Before presenting the Emeral Awards for Best Natural Shampoo, Conditioner, and Hair Treatment tomorrow, I would like to deliver a brief public service announcement.

As you may have noticed, few of the products mentioned in the Emerald Awards series have also won best of green awards in the major newsstand magazines. Those products are primarily sold at Sephora and carry this retailer’s own “natural seal.” Go to the website, and they will acknowledge that no universal standard exists, leading them to create their own seal because “we felt we had to take the initiative to define what natural means in terms of our environment. What is natural beauty? We have defined the term as it relates to Sephora, and products must live up to that definition to be considered natural.”

This definition of natural is, at best, a broad one. In fact, it earned Sephora the honor of being named one of the four “biggest ‘green marketing’ scams” by TerraChoice, the group behind sinsofgreenwashing.org. Beyond that, however, I found much greater concerns than their lax standards.

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