When it comes to natural and organic beauty and personal care products, you usually get what you pay for. Yes, you heard that about commercial products, too, only to find out the face cleanser that took an entire weekend of tip money worked no better than the Clean & Clear you had been using since you were 14. Unfortunately, with natural products, price often reflects quality. The reason is pretty straightforward: it’s much cheaper to create synthetic ingredients in a lab than it is to source them from nature, let alone from a certified organic farm. Organic ingredients are expensive to sow, expensive to reap, and therefore expensive to buy. You can bet your precious, rapidly-depreciating 401k that more companies would be all over this natural/organic thing if it were cheaper to do.

That’s what makes it newsworthy when I stumble upon a rare exception to the Organic = Spendy rule of thumb, in the form of Max Green Alchemy. They’ve kept their line of skin and hair care simple, focusing on the basics like one shampoo, one conditioner, one hand cream, and so forth. The MGA conditioner was the first natural conditioner I found that actually made my hair soft and manageable. Everything else I had tried thus far, particularly in that price range, left my hair dry and dull (I know I totally sound like an infomercial; my apologies). My husband, whose skin reacts to everything, is equally in love with the line. Oh, and did I mention the packaging and aromas are gender neutral? How about that - you and your partner, regardless of gender, can share in the joys of Max Green Alchemy together!!

The creators of MGA also keep careful watch over their ingredients to make sure nothing is synthetic, no quality is compromised, and no animals are ever tested anywhere along the manufacturing process. I was fortunate enough to get a bit of time on the phone with one of the co-founders, Wil Baker, to learn how they went about creating what I think is easily one of best lines of natural, affordable skin and hair care. Here is an exerpt:

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As happy as I am to see all of these green youngsters on the block, it does my heart a lot of good to see green businesses that were started five or ten years ago, when green was not so hip, get a big boost from all of media attention now turned on all things green.

One example is Pharmacopia which was started in 1999. When the hot thing in entrpreneurism was launching a dot-com, Lisa Levin was quietly blending her own lotions and soaps from essential oils and organic ingredients. Lisa first gained a significant market presence for Pharmacopia products in natural products shops, with the Company eventually getting distribution in Whole Foods and other larger natural food stores.

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