Photo courtesy of Gisela Sejpal
By Gisela Sejpal
In this time of economic decline, the movement toward sustainable living is resonating all over Hawaii. Building a local economy is an endeavor many people are striving for with obvious success; more and more businesses are buying their products from local vendors, and individuals are taking advantage of Hawaii’s many natural resources. The Puna district on the Big Island is a prime example; local farmer’s markets abound, and residents are not only selling and purchasing, but trading goods and services as well. This grassroots approach is vital to keeping a local economy alive.
Forty-six year old Suzanne Heinzelman, founder and owner of Breeze’s Botanicals, has been selling and trading her homemade body butters at the Puna markets for the past year. As a child growing up in the industrial city of Detroit, Michigan, Suzanne was taught that the key to success and happiness was solely attained by getting a job with a good company that provided good benefits. So she did just that, working for corporations in the field of business technology. Eventually she realized that what she had been taught to believe was not fulfilling her idea of success. “I knew ever since my first management job that this was not what I wanted to do with my whole life. It just didn’t resonate with my spirit…I didn’t know what my passion was, but I knew it didn’t exist in this corporate environment.”
Suzanne Heinzelman
In 2001, Suzanne began to retreat from her profession, working as a consultant part time. With a more flexible schedule, she travelled to the rural community of Fondwa in Haiti, where she studied sustainable development. This led to her interest in permaculture, and went on to receive certification in permaculture design at The Farm, an Eco-Village in Summertown, Tennessee. Suzanne cites this experience as her biggest influence: “I witnessed people living outdoors, generating their own electricity, catching their own water, composting, gardening. I realized that we have a choice, that there were other ways to live.” She studied holistic nutrition, herbalism, aromatherapy and Ayurveda, an ancient Indian holistic approach to healing.
Suzanne moved to the Big Island in 2002, bought some land, and worked on organic farms. This provided the knowledge she needed to grow plants in a tropical climate, and she began to cultivate her land. Initially, she wanted to grow herbs and plants and supply to local stores, markets, and restaurants. She also contemplated nutritional counseling and aromatherapy. “I was working the land, working my spirit, and I had a quest to create a ‘right livelihood’. I still wasn’t sure where all of this was taking me, but I knew I was manifesting the life that I wanted for myself and my community.”
A year ago, Suzanne’s vision became fully realized in the form of a homemade sunscreen. She knew it was important to protect her skin, but she did not want to use products with harsh chemical ingredients. Using herbs she had grown on her land (lemongrass and lavender) along with natural sun protectants such as sesame oil, raw honey and Vitamin E, she created an all-natural sunscreen that she shared with friends. They loved it, and encouraged her to produce more. Suzanne began selling her Sun Butter at her local market. “People loved it! The market was growing, and word got out, and it just kept going and going…I realized I had created a business, but it was important to me that I not retreat to my business way of thinking. I made it my mission to create a beautiful, vibrant product that makes people feel good when they put it on, instead of solely thinking about profit. I wanted to grow a business from my heart, not my head.”
Suzanne has done just that, and today she makes seven varieties of body butters: Amber Blend, Ginger Blend, Floral Bilss, Mint Blend, Lotus Blend, and, of course, the Sun Butter. All the butters share a base of virgin coconut oil, infused by the sun with herbs or flowers that are organically grown on the volcanic soil on Suzanne’s land, raw beeswax harvested from Big Island honey farms, and raw mango, shea or cocoa butter. Benzoin (a resin made from the root of the Styrax plant) is used as a natural preservative. The process can take 30-60 days from harvest to the finished product. The butters come in re-usable glass jars, and the labels are hand-painted by Suzanne. She pays attention to the natural cycles of the seasons when planting, and tries to harvest when the plants are at their most fragrant.
From her exposure at the market, shop owners and massage therapists started coming to her wanting to carry her product. Word travelled all the way to the Tao Healing Arts Center in Santa Monica. Despite generating this kind of buzz, Suzanne has no plans to scale up indefinitely. “The bees will only produce so much beeswax, the plants only have so much land to grow on. Mass production would mean having to use substitutes, and I am not willing to compromise the integrity of my product. This keeps it at what I call a ‘human scale’. It is up to us at the grassroots level to keep our community self-sustained; we don’t need to generate millions. If we could just generate thousands and keep this economic flow within the community instead of out, everyone could live a very good quality of life.”
Breeze’s Botanicals is proof that a local business doesn’t have to follow the traditional business model. A business that has a direct relationship with its consumers and its community. A business, as Suzanne puts it, “grown from the heart.”
Find Breeze’s Botanicals sold at the Pahoa and Seaview farmer’s markets, at Island Naturals, or at Jeff Hunt Surfboards.
Fore more information, email breezesbotanicals@gmail.com.
Gisela Sejpal is a 30-year-old freelance writer and former Hawaii resident currently living in Portland, Oregon. She hopes to contribute to the growth of local economies by writing about sustainable practices and the inspiring people who pioneer change.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Aloha~ I am Suzanne’s good friend and her west coast contact for her body butter at the Tao Healing Arts Center. I recently moved to LA, but have been a big island resident involved in permaculture the past five years in puna. My role with Suzanne is to make her lovely butters available to those folks on the west coast who may have had a taste of the lusciousness of the big island, or for those who want to experience a taste of the aina from afar..
Every morning I feel like pele’s magic is on my skin when I put my favorite one, the mint lavendar, on my brow, cheeks, and shoulders..!!
I included my personal webiste, I make bamboo flutes, and when I was on island, I was able to harvest and cure local bamboos..
I would love to list my email and phone number as a contact: jonathanwolf11@gmail.com
310-754-0444
Many mahalos from afar, missing kehena, pele, and hamakua.. =)
Jonathan