A Canadian's green dream in China
- By Deng Di
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 22, 2016
In South Liugezhuang Village of Tongzhou District in eastern Beijing lives Laowai (a Chinese nickname for foreigners) Darren Moore. He first came to China in 1996 on a business trip. Soon afterwards, he fell in love with a local girl called Zhang Ping who was an English interpreter. Two years later they married and settled in China. In 2004, the couple started their own business in rural Beijing. With a rented courtyard house, they built their own factory and founded their skincare brand Organic Earth (OE). The story of an organic kingdom thus began.
Green action furnishes green beliefs
Coming from a family with a history of skin ailments, Darren Moore had always been at risk of developing an allergy. Each summer he had to wear long trousers outdoors, which was quite a nuisance. When he came to Beijing, the dry weather affected him. His wife bought him various facial creams, body lotions and medicine, but to little effect. In order to solve this problem, Moore, who has a background in science, decided to make his own soap. After reading numerous articles, he bought some olive oil, baking soda and plant extracts to make soap in his own kitchen. Unexpectedly, the homemade soap worked well on his skin. Inspired by this success, he resigned the e-commerce company and started his own organic business - OE - with great passion.
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Darren Moore’s cold-crafted soap needs to be aired at room temperature for 30 days before becoming a finished product. |
OE promotes the philosophy of putting "green"first. The raw materials it uses are 100 percent natural, coming from plant extracts. A cold-crafted method is strictly followed in the whole production process. When the soaps are made, no high temperature or high pressure is ever imposed to change the properties of the ingredients, and hence no industrial waste is produced.
According to Moore, different from the soaps sold on the market, real cold-crafted soaps are not transparent and are light in color. They don't produce much foam when lathered, but are fine and smooth, giving users natural care and protection. What upsets Moore is that almost all skincare products on the market contain chemicals about which consumers are ignorant.
His wife Zhang Ping has accompanied him all the way over the past two decades. She most appreciates his focus on green issues and determination. When sourcing supplies for OE, her husband never makes do with inferior ingredients. Once they cooperated with a new foreign supplier and the organic soaps produced appeared in different hues. After some investigation, Moore discovered that the raw materials provided by this supplier contained chemical additives. Outraged, he asked his workers to destroy and dump the soaps. This decision cost him hundreds of thousands of yuan, leaving a huge financing gap, but Darren Moore was more determined than upset.
In the past few years, the couple's adherence to green products has helped OE out of many downturns. OE has already become the third biggest cold-crafted handmade soap manufacturer worldwide. Its consumers include members of royal families, celebrities, and ordinary people all over the world. During the APEC summit in 2014, Laureen Harper, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was attracted to OE by its good reputation. During the visit, Laureen tasted a kind of edible soap with a cacao flavor, and has been a loyal user ever since. Many big companies such as HP, Samsung China and Mercedes-Benz have ordered gift boxes of OE organic soap as presents to their employees.
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