How We're Tackling Sustainability

Just because we’ve been thinking hard about sustainability for over forty years doesn’t mean it’s any easier to know what’s right. It's why, when making these decisions, we try to keep in mind one simple question: 'what would Nature say?'

What we find is that, as in Nature, there is an ever shifting balance to maintain — and that requires ecological thinking. A constant reassessment of what ‘sustainability’ means today. There is no such thing as ‘best’. Only ‘best for now’. Below is our best-for-now — but behind the scenes, we’re always working on our best-for-tomorrow.

IMPACT

Measuring what matters

Read our new Impact Report 2024-25!
You can’t lessen your impact on Nature if you don’t first understand it. That’s why we measure ours – carefully, honestly and every single year. Since 2021, we’ve been assessing our environmental and social impact as part of our ongoing commitment to tread more lightly on the planet. Our Impact Report 2024-25 shares the progress we made in our last financial year and reflects on how far we’ve come over the previous three years.

Inside, you’ll find a transparent look at our carbon footprint across Scopes 1, 2 and 3, our water footprint, material usage and what we’ve managed to recycle, and the steps we’re taking to understand our impact on the Natural world. We track how we’re creating positive change throughout our supply chain and celebrate the inspiring charity partners we work alongside to regenerate and restore Nature.

This year’s highlights include:

A reduction in our Scope 1 carbon footprint
A more in depth look at challenging categories in our Scope 3 footprint
A deeper understanding of our impact on the Natural World

We believe progress starts with honesty. By measuring what matters, we can focus on meaningful action – and keep moving forward.

Read our previous year’s Impact Reports:

Our factory, warehouse and central Manchester office are all powered by 100% renewable energy. That energy is sourced solely from solar, wind and hydro power, meaning we have almost no Scope 2 carbon footprint – which is great news! Even better news: our UK-based supplier ONLY provides renewable energy. So, rather than funding the continuation of fossil fuels, we’re investing in a future where all the energy in the country comes from renewable sources.

Choosing renewable energy is a huge part of our mission to protect and restore Nature. Renewable energy doesn’t rely on the extraction or mining of fossil fuels, which generates greenhouse gases and causes habitat loss and land disturbance. Instead, it relies on abundant, natural resources that don’t diminish – like sunlight, wind and water power.

The water we use on our manufacturing site is heated using biomass boilers, fuelled by pellets made from waste sawdust from UK mills. This renewable energy heating system has a considerably lower carbon footprint than the fossil fuel alternative – and uses up a waste product in the process.

Balancing, not cancelling out

You’ve probably heard the term ‘carbon neutral’, but we prefer the phrase ‘carbon balanced’. And thanks to our partnership with the amazing World Land Trust (WLT), we’re just that.

Every business inevitably emits carbon, and ‘neutralising’ suggests getting rid of those emissions completely, which isn’t currently possible. Instead, we balance ours out by storing it in the precious carbon sinks that WLT works hard to protect.

We calculate our emissions, reduce what we can – and offset the unavoidable ones left over through WLT’s carbon balancing programme in Guatemala. You can read more about our partnership with WLT here.

packaging

Bulk is beautiful

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We’ve been making our products in big 5 litre bottles for decades — but it’s only recently that people have really started buying them from us. And we’re so glad they do because the maths is pretty simple: the bigger the bottle, the bigger the difference it makes. Our 5 litre bottles hold the equivalent of 12.5 smaller bottles. And our whopping 20 litre bottles hold the equivalent of 50 smaller ones. Yes, the bigger bottles use thicker plastic — but they still use substantially less plastic than the combined volume of the smaller bottles. So whether you refill at home or refill at one of our many refill stores, refill really does mean less landfill.

Our 500ml bottles are made from 100% recycled and infinitely recyclable aluminium, with 13 times less carbon than a virgin aluminium bottle. Yes, the carbon footprint of one aluminium bottle is higher than the carbon footprint of one (recycled) plastic bottle — but respective recycling rates are worlds apart. In the EU, plastic recycling rates are around 10%, whereas recycling rates for aluminium are 86% (and aluminium drinks cans can often be back on the shelves, recycled, in just 60 days) . This obviously means far fewer planetary resources are needed — and if you refill one of our aluminium bottles just once, its carbon footprint drops below that of our 100% recycled plastic 400ml bottle.

