story of Cosmetics a “repugnant and absurd…shockumentary.” Whoa!

There’s a good reason the cosmetics industry doesn’t like all the attention it’s getting:  for years, they’ve been largely left alone to decide what’s safe to put in their products. You know, things like lead in lipstick. Neurotoxins in body spray. Carcinogens in baby wash.

Now that’s repugnant!

Yesterday, the industry front group released their own plan for “reforming” cosmetics industry regulation—basically a lame, watered-down version of the kinds of changes that would really help to make our products safer and healthier.

To learn more about the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, click here, or check out Stacy’s blog to learn more about the industry press conference.

Now is a critical time to really turn up the volume on personal care product safety and to demand that Congress forces cosmetics companies to get the neurotoxins and carcinogens out of our personal care products.

We got a great start yesterday:  thanks to you, more than 50,000 people have watched The Story of Cosmetics over the last 24 hours and thousands more have taken action to make sure we get these nasty toxics out of our products. Yay!

In the next week, we want at least 100,000 more people to watch the film and add their voices to the call to clean up the cosmetics industry.

Will you help us get there?

Just keep doing what you’re doing—posting the video on your Facebook or Twitter, forwarding it to friends, family and colleagues, writing about it on your blog, shouting the url from the rooftops!  It also really helps when you comment on blog posts that mention the film.

And of course, make sure that you visit the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website to sign a letter to your Member of Congress. Make your voice count!

Lead in Lipstick? Coal Tar in Shampoo? As New Bill Calls for Stricter Rules on Beauty Products, a Debate Between Campaign for Safe Cosmetics Founder and Cosmetics Industry Spokesperson

Do you know what’s in the personal care products that you use? Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced legislation Tuesday night that would toughen safety standards for beauty products and require regular government testing for hazardous ingredients. We host a debate between Stacy Malkan, founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, and John Bailey, chief scientist at the Personal Care Products Council and a spokesperson for the cosmetics industry

Skin Deep: Online Cosmetics Safety Database Rates 62,000+ Beauty Products

We speak with Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group and the creator of Skin Deep, an online cosmetics safety database. The database provides safety ratings for more than 62,000 products on the market and receives about one million hits per month.

Actress and Cancer Survivor Fran Drescher Speaks Out in Support of New Bill Seeking Stricter Cosmetics Rules

Actress and cancer survivor Fran Drescher is speaking out in support of the bill introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D–IL) that would toughen safety standards for beauty products. Drescher is best known for her role as Fran Fine on the long-running former sitcom The Nanny. She is also a cancer survivor and the founder of the group Cancer Schmancer.

By Margot Roosevelt:

“Annie Leonard used to spout jargon. She reveled in the sort of geek-speak that glazes your eyeballs.

Externalized costs, paradigm shifts, the precautionary principle, extended producer responsibility.

That was before she discovered cartoons.

Today the 45-year-old Berkeley activist is America’s pitchperson for a new style of environmental message. Out with boring PowerPoints and turgid reports; in with witty videos that explain complex issues in digestible terms…”

Click here to read the full story!

“Before she deployed a cutely animated Internet film to indict the American way of consumption, the environmental activist Annie Leonard had another weapon: her long, brown ponytail. She fastened it high and bouncy, like a cartoon coed. That, plus a crumpled list in her hand and a Valley Girl lilt, was apparently all she needed to get into the dumps, ports, and factories she was investigating on behalf of her then-employer, Greenpeace. Where were Los Angeles’ recyclable plastics ending up? Who was dismantling our toxics-laced computers? “I’m pledging into a sorority?” Leonard would say, “and I need to find these things for a scavenger hunt?” In a pre-9/11 world, the tactic nearly always worked. “They never thought this dumb girl could do them any harm,” she says…”

READ THE WHOLE STORY