How Your Beauty Products Can Help Mother Nature

Eco-friendly beauty companies you’ll love

I often get asked what it means to “go green.” It seems like a simple answer: Reduce waste, change to energy-efficient light bulbs, buy organic food and so on. But there’s more to it: Going green, or “mindful living,” is about understanding the impact we have on the natural world and the people in it. It’s the realization that every decision we make affects someone, somewhere in the world.

If you really want to live a mindful life, I encourage you to support ethical brands. Here are four of my favourite clean and eco-friendly beauty companies.

1. Causemetics

Causemetics is Canada’s first collaborative brand of green beauty products. It was developed with the support of 11 Canadian skin care companies that agreed to rebrand one of their best products with a shared identity for the purpose of fundraising for the Canadian Breast Cancer Support Fund (CBCSF). “When people talk about breast cancer, they talk about pain and suffering, treatments and medications, but they don’t talk about money,” says Donna Sheehan, founder and executive director of CBCSF, and a cancer survivor herself. “People don’t talk about the cost of breast cancer, but we do.” To that end, proceeds raised go to cancer patients to help with their living expenses, says Sheehan.

2 . Conscious Coconut

The name says it all. When you buy this organic, fair-trade coconut oil, you’re helping to make a difference in so many lives. This company works directly with farmers and suppliers in Thailand and the Philippines to support fair trade, ensuring that workers’ necessities, including clean water and access to education, are met. But they don’t stop there: Final production shifts to Tampa, FL, where adults with developmental issues package the tubes. As well, for every purchase made, a child is given a meal through the brand’s partnership with Feeding America.

3. True Moringa

Co-founders Kwami Williams and Emily Cunningham learned one thing after a visit to Ghana: Money really does grow on trees – moringa trees. Now, they work with farmers in Ghana, harvesting the oil from these trees to formulate skin care products. To date, the company has planted more than 270,000 trees, working with more than 2,000 Ghanaian farming families.

The brand is involved in many steps along the way: At the front end, they help kick-start farmers’ operations with basic supplies; at the back end, they buy farmers’ seeds and ship them to their processing facility, where they are cold-pressed into their True Moringa oil. “There are 1.5 billion acres of fertile, uncultivated land in Africa and 120 million small farmers living on that land, earning less than two dollars a day,” says Cunningham. “My co-founder, Kwami, and I are so excited by the potential of moringa to change that narrative.”

4. Hand in Hand Soap

The company Hand in Hand Soap was founded by two social entrepreneurs who believe that business can do more than just make money. For every bar of soap purchased, Hand in Hand donates a bar of soap (and a month of clean water) to children in need. “The goal was to come up with a household product that people use every day that has the power to save lives,” says Bill Glaab, co-founder and president of Hand in Hand.