We’re working on switching more and more of our products into aluminium, whilst also making the carbon footprint of that aluminium as low as possible. Watch this space.

Enough, already

Our 400ml bottles have been recycled and recyclable since 1999. It’s why they’ve always had that funny grey tinge. Because if we’re going to use plastics (and unfortunately we do still need to), then we want to ensure that as much of that plastic as possible is already in existence. One day, we hope we’ll find a way to ditch it for good. But until that day, it's about tackling the problem in a number of smaller ways. You can read at length about our plastic usage (and what we're doing about it) here.

Our 100ml, 300ml, 350ml (hair mask tubs), 400ml and 1L bottles are recyclable and made from 100% Post Consumer Recycled (PCR) waste plastic, while our 2.5L and 5L packs currently contains 35% PCR waste plastic. This goes up and down as we’re constantly working with new suppliers to find a bottle with increased recycled content that doesn’t crack or split (which recycled plastic is more prone to do than virgin). We are currently working on a solution for our 20L bottles, and are always reviewing our supply chains to source packaging materials with increased recycled content, while not compromising on recyclability. We also use 100% recyclable pumps (ie. made without the metal spring commonly found in pumps which makes them very hard to recycle).

Card that goes the extra yard

All the card we use in our packaging is from FSC or PEFC certified suppliers and is 100% recycled. Wherever possible packaging from suppliers is re-used and shredded for packaging when it’s not.

A note: As a manufacturing business, we have complex supply chains which rely on many moving parts – and we’re increasingly experiencing issues getting hold of the recycled materials we want to use. This is a challenge that we’re addressing, seeking secondary suppliers that can meet our requirements. We also want to be as transparent as we can with our customers, so if our packaging isn’t what we intended it to be, we’ll put a sticker on it to let you know. Sometimes supply issues can get in the way of our ambitions, but we’re constantly pushing for recycled content wherever we can.

We want our bottles back

We tie ourselves in knots trying to close the loop on our products — and have been trying to figure out how best to do this since before ‘closed loop’ was a thing. Previous attempts have looked good, then not so good. So right now, we’re back to trialling new methods — and by returning your bottles to us, you help us reach better solutions, faster.

Our hope is that very soon all large format bottles returned to us can either be washed and refilled or ground down and remoulded. For smaller bottles, the best way to close the loop at home is by refilling them over and over again.

Please return your empty, washed and dried 5-litre and 20-litre refill bottles to us at the freepost address below. Only 12% of household plastic waste in the UK is recycled, but 100% of the refill bottles returned to us are either reused or recycled. We keep those we need for our ongoing reuse trials, and the rest are recycled by our specialist recycling partner.

FREEPOST
Faith In Nature
Ainsworth Road
Radcliffe
Manchester
M26 4AF

The moon on a stick

Between our plastics policy, refill availability and closed loop scheme, we like to think we’re passing on as little of the plastics problem to our customers as possible. But the gold standard in not passing on the problem is zero waste. And our shampoo bars and conditioner bars do just that. Zero plastic. Zero sulphates. And zero compromises on great hair days. It’s why you might sometimes hear us refer to them as our moon-on-a-stick-haircare-bars. (Because when the planet’s on the line, only the moon on a stick will do).

We also have a zero waste to landfill policy in operation on site, certified as far back as 2018. This means that everything we can recycle from our site is collected, sorted and recycled, and the remainder of our waste is burned for energy in a Waste to Energy Facility. Our overall waste was reduced by 3.92% in the last year compared to the previous year, and we’re actively seeking out new suppliers to recycled hard to manage waste streams.

PEOPLE AND PLANET

Without the people who make our products, we wouldn’t be here. So it’s really important that our people want to be here when they’re here and can enjoy their lives more fully when they’re not. To help with that, we run a four-day week business that gives our people an extra day to spend doing whatever they choose.

We’re also a certified Living Wage and Living Hours Employer, meaning we’re committed to providing our employees with properly paid, secure, stable and predictable work. And we’re a supporter of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter which helps employers raise standards through secure work, fair pay, wellbeing support and inclusive practices.

