Aug 17, 2007

Shades of GreenBy Chris PenttilaEntrepreneur.com

Joshua Onysko is the definition of a green entrepreneur. His organic body-care company, Pangea Organics, makes all-natural soaps and lotions with ingredients such as almond oil, beeswax and sweet basil. The company’s 10,000-square-foot Boulder, Colorado, facility is 100 percent wind-powered, and an onsite 2,500-square-foot organic garden provides lunch for Pangea’s 22 employees. “It feeds our entire staff seven months out of the year,” says Onysko, 30. Pangea projects sales of $2.7 million in 2007.

The mainstreaming of organic products, however, has brought big companies and retailers into Pangea’s niche, where federal standards require that raw materials be certified as organic, but leave how those materials are used wide open to interpretation. “Body care has no governance at all,” says Onysko. “If you can spell organic, you can put it on your label.”

Now suspicious consumers are questioning the integrity of all organic products, including Pangea’s. Onysko visited a blog where a poster was upset that Pangea’s lotions lacked a specific seal to show that no animal testing was performed. He posted a reply to reassure readers that the company eschews animal testing. “People think that Pangea is an enormous corporation,” he says. “We spend a lot of time explaining to people via the internet and the media who we are and why we do what we do.”

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