How to make your Christmas just that little bit greener…

Much of my time as the company’s environmental advisor is spent researching and implementing new ideas for the company to lessen the impact we have on our environment. It’s progress, not perfection, but every new, more environmentally friendly thing we do helps to make a difference.

This Christmas for example, I have worked closely with our design team to ensure that our beautiful and award winning Christmas boxes are not only totally fabulous and a delight to open, but are also a little kinder to our world. We made the boxes slightly smaller, so that less packaging is needed inside to protect the products, plus they’re made completely from environmentally friendly 100% recycled board and the Sea Holly design is printed on to paper from a sustainable, FSC accredited source and has a biodegradable matt laminate finish.

I’ve also shared some tips on how you can reuse or recycle any of our Christmas packaging on our website (UK, US, Ireland).

Whilst Christmas is a time when we traditionally consume more than at any other time of year, celebrating doesn’t have to mean we should forget about the extra waste we generate. There are some positive actions we can all take to make the season that little bit greener without getting in the way of the Christmas spirit:

Before Christmas…

Christmas cards
Up to 1 billion Christmas cards could end up in bins across the UK this Christmas (estimate from www.wasteonline.org.uk).

What can we do?
Why not email your Christmas wishes to some of your friends and family? Cancer Research UK have a great festive selection of e-cards and you can donate the money that you would have spent on cards to a good cause! (www.sendandgive.org)

Christmas wrapping paper
Over Christmas, enough wrapping paper will be used to cover an area larger than Guernsey (estimate from www.wasteonline.org.uk). However, wrapping presents is part of the festive ritual and admittedly, it wouldn't be as much fun if you could see what you'd got as soon as you looked under the tree.

What can we do?
Why not use more gift bags and boxes, they look fantastic and can easily be reused. 100% recycled Christmas paper is a great idea too (www.guardianecostore.co.uk). Finally, try to reuse or recycle the Christmas paper you receive this year. To find out how visit: www.recyclenow.com

After Christmas…

Christmas cards
In the 12 years that the Woodland recycling scheme has been running, 600 million cards have been recycled. This has enabled the Woodland Trust to plant 141,000 trees, save 12,000 tonnes of paper from landfill and stop 16,000 tonnes of CO2 from going into the atmosphere – the equivalent to taking more than 5,000 cars off the road for a year. So it a really worthwhile thing to do!

What can we do?
Try to recycle all your cards. A great idea is to use some of your favourite cards to create unique gift tags for next year. You can also take your cards to one of the Woodland Trust collection sites, who will recycle the cards to help raise money to plant new trees (www.woodland-trust.org.uk/cards).

Wasted food
Did you know? Almost a third of food bought at Christmas is wasted by the average family (Friends of the Earth – www.foe.co.uk).

What can we do?
Think carefully this Christmas about what food you will need over the festive season. Why not take a list with you when you go shopping? You are less likely to be tempted to add things you don’t really need into your basket. (This saves money too!)

I’d also recommend popping a Compost Crock onto your Christmas list. These decorative ceramic crocks are the smart new way to collect kitchen scraps for the compost heap and are custom-made for kitchen waste destined for your compost bin (we use them here in our office kitchen!) Find out more from www.naturalcollection.com. If you would like further information on composting visit www.recyclenow.com.

I hope you find these tips useful. If you have any other ideas for making Christmas a little bit ‘greener’, why not share them on this blog – I’m always looking for new ideas.

Green Beauty

Phew! No sooner had we arrived back from our exhilarating West Coast launch in LA then it was straight off to do three special beauty evening shows on QVC. Just in time for this I received a review copy of the new, much anticipated Green Beauty Bible  (available on our UK website), out today. Written by top beauty duo Sarah Stacey and Jo Fairley, this eco-edition of the best-selling Beauty Bible series records the feedback of over 1000 individual testers to uncover which of the ‘more natural’ and ‘eco’ brands score the highest. Not only covering ranges that include natural ingredients in their formulations (like us), but also those that try to reduce their carbon footprint, minimise packaging, print with ‘green’ inks, have a genuine commitment to cruelty-free and all the rest. You know, when Kim and I started putting our range together 13 years ago, we didn’t set out to be a ‘natural’ brand – we set out to be the ‘best’ brand. This included a heavy dose of potent plant ingredients, a strong commitment to cruelty-free, minimum fuss-free packaging etc. long before it was seen as fashionable and certainly before the words ‘green,’ ‘eco’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ had entered the beauty dictionary. Being a ‘greener’ beauty brand is only one part of what makes us tick, which also includes a genuine commitment to outstanding customer service, research into product safety and efficacy and always aiming to be an affordable luxury.

