The Purest Salt on Earth?

I always read the label. When I shop for groceries, I'm the person standing in the aisle picking up item after item and turning them over to read the ingredients and examine the label.

The other day my husband and I were on our way out of town for the weekend, and we stopped by our food coop to pick up some essentials: black beans, eggs, spinach, orange juice, olive oil, and salt. I love good salt because I love to cook and bad industrial salt ruins great ingredients.

I grabbed a brand that I hadn't seen before: HimalaSalt "Primordial Himalayan Sea Salt" which looked like the best option, and after having tried in on several different dishes, I can tell you that it is tasty.

During breakfast my husband picked up the cylindrical shaker and asked, "how can this be 'The Purest Salt on Earth'? What do they mean by pure? Isn't good salt supposed to be impure?"  Like many green consumers, Ben has become pretty jaded. The label claimed its salt was "sourced deep from within the remote Himalayas," meaning that it is free of industrial impurities, "unlike table salt or sea salt from our polluted oceans." Ok, he could accept that.

But then we started to count the other eco-claims made on HimalaSalt's brown paper label, and saw that there were no less than twelve! The others were: GF, K, P, Ethically Sourced, Artisan Harvested, Powered by 100% Renewable Energy, Sustainable Sourcing, All Natural, No Additives, Green Tags, and Green-e Certified.

To Ben, this seemed like overkill, and his greenwashing detector went off. He asked, "isn't this company just waiting for a service like PosiPair, so that they can prove themselves to skeptical consumers like me? How do I know their salt isn't mined by children working salt mines in occupied Tibet?"

Some of Himasalt's eco-labels I recognized from PosiPair's directory, but some of the company's claims I'd never encountered before. I decided to do some digging online. I started with what I considered to be the most uncommon claim, "Sustainable Sourcing".

I went to their website, http://himalasalt.com/, and found four more eco-labels - Non-GMO Project Verified, Organic Trade Association Member, USDA Organic.  Then, when I clicked on the "About Sustainable Sourcing" link I found out that the label refers to founder Melissa Kushi's entire approach to conducting business. "Melissa's mission to produce exquisitely pure, natural products without compromising the future has resulted in "business as a force for change." Sustainable Sourcing™ offers ethically sourced, artisan harvested natural products from the world's most remote, pristine lands."

So it turns out that some of HimaSalt's claims are just that -- claims. But it also is clear that they've invested heavily in backing those claims up. I wonder how many consumers see the company's packaging and have the same reaction my husband did. I wonder how many will take the time to look up the company's website, as I did. And I look forward to the coming day when thousands of companies like HimalaSalt discover that PosiPair can help them show their consumers the validity of their green claims.  

~ by Sarah Manski for PosiPlanet, the blog of the founders of PosiPair.com