“Are you that ‘polish’ woman?”

One of the most rewarding things about creating the range with Kim all those years ago is hearing what a difference it makes to others as well as ourselves – sometimes when you least expect it. I was in Starbucks the other day, just around the corner from our King’s Road store, ordering my current favourite soya chai latte, when I spied a group of teenage lads huddled in the corner pointing at me. One of the boys finally plucked up the courage and wandered over asking “so, are you that ‘polish’ woman?” He then went on to tell me how he enjoys using our “stuff” – as do his friends. Curious to find out how he first discovered the range he admitted that his mum bought him his first Cleanse & Polish  (UK, US)  and the rest, as they say, is history. From the calls and letters we receive every day, we know that this is how so many of our male customers find out about us. Many mums have bought Cleanse & Polish for their sons as a ‘last resort’ for skin that is spotty and have been simply amazed at the smooth transformation. It’s really quite incredible that one simple product can consistently give such great results – whatever your age and stage in life. One day I’d love to do a clinical trial for acne-prone skins as I’m just so convinced the results would be outstanding. I’d also say to any mother concerned about her teenage son’s (or daughter’s) skin to definitely give it a go. It really can pave the way to smoother, clearer skin in a matter of days.

Over the years, a surprising number of guys have been using our original Cleanse & Polish (even in its first pale pink packaging!) and when we looked into the figures we discovered that in fact 15% of our male customers are already buying Cleanse & Polish.  My husband has long been a Cleanse & Polish devotee. Before we brought out the Sensitive Shave Cream he used it for his daily shave; now he uses it simply as it’s intended: to get his skin really, really clean. My teenage son has more recently become a fan and, so he says, are his friends. So, it’s really exciting to finally be able to give the guys a Cleanse & Polish of their very own… with the debut of Cleanse & Polish For Men (UK, Coming soon in the US) , complete with it’s unique colour-edged cloth and storage bag.

Why make it for men? Well, we know they will benefit from using it. We all want clean, fresh, healthy skin and guy’s faces in particular can get grimy due to their more masculine habits of DIY, car mechanics, playing rugby or football in the mud, or simply trudging home through the urban grime. Our super-rich cream is simply the best way to clean even very dirty facial skin. The beauty therapists I’ve been working with recently (yes, we will have some more exciting news to share with you here soon), recommend that if skin is especially grimy then give it a second application for a really ‘deep cleanse’. A great clean-skin tip. Also, as male skin tends to be both thicker and oilier than ours (great for avoiding early wrinkles but perhaps a little more resistant to cleansing), rinsing the muslin cloth in very hot water before removing the cream can make it extra hard-working as it helps soften pores, drawing out even more grime. Finishing off with a final rinse of bracingly cold water can then help tighten up the feel of the skin again. As men’s skin tends to be more resilient, this slightly ‘rugged’ way of using Cleanse & Polish is probably just one for the boys though. 

The many men I know who have already tested Cleanse & Polish For Men have all commented on its bracing aroma - that potent hit of eucalyptus that whooshes up the nostrils as soon as you squirt some into your hand. The favourite snack-food of the koala, eucalyptus is native to Australia and steam distillation is used to extract the unmistakably aromatic and potent essential oil from the plant’s leaves and twigs. Renowned for its antiseptic and purifying properties, we use Eucalyptus globulus (or blue gum eucalyptus). Cleanse & Polish’s ability to deeply cleanse the skin makes it particularly ideal for guys to use before shaving and it’s brilliant for spot-prone skin as it can help treat breakouts. I’ve always been a great believer in the saying that if something’s good, don’t change it. That’s why even though we considered adapting the original multi-award-winning formula specifically for the men’s market, we couldn’t quite work out how to improve something that’s already considered by so many to be the best. So it’s stayed reassuringly true to the original skincare classic and the only change is its more ‘manly’ identity, teaming well with the rest of the men’s range. If you’re interested, there’s lots more info in our summer newsletter and special men’s brochure, just out now.

