Here's to Our Environment
It looks after us! It has done this for time immemorial. Let's return the favour :D
[looking for our environmental policy? please look here]
I'm sure nobody here would think otherwise, so I'm happy that we can all agree on this. We have been careful with what we do for a long time, long before we started making eco-friendly skincare.
When you use any of our products, you can be sure of the following:
- all ingredients are chosen for a clear purpose. We never like 'the kitchen sink' as an ingredient. We are also not a fan of using fancy, trendy ingredients that have a lot of buzz but don't deliver anything special. We've chosen something because we know it works, has a low environmental impact and brings value for money to you, your skin, and therefore to us.
- we choose ingredients that have a reasonable shelf life. This means that we can stick to simple, skin friendly, natural preservatives. A favourite quote, that has inspired us for a long time, reads: "toxins: the less you put in, the more you get out". We think it's more important than anything else that we avoid giving you any ingredients that can be harmful.
- your items come in packaging that have the lowest possible environmental impact. And we will continue to make sure this is the case, or we will make the change. Our packaging is either reusable, biodegradabe or recyclable. Without compromise.
We would kindly ask that you familiarise yourself with good recycling practices. When you recycle a body butter or salve tin, or a glass jar, it is really important that you wipe this clean.
The most environmentally friendly way to do this (apart from using every last bit) is to simply use a small piece of paper towel and dispose of this in the normal bin.If you have compostable towels, they can be added to home composting.
If you use water and soap, this means the oils in your butter have to be removed from the water. Often this is done using harsh chemicals.
Our biodegradable pouches should not be added to paper recycling. They are made with plant based materials that are not suitable to be pulped. They should be composted at home or simply added to regular waste to decompose.
Our cardboard boxes, paper void-fillers and kraft crinkle, as well as the paper we wrap around our soaps can all be recycled as normal with paper recycling.
We decided to make 'Things of Nature' kind of as a result of seeing 'organic' and 'natural' skincare that didn't seem to care much about packaging or ingredient-miles. Sometimes these didn't even seem to care about the skin they were supposed to be caring for. We were part astonished, part disappointed, but mostly we were determined.
We started with looking, and looking.... and looking some more. So many things to consider. It was like a minefield at first.
We wanted to make sure our ingredients were not only really good for your skin, they had to be sustainable too! And if they were not local, these ingredients had to have a function that could not be replaced with something more local.
The more we researched, the more we started to see the similarities between different oils and butters. Oils and butters are all a mix of triglycerides, and mostly they are the same ones. Some have more of one and less of another, but most of them really are, in essence, very similar. And, to get really technical, there is not really a difference between butters and oils.
However, there are a couple that do have outstanding qualities that make them different from the others, qualities that can have impressive benefits and effects on skin that needs some help. The most obvious ones are shea butter, sunflower oil and jojoba oil, which is actually really a wax (oh my...).
We found that a large number of beneficial herbs, flowers and botanicals that can have incredible benefits for skin and hair, grow relatively or even very local, making them obvious choices for us.
After we agreed on which would be our basic ingredients, we started looking at our packaging. This was certainly not straight forward. Most options had both benefits and drawbacks.
- how durable is it?
- is it recyclable? biodegradable? compostable?
- if it's not recycled correctly, what happens?
- where is it made?
- how are the raw materials produced?
One of the most recyclable products is glass. It can be recycled forever, without any loss of usefulness. The big drawback is breakage and weight. The benefits of the recycling qualities are in stark contrast to its durability and the extra weight in shipping.
The next most recycled material that can be used to store creams is aluminium. It is a ubiquitous metal, that can be recycled almost without limits, and more importantly, that takes less energy to recycle than to produce from 'virgin' sources. Although it dents quite easily, this is really just a cosmetic issue and doesn't affect the contents at all.
There are other types of metal tins as well. What make these less attractive for us are the source, which is not always easy to determine, as well as the difficulties with recycling.
Although most of them can be recycled, the majority is made up of alloys that need to be seperated to be reused. They are often recycled in a way that will force the material to be 'downgraded' and therefore not really recycled in a meaningful way.