With the ever-pressing concern that our world is increasingly becoming littered with plastic and other pollutants, we yearn for a healthier, sustainable way of living.
Without compromising on quality and efficacy, homegrown British brand Beauty Kitchen offers a natural, eco-beauty product range that’s built with high ethics. We got to interview the company’s co-founder, qualified chemist and sustainable beauty pioneer, Jo Chidley to learn more.
LM: What inspired you to set up the Beauty Kitchen? Tell us your story.
Beauty Kitchen was inspired by my own personal search for sustainable products. I was shocked to find that some products were not as ‘natural’ as they first appeared, and those that were natural, were either ineffective, expensive or just plain boring! So, I enlisted the support of industry experts and created Beauty Kitchen – with the sole aim of making the most sustainable beauty products in the world. My overall goal is to inspire more and more people to buy sustainable products, not because they think they should, but because they really work.
LM: What are the hero natural ingredients in your range and what are the benefits?
Plankton, Microalgae and Abyssinian oil – these are the most carbon neutral, sustainable, effective ingredients in the world. I’m always searching for new, effective, 100% sustainable ingredients, and the plankton microalgae are as magical as the tiny seahorses that eat it. Microalgae are the lungs of the earth (producing 50% of the oxygen that we breath) and it also boasts the unique ability to protect itself from environmental stresses, making it the perfect skincare ingredient. Seahorse plankton originated from my passion for seaweed harvesting – I’ll often go out either in a canoe or my wellies! In deeper water, you get very different seaweeds with very different properties when consumed as food or used in beauty products.
At Beauty Kitchen, we look to Cradle to Cradle principles and B Corp standards to make our decisions about everything from the business that we run, to the people in our team, to the ingredients that we use. We have recently launched the Return. Refill. Repeat program – a bottle washing facility that once customers have finished the product, they can send the empties back to us and we will wash them, refill them and reuse them. This fulfils a huge dream for Beauty Kitchen.
Reusing is even better than recycling because it a) saves energy by removing the processes needed to recycle and b) minimises waste before it happens. The success of reusing sits with a shift in what we – as a society – do with what would usually end up in landfill. It’s just about being creative to increase the lifespan of what already exists. For me, this program (and everything we do) is about taking care of the sustainability side of things for our customers, so they feel good about the choices they make. It takes the concept of sustainable beauty to a whole new level and allows beauty consumers to take positive steps to adopting a zero-waste beauty regimen.
In addition, we’ve switched our packaging to glass aluminum – which makes it really easy to wash and reuse. In fact, we’ve redesigned every single element of our new packaging with reusability in mind – such as no glue on our lids which means these can be washed and reused too. This will minimise waste and close the loop on beauty packaging. Ever since the beginning of Beauty Kitchen, we’ve always looked for more sustainable solutions for what we put in our products and then what we put those products in to.
So far, we’ve worked with rock paper labels (no trees or water needed to produce them!), minimised packaging and pre-cycled packaging – where we make use of other brand’s unwanted bottles, jars and even fabric, that would otherwise go to landfill.
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