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Peace in a Bottle

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Kaitlin Bruno
Topics: Agriculture, Conflict and War, Economic Development, Trade
Countries: Israel, Palestine, United States

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is getting an economic jolt from none other than Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps.

Dr. Bronner’s is an American company that has a 50-year tradition of environmentally and socially minded products. One of the company’s founding principles is that "constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with the workers and the Earth from which you made it!"

Following in that tradition, Dr. Bronner’s in 2005 started buying a majority of their olives from the Holy Land. Olive oil is the main ingredient in their magic soaps, and Dr. Bronner’s wanted to use its demand for olives to promote economic cooperation between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Their magic soaps are now made with a mixture of Palestinian and Israeli olive oil. Dr. Bronner’s gets 90 percent of their supply from the Palestinian Canaan Fair Trade cooperative. The other 10 percent comes from the Israeli women’s fair trade association Sindyanna and the Strauss family farm in Israel.

"Blending olive oil from Palestine and Israel is a symbolic but significant contribution to promoting the concept of coexistence and cooperation in this area," Dr. Gero Leson, director of special operations for Dr. Bronner's, says in the video above.

Dr. Bronner’s initiative might be relatively small in the greater scheme of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the project's ingenuity and potential has caught the attention of media such as American Public Media’s Marketplace.

While lots of companies have some sort of charitable arm or a mission that incorporates social responsibility, few are working in such a sensitive area and in such a deliberate manner to promote peace. Perhaps it's fitting for a company that has adopted this principle: "We are all brothers and sisters and we should take care of each other and spaceship earth!"

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