B CORP

Being the change

B Corps are companies verified to meet very high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. It’s about businesses doing good for people and the planet, in addition to making a profit.

The B Corp movement is aligned with everything we’ve ever done, right from the very beginning. But becoming a B Corp isn’t easy, especially for a manufacturing business like ours.

We’ll be re-certifying against B Corp’s new standards in 2027. You can read more about B Corp and what it means to us here.

FORMULATIONS

We know that Nature needs restoring and protecting, so our technical team works really hard to find ingredients that are made from a waste stream, or that give back to Nature and those that look after it.

Our Grapefruit and Sweet Orange oils are made from waste fruit peel from a juicing factory. This reduces waste production (and the carbon footprint that goes with processing all that waste!), promotes circularity and improve resource efficiency.

Our Tea Tree oil comes from a farm in New South Wales, Australia, where they are actively restoring Koala habitat following bushfires and floods. The farm has established over 12,000 plants, restored degraded vegetation and created 1.5km of Koala corridors, regenerating riparian habitat to support biodiversity and Koala populations.

The Shea butter in our products is harvested from naturally occurring Shea parklands via a Co-op in Ghana. Rather than intensive plantations, these parklands help to maintain agroforestry landscapes and provide income to rural women. This approach employs 15,000 women globally.

The Egg Wrack Seaweed that we use in our products is harvested using Nature stewardship practices which means that it is wild harvested under a strict set of stewardship practices which minimise ecological impacts and allow regrowth.

Our Dragon Fruit Seed oil promotes the circular economy, efficient resource use and waste reduction as it is a zero waste ingredient, cold-pressed from seeds that would otherwise be discarded.

Our Argan oil is sourced from a supplier supporting women’s co-operative in Morocco. Argan forests are recognised for their biodiversity value, preventing desertification and supporting traditional livelihoods.

We've been making vegan and cruelty-free products for over 50 years, long before it became commonplace. Our certifications from The Vegan Society and Leaping Bunny reflect our commitment to ensuring no animals are harmed in the making of our products, which is verified with every supplier we work with. Animal welfare has always been central to our values, and we believe avoiding animal-derived ingredients and animal testing is not only the ethical choice, but also supports a more sustainable future.

There’s no easy answer

Believe us. We feel the same way you do about palm. But the reason palm is so widely used is because it’s so efficient. In other words, to produce the same amount of oil from, say, sunflowers would require twenty times the land-mass. That’s why in our list of 93 ingredients, 1 does contain palm derivatives across our 183 products. It's an incredibly complicated issue, which requires equally complicated solutions. We're working on them, and we're hopeful we'll come closer to solving this issue in the near future. All our ingredients are sourced from suppliers certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm which prohibits the deforestation.

To help us work on this challenge, we’ve partnered with the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS). We’re a Pioneer supporter of their Rewild Fund which works with local people through education to empower them to preserve and protect land that would otherwise be destroyed by palm cultivation.

Often, but not always

While some of our ingredients are organic, we’re not a certified organic business. Since 1974, our aim has been to make natural products affordable for everyone. And while organic produce continues to become
more accessible, it can still be prohibitively expensive for our needs. When we can go organic, we do. But when we can’t, we choose the best quality, sustainable alternative.

PROUDLY INDEPENDENT

Independent since 1974

If it wasn’t for Rivka’s independent thinking, way back in 1974, we’d never even be here. Such was her belief that natural, cruelty free, ethical products should be affordable to all that she pawned her jewellery to start Faith In Nature. That independence still runs strong in our DNA — and being an independent company means that we’re only answerable to you, Nature and ourselves. It means we’re free to make the difficult decisions. Free to swim against the tide. Free to do what we believe will create the best ethical, sustainable, natural products we possibly can.

Thinking global, acting local

All of our products are made in our UK home, just outside of Manchester. It means a great deal to us to keep manufacturing on home soil — and continuing to employ many of the same people who’ve worked with us for so long that they’re probably as surprised as anyone that we’re now a local award winning manufacturer of natural products.

Notes on Nature

After nearly fifty years in the natural products movement, we've learnt a thing or two along the way and we've certainly got plenty of stories to share.

Explore all