Made With...
- Shea butter from a women-run co-op in West Africa.
- Ingredients sourced from local small businesses.
- Sustainably harvested pure essential oils.
- Skin-nourishing plant oils, butters, and waxes, like: rosehip, grape, argan, castor, babassu, hemp, jojoba, camellia (tea flower/Tsubaki), peach, meadowfoam, apricot, perilla, pomegranate, avocado, olive, almond, shea, and more.
- Plant-based colourants, extracts, teas, and juices.
- Purifying clays and charcoals.
- Sugarcane squalane.
- Glycerin; both naturally-occurring (in soap) and vegan (in everything else).
- Simple ingredients you can find in your pantry at home.
- Not-so-secret ingredient: love.
Since our soaps are made with large amounts of shea butter, we needed to make sure to source as ethically and socially-responsible as we could.
During our selection process, we found and established a relationship with a shea butter co-op in West Africa, run by mothers, sisters, and daughters. In this region, shea butter is treasured for its healing abilities, and its harvesting techniques are passed on from mothers to daughters. Therefore, we felt confident that the shea butter from this co-op would be farmed naturally with minimal use of harsh agricultural agents, lessening the impact on the environment, as well as maintaining the nutrients in the soil.
We aim to empower these women by paying fair prices, while limiting our carbon emissions by having shea butter directly shipped to our facility from the farms.
Many of our ingredients are sourced from local businesses, which is why we’re proud to be “Made in Canada.”
This also helps us reduce the environmental impact of freight, including fuel, packaging material, and human-power to get ingredients into our facility.
We’ve chosen to scent most of our products using natural, essential oils from plants. A quick summary on essential oils is as follows: through distillation, aromatic compounds from plants are extracted into a volatile liquid. These liquids are called “essential oils”; or the “essence of” plants. Essential oils have a long history in folk and natural medicine, as well as in perfumery. Some are also said to have specific benefits to the skin.
However, due to modern industrial harvesting, certain plants are facing endangerment due to over-harvesting. Therefore, we pay close attention to the essential oil industry during the product development stage to ensure the essential oils used in our formulations are sustainable. We also refer to scientific data on the minimal amount of essential oils required for lightly scenting our products, as well as providing benefits to the skin.
Wow, that was a mouthful! And that’s not even a complete list of amazing plants in our products. Each of these plant oils, butters, and waxes brings something special to our formulation, hence why we use so many different ones.
In fact, many of our products are formulated with specific skin concerns in mind. Through analyzing research in plants and dermatology, we can be sure to utilize plants that bring something beneficial to the skin.
Since skincare takes a certain level of upkeep and maintenance, we recognized that skincare should not only be good for the skin, but should also be fun to use.
This is why we’ve chosen to add colour to many of our products through the use of plant colourants, extracts, teas, and juices.
Effectively some of the gentlest physical/mechanical exfoliators for the skin, our products contain ultra-fine, cosmetic grade clays and charcoals that help draw out impurities, as well as lightly buff away dead skin.
Our skin normally produces squalene (with an “e”) in our sebum, which is the precursor to squalane. Unfortunately, squalene oxidizes far too quickly to be used in skincare formulation, so upon hydrogenating squalene, squalane, a stable version of the molecule, is produced.
Due to our bodies’ natural squalene production, squalane has exceptional occlusive (moisture-locking) abilities without clogging pores. It is also reported to calm inflammation, boost collagen production, as well as help balance oil production in the skin.
Traditionally, squalane was sourced from shark livers, which made it an ingredient with a huge environmental impact, horrible animal cruelty, as well as unusable in vegan formulations. Fortunately, in recent years, plant-based squalane from olives and sugarcanes have become increasingly popular, making it possible to formulate vegan skincare with squalane.
Glycerin is a naturally-occurring humectant that is produced during saponification (the process of converting oils and alkali(s) into soap salts). In commercial soap manufacturing, glycerin is often milled out of soap after saponification to be sold as a standalone product. However, since our soaps are artisanal, we leave all of the beneficial glycerin in the soap, making it less harsh and drying on the skin.