As a brand, we fared so well in the original Beauty Bible that I did wonder quite how we would compete now with many of the newer ranges to hit the shelves in recent years. After all, 13 years on and we still stick to our founding principles and our formulations are pretty much the same as they were when launched. So you can imagine the delight/relief to discover our multi-tasking Cleanse & Polish is still top of the Cleansers section (more than 80 were trialled). With 9.5 out of a possible 10, C&P as we affectionately call it, remains the number 1 highest scoring product of all time! WOW!  It was also rated one of the book’s ‘Star Buys’ because of its price and the fact that it lasts for ages.

Alongside the tester’s favourites of Cleanse & Polish and Skin Repair (which came tops again in Neck Creams) the book includes many of our as-yet unsung ‘heroines’; those Cinderella products that sometimes get overlooked yet give amazing, reliable results as well. Little gems such as Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion (UK , US), Intensive Nourishing Treatment Mask, Energising Body Scrub and Energising Hip and Thigh Gel have all received their first ever awards. Eyebright is also a ‘star buy’ in the Treats for Tired and Puffy Eyes category as well as gaining 2nd place in the Eye Make-up Removers section, and really is fantastic for me at this time of year as I battle the annual onslaught of pollen-polluted eyes. One tester raved that it’s “a fab pick-me-up for mornings when your eyes are really sore and tired, also helped with moisturising dry under-eyes”. We receive good feedback from other hayfever sufferers who swear by it for reducing itchiness too. At this time of year, I always keep one in the fridge and a mini in my make-up bag for itchy-eye emergencies. 

Our moisture mask, Intensive Nourishing Treatment, is another of my seasonal essentials as it works wonders for rehydrating and restoring skin that’s feeling dry and tight after too much travelling, sun or simply over doing it…  With GLA-rich borage oil – one of my favourite natural oils which works both topically and internally to help keep the complexion supple and strong – plus moisturising shea butter and soothing St John’s wort. A thick layer of this replenishing cream is deeply nourishing and calming – a comfort blanket for poorly skins. If you’re looking for visibly velvety skin, one tester said her “skin felt like a soft, ripe peach”… and that’s good enough for me too.

With summer holidays and the promise of more warm weather approaching, I’m definitely beginning to become more conscious of my legs and arms once hemlines (and sleeves) start reducing. That’s why it’s such great news that two of our body energisers made the headlines too. Ideal for sloughing away dull, dingy and dry skin cells our invigorating Energising Body Scrub leaves skin smooth -and perfectly prepped for a spritz of golden self-tan. Massaged in afterwards, its partner Energising Hip and Thigh Gel – loaded with circulation-boosting botanicals such as ginkgo biloba, ivy, horse chestnut and butcher’s broom – really can help improve the tone and appearance of your skin. I’m also a big fan of dry skin body brushing, having first written about it in a book I wrote on cellulite nearly twenty years ago. I find the most effective way to incorporate this into my beauty routine is to use a natural bristle brush before I jump into the shower, always working upwards towards my heart with long, sweeping movements. Then I revitalise, slough and smooth with my Energising body trio. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find there’s nothing like it for helping to get mind and body going on those far-too-early mornings.

The whole area of ‘green’ beauty has grown and developed significantly over the last decade, with a panoply of new products and ranges to choose from, ranging in eco-shade from eau-de-nil to bottle green. It’s a complex and frequently confusing area. I wouldn’t say I agree with every aspect of the greenest eco-warrior’s footpath, but I travel pretty much in the same direction. To this end, the Green Beauty Bible book is a very useful addition to my bookshelves and well worth a read.