Sloane in Bloom

The whole of Chelsea is filled with flowers! This is definitely the best week of the year to take a stroll down Sloane Street. So many of the biggest names in the fashion and beauty world have put an enormous amount of time and effort to make beautiful botanical displays to theme with Chelsea Flower Show. I loved British shoe designer Emma Hope’s beach garden shop front (a home from home for us!), which apparently she just “threw together” at the last minute, uprooting plants from her garden, including two impressive 2m high Buddleia set against subtle blue-grey Cornish slate slabs. Perfumer Jo Malone filled her boutique with fabulously scented white and palest pink scented blooms, including an impressive iron bedstead overflowing with exotic varieties, from Casablanca to Tuberose and my May-time English garden favourite Lily of the Valley. Tiffany the jewellers swapped their glass front door for a giant white walk-in birdcage, complete with metal birds. Cartier outlined their world-famous watch shapes with darkly green foliage and French fashion giant Hermes took an Indian theme with arches bedecked with exotic flowers. Even the classic British menswear designers, Hackett, got in on the act with a quintessentially British male gardening theme of the potting shed, principally made with cut box stalks. So very stylish and fun – I have made a diary note to bring the family to London this time next year to marvel at this free display of talent and imagination.

Kim and I were lucky enough to get tickets this year to visit the Chelsea Flower Show today and so we headed off for the first time since my days covering the event as part of the GMTV team. Like so many, we made for the central pavilion as we wanted to catch up with gold medallist Jekka McVicar, who grows her organic herbs to an astonishingly high standard. She was watering her precious plants when we arrived, standing next to her gold medal certificate. This was her 60th gold medal no less and she proudly told us that she was the only certified organic winner too. We spent a while discussing the many botanicals we have in common, including some featured in her display such as comfrey, rosemary and melissa. One of Jekka’s favourite uses of rosemary is to make a fresh herb tea – a simple infusion of a freshly picked rosemary sprig in a jugful of just-boiled water. It sounds delicious and we promised to try it. Outside the pavilion the central avenue was lined with the big display gardens, and I spent longest admiring the ‘best in show’ gold medal winner, the Laurent-Perrier all-green grove designed by Tom Stuart-Smith. His unusual and spectacular display of 30 year-old English hornbeams were especially pruned so that the leaves and branches floated like puffed clouds, seemingly floating in mid-air. Beneath, banks of velvety moss and grasses provided a textured botanical blanket, using texture and form instead of colour for variety. Pale blue-grey zinc tanks filled with overflowing water added to the calm air of tranquillity – a welcome haven for the eyes amongst all the hustle and bustle around us. 

I also enjoyed strolling along the much smaller Eastern walkway, filled with smaller gardens each with their own quirky themes, many of which were built from antique mossy stones that looked as if they’d been there for years. We were just finishing our stroll of these when a call came through on Kim’s mobile – the judging of the Sloane in Bloom competition had just taken place and we’d won second prize!! We were speechless and so very thrilled. The deserving winner was Jo Malone for her magnificent scented arrangements, but we were more than ecstatic to be judged ahead of so many top international designer stores – especially as this was our first attempt. The talented florist Jane Packer did incredibly well with her traditional garden bench surrounded by our skincare botanicals, so we’re delighted for her that we were awarded a prize. We’re already starting to think ahead now for next year, although those perfectly sculpted, cloud-filled hornbeams will definitely be a long way off.

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.