In our other formulations that do not contain naturally-occurring glycerin, we add vegan, pharmaceutical grade (USP) glycerin to help with moisture-retention in the skin.
Because we believe in natural, simple ingredients, you may recognize some pantry staples, like: raw cocoa powder, turmeric, paprika, parsley, chamomile tea, green tea, rolled oats, poppy seeds, salt, sugar, and others. In various formulations, extracts of these ingredients are added due to their benefits to the skin.
Each ingredient is processed and extracted differently, depending on its efficacy and stability. We aim to preserve as much of the beneficial properties as possible during the production process, without wasting the raw ingredients.
We stand behind each of our products and formulations, and put love and care into each step of production; starting from sourcing raw ingredients, to having the finished product in your hands. Although we may not be able to speak to each user of our products directly, we hope that the love is conveyed through the quality of the products, as well as the positive results on your skin.
Made Without...
Palm oil, palm kernel oil, palm oil-derivatives.
Due to the deforestation, habitat destruction, and animal cruelty that comes with excessive palm oil farming and production, we’ve opted to stay away from palm oil and any of its derivatives. We want to make it easy for you to choose and use products with a clear conscience.
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Animal products, by-products, and derivatives.
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Mineral oil, paraffin oil, petrolatum, and petroleum jelly.
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Cosmetic micas, ultramarines, chromium dioxides, lakes, and synthetic dyes.
Synthetic colourants can pose issues with irritation, inflammation, and clogging pores, especially for sensitive and acne-prone skin. In addition, impurities in synthetic colourants can include heavy-metals like lead and arsenic, that can be incredibly harmful even in small doses and can be absorbed through the skin. -
Phthalates & Parabens.
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Sulfates.
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Excessive single-use plastic packaging.
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Animal testing.
Through our research, we’ve discovered that vegan ingredients often contain more nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, as plants themselves contain a multitude of skin-loving nutrients. Since your skin is the biggest organ, it only makes sense to use nourishing ingredients and take good care of it. In addition, plant-based ingredients are often less irritating compared to its animal-based counterpart.
Finally, as we are both certified cruelty-free and adamant supporters of cruelty-free cosmetics, keeping our ingredients vegan was a natural move.
Emollient ingredients derived from oil-refining can contain impurities, such as carcinogens, while providing none of the benefits or nutrients like plant-based ingredients. We’ve made the deliberate choice to steer away from emollient ingredients derived from fossil fuels, as they lack nutritional benefit for the skin.
Instead, we’ve created products that include plant oils, butters, and waxes to better soothe and nourish the skin, while providing essential nutrients from the earth.
However, we don’t believe that you should sacrifice the joys of using beautiful, colourful skincare, and have opted to use natural colourants, like plant extracts, plant powders, clays, and activated charcoal.
Phthalates and parabens are known to disrupt hormones in the body, so we’ve opted to formulate without either type of chemicals in all of our products.
Sulfate-based surfactants can be stripping and irritating, especially for dry and sensitive skin. Our cleansing formulations contains natural soap salts instead of sulfate-bases surfactants to gently clean your skin.
Although all of our packaging is intended to be recycled, we understand that recycling facilities vary from region to region. Therefore, we’ve opted to use minimal plastic packaging, since it can be problematic due to the different types of plastics accepted at different facilities, or some types not being accepted at all.
Instead, our products are packaged in recyclable/recycled material, like paper, glass, and aluminum when possible; the latter 2 which can be safely reused. We believe “reduce” and “reuse” are critical to global sustainability, and encourage the reuse of our packaging in your home and office.
We firmly believe that with the development of cosmetic sciences, the use of animal testing is outdated and unnecessary. Furthermore, it is needlessly cruel and impractical, as animal skin may not react the same way to cosmetics when compared to human skin, while animals can’t tell you if a product is irritating without showing physical signs of irritation.
To ensure the safety of our products, we collect and inspect the certificates of analysis (CoA) and safety data sheets (SDS) from our suppliers for each ingredient, and track each production run internally.
In addition, we also have a team of (human) product testers who test and review products before they are made available to the public.