With all things botanical as the theme, I was able to spend a rare few minutes of tranquillity amongst the hustle and bustle of London’s King’s Road when I stopped inside our Duke of York Square store earlier today. As part of the ‘Sloane In Bloom’ competition, run in homage to the nearby Chelsea Flower Show, shops in the Sloane Square area (of which we are one) are invited to transform themselves with a floral theme. Our inspiration came from a traditional English garden and so I caught a few moments outside on a weathered wooden bench and breathed in the sweet scent of early lavender and headily-scented climbing roses. Put together for us by the wonderfully talented Jane Packer, who Kim and I worked with twenty or so years ago – even before she had her first shop - it’s well worth a visit if you’re in town, as the whole area is bedecked in stunning spring flora. I finished the evening by giving a talk on some of our botanical ingredients to complement the surrounding theme, soon to be available as an audio download on our website. I hope you enjoy.

Green Solutions

My local council have a brilliant new recycling scheme to upgrade on their current dry recycling. As I live in London where recycling seems to be a bit trickier, they now offer three door-step options: dry recycling, composting (vegetable peelings, plate scrapings, garden cuttings etc) and that leaves you with hardly anything left for the third - land refuse, which is great. How are everyone else’s councils doing in making things greener? I was really pleased to see this and it’s so easy to do .

At work, we have many initiatives to make things greener – here are just some of them:

• We recycle all kinds of materials from cardboard to ink cartridges and even toilet roll inners! The ink cartridges are taken back by a local company called WBS, and a proportion of the money raised is sent to the Island's Hospice.
• We use environmentally-friendly cleaning products that are also approved by the BUAV (who approve products that are not tested on animals).
• We have a paper waste scheme where we re-use scrap paper for internal printing.
• Our Newsletters are printed on Revive 50% recycled paper using vegetable based inks.
• We have removed the use of plastic bottles, in favor of glasses / water coolers for our team.
• We use EcoFlo (biodegradable loose fill) in all our orders.
• We supply complimentary fair-trade tea & coffee etc for our team.
• We started a ‘Turn It Off Campaign’ a few years ago now, to help reduce our energy usage and, in turn, reduce our carbon footprint.
• On a larger scale, we were delighted to achieve the ISO14001 listing in April last year.
• We were also the winner of the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce Green Business Award.

But it doesn’t stop there – lots more to keep working towards. We always say progress, not perfection… watch this space for more news.

Echinacea Harvest

The recent flood warnings across the UK takes me back to the echinacea that we harvested this summer. Our Echinacea is being grown for us by James Lambe on his organic farm in Herefordshire which was right in the middle of the dreadful floods. We kept in close contact with James over the week leading up to the harvest to see how the Echinacea was faring and amazingly (and you can see by the photo in the newsletter) that this hardy perennial stood up to the lashing of rain that fell. The next problem was whether we would be able to get to the farm. James and his family had been stuck in traffic for 12 hours while trying to travel 10 miles back to the farm a couple of days before the harvest and they had been closely watching the normally small river that gently flows past their farm building as it rose and came very close to flooding their premises.

Part of my job is sourcing our botanical ingredients from across the world and over the years we have worked very hard to establish supplies from British farmers to support British agriculture and have traceability of our ingredients. I always thought that another plus side of this was that it made it easy for us to visit the crops as they are grown and harvested, not this July!!

This is part of the appeal of botanicals for me. Not only do they have the most amazing skin properties but they are never predictable!! I work very closely with our product development team and we often joke (and cry!) about how using botanicals does make our life more difficult, or challenging as we like to call it!! We could use synthetic versions of the same ingredients but Liz's research over the years has shown that the natural version really is best for our skin due to all the added benefits that they provide (as you will know from the amazing results we get from our products).