Christmas and Research in Kenya

I’m now back in Kenya for Christmas, combining time spent with family and friends with some new botanical ingredient research in the New Year too. One species our botanist Anna Macleod and I have been investigating for several years now is the fascinating ‘sausage tree’, so-called because of the long sausage-shaped pods that hang from its tall branches, not unlike salamis hanging in an Italian deli’s window. The sausage tree (real name Kigelia africana) has some very unusual and interesting skin-tightening and firming properties, as well as being a useful local antiseptic and anti-inflammatory ingredient used here in herbal medicine. It’s also a very attractive tree, with large, dark green, fig-like leaves that provide useful shade cover in very hot climates. We have an extensive tree planting programme here on our small farm and one of the first things we do on arrival is to check on their progress. I spent the best part of today in thick-soled, thorn-proof boots walking the boundaries to make sure that all our newly planted trees are being regularly watered and protected from marauding giraffe, who like nothing better than to nibble out the tasty central crown shoots of a young thorn tree. I was especially keen to check on the progress of the three small Kigelia africana planted last time I was here. We chose a hot, dry, dusty area at the back of our boundary for these, in the hope that they will one day provide a useful respite from the relentless sun. Fortunately, they don’t seem to be to the giraffe’s liking and they all look healthy and strong, with lots of shiny green leaves sprouting.

There’s no doubt that extreme sun exposure causes many problems for the skin, especially in tropical countries or locations close to the Equator. The arid desert plains of Kenya are especially harsh as there is low humidity and little moisture in the air, so the sun over-dries the face in an instant. I’ve been especially pleased that I packed several jars of our Superskin Moisturiser, as its high levels of skin-repairing Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s) and plant oils are fantastically re-moisturising without being in the slightest bit sticky. It’s so rich and nourishing that I can feel my skin being instantly replenished and soothed after a long day in the extreme heat. I’m obviously using our Sunshade SPF25 when outside too, but the additional antioxidant benefits of the pomegranate and natural-source Vitamin E are especially soothing and repairing. By contrast, I’ve just received the last instalment from Dr Amy Rogers, the researcher we helped sponsor for new research into climate change on an Antarctic expedition. There are probably not many skin creams currently being exposed to two such climatic extremes so many thousands of miles apart – and it’s good to know that Superskin’s botanical formulation holds up well under pressure! Here is Dr Roger’s last journal entry:

Dr Amy Rogers writes:
“I’ve now been in Antarctica for about 5 weeks. We were due to fly out last week, on December 10th. Unfortunately an Antarctic snowstorm has meant that we have been stranded here with no possibility of an aircraft landing to pick us up. We haven't seen the sun for nine days now and have had total whiteout conditions. At the moment visibility is down to a few metres. We've also had snow drifts up to six feet high, so we have been busy digging our tent out of the snow each day to ensure we don’t end up buried. The weather has cleared and we are hoping that it will be possible to clear the ice runway of over 6000 tonnes of snow by tomorrow morning. If the plane from Punta Arenas can’t land tomorrow, then we will most likely be stuck in Antarctica for another week. This means that we could be spending Christmas in Antarctica. We’ve all got our fingers crossed that the snow-blowers will be able to move the snow off the runaway before the weather closes in again. This last week has brought some new challenges to test my Superskin moisturiser. Now back at the main basecamp we spend a lot of time moving between mess tents and the outdoors. This can involve temperature changes of 30-40 degrees. Moving between these different temperatures doesn’t seem to have presented too many problems. I’ve been really pleased with the way that the Superskin moisturiser has worked at protecting my face in such extreme conditions. It’s made my Antarctic expedition a lot more comfortable. Instead of the lasting skin damage that I was worried I would get from being here, I think that my skin feels better than it did before I went away.”

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).

Grasse, the traditional perfume capital of the world

In Grasse to visit one of our essential oil suppliers and to see first-hand how the plants are turned into high quality oils. Grasse is the traditional perfume capital of the world as the first fine fragrances were made from the flower oils that were grown in the hillside around this medieval walled town. Today, many of the centuries-old buildings remain but most of the flower fields have been ploughed up and built over. We are fortunate to work with one of the last remaining traditional fragrance oil makers, who distil and extract the highest quality natural aromatic essences.

