Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

mikeyouse

Brandless is pursuing something down this line:

https://brandless.com/

View on HN

CBD is listed as the first item...

My trust in such a brand quickly goes to zero.

I don’t understand how that makes them untrustworthy

What is CBD?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol

Brandless makes no sense to me. They mostly buy from China and their products are more expensive than they should be (their product descriptions don't offer any arguments why, at least). They claim to be health and environmentally-conscious but there's no relevant information to read on the product pages.

Take this random Brandless product: https://brandless.com/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner

Why on Earth would you buy it? How can you possibly tell that it's eco-friendly or not?

"At Brandless, we define clean beauty as beauty products that are made without questionable ingredients and only formulated with the minimum ingredients required for the product to function."

I looked at a lotion, which includes the ingredient "fragrance". This is automatically questionable because it doesn't tell you what the ingredient actually is. Moreover, it's a term that companies use instead of telling us what's actually in the product, including any number of potentially harmful ingredients. It is also patently not required for the product to function, so it's clearly against Brandless's stated aim.

Brandless looks to me like an Orwellian marketing gimmick: they claim to be brandless, yet they're actually trying to develop a brand.

I think they're trying to convey a sense of trust across all of the items they offer through their parent 'Brand' which is a bit ironic given the name. Ideally they only offer eco-friendly items and that relieves the consumers of the burden of making that choice for themselves. As noted on other Acacia products, it's a fast-growing renewable wood.

https://brandless.com/products/acacia-wood-cheese-board

I don’t understand how selling items manufactured in a country with the environmental regulatory environment of China can honestly be sold as eco-friendly.

China is improving, if only because a rising middle-class is demanding air that doesn't choke their lung in cities like Beijing or Shanghai. The US, on the other hand, is regressing.

There are many vectors to environmental health besides the PM2.5 and PM10 levels. Chinese industry dumps straight into the rivers and onto the ground. Among many other environmental shortcomings relative to western industry. They also have no/toothless Occupational Safety,a separate but still reasonable concern.

Why wouldn't you buy it? It's a $4 kitchen spoon. What could you possibly want to know?

Edit: A bit of poking around suggests that Acacia is a fairly sustainable source of wood, so I would guess that's the thing that makes it eco-friendly. Some of their other acacia products do mention this, but the spoon doesn't for some reason.

I was going to say, that's a pretty nice looking spoon for $4.

Weird that "/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner" doesn't seem to involve stainless steel at all.

The care instructions still mention that the handle is stainless steel. I suspect they’ve revised the design without creating a new SKU.

I do wonder why they felt the need to add metal at all though; I’ve never felt that a plain wooden spoon was lacking anything and having a heat-conductive material in a hot pot seems like a good way to get a burn. The description just says it’s a “nice accent.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com