Echinacea harvest

To Hereford for a couple of days with our Ethno-botanist Anna Macleod to oversee this summer’s echinacea harvest and extraction process. We’ve been working with James and Emma Lambe at Castle Farm for several years now and one of Anna’s pet projects has been to set up a test-crop of Echinacea Purpurea for us to use in our range of Skin Repair moisturisers. British farmers are really up against the elements at the moment and we battled with the severe rain and local flooding just to get to the farm deep in the depths of the countryside. Fortunately we had a short window of sunshine, just enough to get in most of the flowering Echinacea crop (which is cut by hand, so quite labour intensive) and managed to take some lovely photos which will hopefully appear in our Autumn newsletter later this year. Once the Echinacea is cut it is laid onto racks in the drying room to allow the stems to dry out, ready for chopping. The stalks and flower heads are then macerated in water to make a strong herbal infusion. This then forms the basis of our echinacea extract, and at the end of the process James handed me some of the final liquid to bring back to our labs.

Anna and I also watched cucumber extract being made – a simple process of chopping lots of locally grown, organic cucumbers, tipping the pieces into a huge circular press and siphoning off the fresh green juice – it smelt (and tasted!) really delicious and I shall try and re-create this in my juicer at home with our surplus home-grown cucumbers this year. The juice should freeze well and can probably be made into tasty ice-cubes to subtly flavour water and fresh vegetable juices. I’ll have a go anyway – last year we had vast quantities of cucumbers as they all ripened at once. We sold lots in our village shop and we gave basketfuls to friends, but there is only so much cucumber soup you can make… and I discovered that, unfortunately, it doesn’t freeze well. Still, our piglets hugely enjoyed crunching up the remainder - they may not be so lucky this year if I can turn the cucumbers into a refreshing juice.

Once Anna and I had finished in the farm fields we were invited back to James and Emma’s kitchen for tea. On the bookshelf I spied a real treasure – an original, leather-bound copy of Gerarde’s Herbal. This book was printed in 1633 and Emma very kindly said I could sit and leaf through its pages (after very thoroughly washing my hands). I have often referred to this great botanist’s book over the years, especially when researching my own much smaller books on plants and herbs for the skin. But I have never seen an original copy of this mighty tome and it was an incredible thrill to sit and turn its vellum pages. This volume was published in 1633 and it was quite hard to follow as Gerarde simply documents plants as he finds them. There is no index and the species aren’t even in alphabetical order, so you simply have to sit and turn the pages not knowing what you’ll find next. I found several plants that we use in Naturally Active Skincare though, including Self Heal, Comfrey and St John’s Wort. Amongst the notes, Gerarde has written about medicinal plants being grown “in fields on the edge of a small village outside London called Kentish Towne”. He wouldn’t recognise the place today. An amazing historical record, as well as a fascinating compendium of botanical properties and medicinal uses, which is still very useful and relevant. I could happily have sat in the Lambe’s kitchen until the small hours immersing myself in this extraordinary work – an unexpected and memorable treat at the end of a busy few days.

I’ve been working on our Green Policy for my colleague Kate – it’s a very rewarding project and I’m pleased to see all the detail that goes in to make our ethical choices. In some ways, we have always been green but the current focus on green issues has made everyone step a step back, and consider the impact of their personal and working lives on the environment, like never before…  Working with nature has long been our goal – from the very beginning, we aspired to 100% traceability of the ingredients that we used in our botanical formulations, with our team of ethno-botanists dedicated to working with Mother Nature to find the best natural remedies available in our quest to help everyone achieve healthy-looking, radiant skin. This means extracting botanicals from source - literally knowing the field, climate, altitude and soil in which they’re grown, as well as working directly with farmers & growers across the globe, cutting out the middle man and never buying ‘off the shelf’. The ingredients we use have been ‘time-tested’, some used traditionally for thousands of years.

As well as this green & ethical sourcing, we strive hard internally to fulfil our green motto: ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’. From using environmentally-friendly protective chips, tissue paper and cardboard outer boxing for our mail order service, to using recyclable packaging and recycled paper in our seasonal newsletter; from our internal ‘Turn It Off’ campaign to keep electrical waste to a minimum, to what we use to clean our offices, and to our new state-of-the-art eco-friendly Green House (with geo-thermal heating and recycled rain water for flushing loos) – being green is a priority for us. To this end, we have worked hard to achieve the ISO14001, an internationally-recognised certification for environmental management systems, highly regarded in the environmental management world.

We feel strongly that what we’re doing – in our small but hard-working way – is progress, not perfection. If we can all make these little changes, we can collectively make a big impact on the world around us.