The fine weather throughout southern Europe has meant that the jasmine harvest continued throughout September, instead of finishing a few weeks ago. As luck has it, we arrive just as the very last ten kilos of hand-picked jasmine blossoms arrive from the fields. I am especially keen to see this process as it is a key ‘naturally active’ ingredient in our Bliss Vital Oil range (UK) , (USA) and can be found in our Bliss Bath Oil, Body Spray and vegetable-wax candles. It takes about an hour to carefully pick a kilo of delicate jasmine flowers, so just two basketfuls represent ten hours of labour! Once the blossoms arrive, they are placed into a huge vat where the oil is extracted under pressure – a bit like a huge pressure cooker. The oil-rich flowers give up their volatile oils easily (unlike other more solid natural materials, such as tree bark or seed pods), so before long, a sweetly pungent, golden wax is being siphoned off into metal containers to be stored in cool, dark conditions until we need it. You can see why jasmine oil is so hugely expensive as not only to the flowers take so long to pick, the 10 kilos of petals produce just 30mls of jasmine absolute. In the next door processing room we could smell the extracting of tonka bean absolute, a key aromatic ingredient for fine fragrances. We followed the entire process, from the shiny brown pods being finely ground into powder before being sprinkled by hand onto blanched (odourless) straw and placed inside a round metal vat. It’s a time-consuming and labour-intensive process that hasn’t changed in fifty years or more. Once sealed into vats, the deliciously chocolately tonka bean aroma is extracted under pressure, a process that takes around 20 hours in all as beans are harder to extract from than oil-rich flowers. Other essential oils we saw in production included orris (ground iris root), one of the most expensive perfume ingredients due to its scarcity, lavender, oak moss and petitgrain (from the leaves and twigs of a citrus tree). The genuine essential oil business is built on a real labour of love and our hosts commented on how rare it is for them to work with an organisation such as ours that is prepared to pay for the genuine article. So often in the beauty world it is easier (and very much cheaper) to choose the synthetic option.

As our discussions turned to talk about neroli (the essential oil from orange blossom trees, which we use in Hand Repair (UK) , (USA) , Superbalm (UK) , (USA) and Superskin Concentrate (UK) , (USA) we discovered that we are using about 15% of the entire world’s supply – almost everyone else, apart from a few fine fragrance houses, has now switched to a synthetic chemical copy. We’re proud to be one of the few companies left that still supports this traditional, sustainable process, which not only supports small-scale local farmers and growers but also produces the very best quality, natural ingredients.

Short hop across to France

Spent the afternoon at Heathrow waiting for a flight to Nice, in theory a short hop across to France, but the reality made longer by air traffic delays. When finally called to our departure gate I was met by a lovely stewardess who took one look at my passport and exclaimed “oh, I use all your things, especially the Cleanse & Polish!” and we then had a nice chat about skincare while the queue grew even longer behind me… Two hours later and I emerged blinking into the South of France sunshine, my senses immediately assailed by the warm wafts of scented breeze coming from the plethora of pine trees growing wild around the airport. The essential oil from pine needles was one of the first to be documented as being naturally therapeutic. The properties of many essential oils were documented by the French chemist Rene-Maurice Gattefossé during the First World War, when he noted how many injured troops recovered more quickly from bronchial infections when they had been amidst the pine forests. Gattefossé is often credited as being the ‘father of modern aromatherapy’ as a laboratory experiment saw him plunge his scalded hand into a vat of nearby lavender essential oil and was amazed at how quickly his burnt skin healed. This chance discovery lead him to further research the healing properties of this remarkable oil and today it is widely recognised as one of the few true natural healers. I keep a small bottle of pure lavender essential oil above the Aga in my kitchen specifically for dabbing onto minor burns and scalds. It really does work wonders. I’m now here in France for some more research into the amazing properties of the many essential oils that grow here, lots of which we use throughout the range, including high-altitude French lavender, rosemary and the highly-prized (and extremely costly) jasmine oil, which I’m really hoping to see being made here during my stay.

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!