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Nature harnessed,
not harmed

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.

NATURE ON THE BOARD

Giving a voice and a vote to Nature

In August 2022, we became the first company in the world to appoint Nature to our board of directors. All of the decisions we make affect Nature in some way, so it seemed only right that Nature should have a say — and a vote — on all of those decisions.

Through the brilliant work of Lawyers For Nature and Earth Law Center, we were able to overhaul our company structure — creating a legally binding framework that puts the Rights of Nature at the heart of all we do.

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” said somebody much smarter than us. This is the deep systems change we want to see in business if we are to recognise Nature not as a resource, but as a key stakeholder in business operations. You can read much more about the move here.

B CORP CERTIFIED

For people and planet

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.

B Corp certification is for three years, meaning we’ll need to show improvements over time to recertify in 2026. You can read more about B Corp and what it means to us here.

REPORTING

Crunching the numbers

It’s impossible to reduce your negative effects on the natural world if you don’t know what those effects are - so we carefully measure ours. Our first Impact Report 2021-22 outlined our key areas of environmental impact. The following year, we extended what we were able to report on, allowing us to go into much greater detail.

Consequently, our Impact Report 2022-23 details our carbon footprint across scopes 1, 2 and 3, our water footprint and the beginnings of our impact on biodiversity. It also explains how we’re driving change through our supply chain, and showcases our amazing charity partners, with whom we’re working to regenerate and restore Nature.

Highlights include reducing our Scope 1 carbon footprint by 14% compared to the previous year, maintaining zero Scope 2 (thanks to our sourcing of 100% renewable energy) and increasing our recycled plastic use by 11%, year-on-year. It’s an ongoing journey, but there’s already plenty to celebrate. Keep a lookout for the Impact Report 2023-24, coming soon.

ENERGY

The power of the Sun

Our factory and warehouse are powered by 100% renewable and community owned solar energy sourced from our energy partner, Energy Garden London. Energy Garden is a Community Benefit Society with a mission ‘to provide a solution to the most pressing social and environmental challenges facing society including climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality’. By providing solar energy, they generate much needed investment in renewable energy and create profit which goes back into their community of funders, as well as running training programmes for young people living in urban areas with very restricted access to Nature.

Our central Manchester office is also run on certified renewable energy, sourced from a provider which serves the whole building.

The water we use on our new Ainsworth site is heated using eight biomass boilers in which we burn wood pellets made from waste sawdust from UK mills.

CARBON BALANCED

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.

EVERY ORDER HELPS RESTORE NATURE

In partnership with TreeSisters

For every order placed via our website, we donate to TreeSisters. That donation used to pay for a sapling, which is why you may have seen ‘every order plants a tree’ on our website in the past. But after five years of collaborating with their global partners, TreeSisters learnt that real impact goes way beyond just planting trees. Now, they support communities and address climate change by restoring existing forests, honouring traditional knowledge, empowering people and strengthening Nature connectedness. As always,
their focus is on the leadership and inclusion of women in forest restoration and protection. Their holistic approach is about more than just tree numbers: every project they fund is community-led and designed to meet the needs of local people, with training in things like leadership, agroforestry and gender awareness. You can read more about TreeSisters’ wonderful work here. We love everything they do.

ALUMINIUM

Shiny new, infinitely recyclable, thing

Our new 500ml bottles are made from 100% recycled and infinitely recyclable aluminium. 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.

PLASTIC

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, 400ml, 1L and 2.5L bottles are recyclable and made from 100% Post Consumer Recycled (PCR) waste plastic, while our 5L currently contains 30% PCR waste plastic. This last one 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 now also use 100% recyclable pumps (ie. made without the metal spring commonly found in pumps which makes them very hard to recycle).

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.

REFILL

Bulk is beautiful

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.

CLOSED LOOP

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.

ZERO WASTE

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.

INGREDIENTS

Less, but better

You’ll notice our ingredients lists are short. And there’s a good reason for that: the less we need to complicate the process, the less of an impact we make. Just as in nature, we aim to be as effective and as efficient as possible. Rivka's expertise as a herbalist and aromatherapist is a foundation for our formulations and is why they're packed with plant benefits that really work.

PALM

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, 16 do 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.

To help us work on this challenge, we’ve partnered with the Sumatran Orangutan Society. Together, we’re exploring new ways to grow and produce palm in ways that have a net positive effect on Nature. This partnership supports SOS in their work to educate and empower local people to preserve and protect land that would otherwise be destroyed by palm cultivation.

ORGANIC

Often, but not always

While some of our ingredients are organic, we’re not a certified organic product. 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.

STILL A FAMILY BUSINESS

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.

UK MADE

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.

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