Back in Naivasha, Kenya, I decided to continue my research into ‘fairmiles’ versus ‘airmiles’. Went to visit Harry Milbank, who runs a successful flower and vegetable farm in the beautiful foothills of Mount Longonot. I was interested to hear how they put Fairtrade principles into practice. Fairtrade is one of the most stringent certification bodies and operates higher standards than say, Tesco Gold Standard, although this is still obviously a step in the right direction. The difference being that Fairtrade requires workers’ representation and its social and eco-standards of compliance are very high. In addition, 8% of the revenue from crop sales comes back to the farm and workers representatives allocate this money to be spent within the community. Over 1000 people are employed here, each one benefiting from a weekly wage, free transport, free lunch and medical services plus maternity benefits over and above what’s legally required. They even stagger their rotas to enable breastfeeding mums to return to their babies during the day. Staff can have interest-free loans to buy bicycles and TVs and can buy maize meal at-cost as part of their staple diet. There is no question that farms such as these are a vital part of the local ecomony.

I had a thorough tour of the entire set-up here, including the flower packhouse, where staff were busy packing roses for Tesco. Each Tesco bunch had to be labelled with a ‘by air’ sticker and there is concern that this will penalise African developing countries, who have no choice but to airfreight fresh produce. This is in contrast to European farmers, who not only truck their goods thousands of miles across the Continent, but have to use much more energy in the form of light and heat as they do not have year-round natural sunshine to grow crops in. As one farmer remarked wryly “there’s more CO2 produced in a 10 mile stretch of the M25 than producing roses”. It’s a hard decision, but when you take into account how many are employed here and the chance to bring developing countries out of poverty, I would personally choose to buy the Kenyan produce. For me, Fairmiles win over Airmiles.

This farm is not large by Naivasha standards, producing around 30 million blooms on 16 hectares each year. Most of its produce though is vegetables, a massive 10 tonnes a day for delivery to Europe’s supermarkets. Two-thirds are grown in soil and one third grown with hydroponics, meaning they are grown in a trough filled with something like pumice and irrigated with nutrient-rich water. This can be a polluting business, but here impressive changes have been made. The water is collected and filtered through natural charcoal and sand filters to clean it before it is returned to the lake where it comes from. There are also plans for an oxidised water system to naturally oxygenate the water instead of using chlorine bleaching. The nutrient-rich crop feed comes from their own compost made from the cut flower and vegetable waste and fed with worms. After 8 weeks, the worms have turned this green matter into a fabulously rich compost which crumbles easily into water to make vermi-liquid, which is then applied to the crops. A simple, old-fashioned process which has completely eliminated the farm’s requirement for chemical fertilizers. This more holistic management of the soil has the double benefit of fewer chemicals used plus improved soil and plant health. As I have learnt over the years, good farming practices are based on healthy soil management, which is why the UK’s leading organic farming movement is called the Soil Association. Next stop was to look at natural forms of pest control and again, a simple approach is the most effective. Tiny wasp-like insects (about the size of a flea) are placed next to parasitic aphids on a plant to eat them. These good bugs (phytoseiulus) basically eat all the bad bugs (spider mites), reducing the need for insecticide sprays. In this case, the need for chemical sprays has dropped by a staggering 90% simply by using bio-pest control. Finally, in the test-bed area for future development I saw a patch of a bio-diesel crop called Jatropha being grown. This noteworthy plant can be turned into an oil which can be mixed in at 20% with regular diesel. It is especially interesting as it can be grown in arid regions not usually planted, so won’t take up valuable food crop land. The only downside is that it takes three years to harvest, so it may be a while before we find pumps marked ‘Jatropha’ at the local filling station. But you read about it here first!

Drove with my Kenyan farming friend, Tom Lawrence, out of Nanuki and up a bumpy dirt track road towards the district of Timau, where he and his partners have a newly acquired piece of land ready for high-altitude farming. Of the many possible projects we have been discussing over the last few days, some of the most interesting and include organic eucalyptus oil growing, rosehip seed oil and rose water distillation. The latter would involve planting the highly fragrant and much-prized Rosa Damescena, the traditional rose variety grown for its essential oil and fragrant hydrolat (rose water). The advantage of growing at altitude is the limited rainfall combined with intense UV-rays, which seem to concentrate the essence of the plant and intensify its fragrance. This is possibly why our high-altitude lavender oil (from the Provencal hillside in the South of France) smells so much better than other varieties. Invariably more expensive, it produces a far more superior aroma and makes all the difference to the end product. This extra effort and attention to detail is very much at the heart of all we do when formulating new products as well as our existing Naturally Active Skincare. The crops that will be grown here will provide much-needed employment for several hundred people and will also be grown on eco-guidelines to conserve water and avoid toxic pesticides. Although Kenyan farmers are sometimes highlighted as being bad for the environment in terms of ‘airmiles’, it is very important to look beyond this and consider the wider impact on the local people and the environment with the eco-friendly practices being employed. A study timed to coincide with Valentine’s day earlier this year showed how buying Kenyan red roses was actually better for the environment than buying Dutch ones, even though they travel further. This is because they are grown in a more ecologically sound way in year-round natural African sunshine, not under glass with energy-hungry artificial heat and light. This has led me to think about the term ‘fairmiles’ as one which takes all aspects of growing a crop and its benefit to a struggling community into consideration, not just aviation fuel.

Leaving the comfort and very warm hospitality of Ol Lentille, the next stage of this field trip was to fly back down to Nanuki and meet up with Tom Lawrence, a dedicated horticulturalist and flower-specialist with a particular expertise for growing fragrant blooms at high altitude. He and I first met several years ago when I was on holiday in Naivasha and we fell into conversation about organic oil growing. Back then he was a conventional flower farmer, an industry not known for its environmental practise. But his dream was to farm in a more natural and eco-friendly way and this is now what he is doing in partnership with other like-minded flower farmers. His organisation specialises in growing fragrant flowers for the UK, including David Austin roses, as well as herbs and interesting foliage crops such as eucalyptus. We discussed the possibilities of growing our Eucalyptus globulus, which we use in Cleanse & Polish and our gentle Face Exfoliator. Although not certified organic, Tom uses many eco-friendly farming practices, such as growing banks of African marigolds (tagetes) to distract the bugs away from the roses so they don’t have to spray with toxic insecticides. They also use sticky strips of yellow tape attached to poles set between the roses. These attract the insects (like fly paper) and avoid having to use chemical insecticides. Because they farm on organic principles here, they grow nitrogen-fixing crops in rotation to fertilise the soil between crops. Some of the best for this are beans and peas, which are then shipped to a wholesaler before ending up on the shelves of Waitrose. Another good eco-friendly vegetable crop is ‘tender stem broccoli’, not only delicious and extremely healthy to eat but very useful for organic farmers too. The edible stems are hand-picked and sent to Waitrose, leaving the main stalks and foliage behind to be ploughed back into the ground. This then produces natural bio-fumigant isocyanates, which rid the soil of fungal diseases and unwanted root-knot nematodes. A much better option than polluting the ground with pesticides – and cheaper too. The next time I see ‘tender stem broccoli’ on Waitrose’ shelves, I shall think of Tom, his eco-friendly farming practises and the hundreds of Kenyan workers who depend on this employment to survive.

Spent the night at a fabulous new lodge called Ol Lentille on the edge of Laikipia. A new community-run development built on the very top of a high mountain peak with beautiful rooms, fabulous locally-produced organic food and the most epic view I have truly ever seen. Stayed in ‘the eyrie’, an extraordinary set of circular rooms perched on the highest point (hence its name). There is a spectacular 360 degree view of plains, forests and mountain ranges – Mount Kenya to one side, the Matthews mountain range to the other. All this and not a single house, person, car or building in sight. Truly awesome. Because it is so high, the area has its own micro-climate and it has year-round sunshine and very little rain. There is a bore-hole for water supplies and they run mostly on solar-power, so are highly eco-friendly too. One of the best points about this place is that it is run by the local community and profits go back into supporting local projects, such as education, training, apprenticeships, healthcare and wildlife conservation. Surely a far better and more sustainable option than the profits being siphoned off for overseas business consortiums. This is the way ahead for eco-tourism.

http://www.ol-lentille.com