Making waves for positive change
On World Ocean Day, we honour our planet's shared oceans and our personal connection with them. It's a day to recognise the ocean's vital role in our lives and to promote ways in which we can all help to protect it.
As advocates for planet-positive change, we're proud to support World Ocean Day in calling for long-term, worldwide collaborative action to save our oceans. We’ve always believed in the power of working together to effect positive change for the planet, so we couldn’t be happier to be joining communities, organisations and activists around the world as we work towards our common goal for a healthy, blue planet.
Our ocean-kind actions
Here at Neal’s Yard Remedies, we take pride in protecting the planet and all its ecosystems, our oceans included. Here’s a closer look at what we’ve been doing to help:
We’re microplastic pioneers and we helped to #BanTheBead
We’ve never used plastic microbeads in any of our products, choosing to only use natural exfoliating ingredients such as rosehip seeds and cranberry seed powders for our polishes, and ground rice or pumice powder for our scrubs.
We’re proud to have worked alongside Greenpeace and Fauna & Flora International to successfully lobby the UK government to #BanTheBead in wash-off products, and are now continuing to support the ban globally – last year signing an open letter to the European Commission urging for a faster and more complete ban on microplastics in cosmetics.
All UK-manufactured cosmetics are now microbead-free, however if you’re shopping further afield you can choose products that are free from plastic ingredients, by using the Good Scrub Guide, Beat the Microbead App, and the Look for the Zero guide.
We use environmentally friendly ingredients
The majority of our ingredients are 100% natural and organic.
One step we can all take to keep polluting chemicals out of our waterways is to look for the Soil Association (SA) COSMOS Organic and COSMOS Natural logos.
The Soil Association is a charity dedicated to safeguarding our planet, its ecosystems and all its inhabitants. The presence of their logo on one of our bottles guarantees the product has been made in a way that respects the environment and is free from any harmful chemicals.
We cut our plastic waste
Single-use and non-recycled plastic packaging ends up in our oceans every day. To help cut down on plastic waste, we offer refill bottles and pumpless duos that help you save on packaging as well as cost. You can also upsize to our 950ml bottles, which are made with up to 57% less plastic packaging than their 200ml counterparts*. Our larger format bottles can be easily recycled and come with a screw cap, allowing you to refill your smaller blue bottles time and time again.
We like to use glass wherever we can, but where this isn’t possible, you can be sure all our blue plastic bottles are made from 100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic.
We recycle our water
We’re taking active steps to conserve precious freshwater sources. At our eco-factory, rainwater collected in our greywater tank is used to flush our toilets and feed our living wall, accounting for around 20% of our water usage overall. Our demineralisation water plant now recovers 90% of the wastewater it produces.
Our seaweed story
Seaweed is packed with minerals that cleanse and revitalise skin – that’s why it’s one of our favourite ingredients and we love using it in our Seaweed & Arnica Collection. This nutrient-rich powerhouse ingredient is naturally alkalising and is certified organic and vegan.
We use nothing but the finest, air-dried organic Bladderwrack seaweed, sustainably sourced from the British Isles and Nordic region. It's carefully selected, hand cut and dried within hours to preserve its precious minerals for a cleanse that's ocean-kind as well as body-kind.
To find out more about how you can support our oceans and waterways, visit worldoceanday.org
Come behind the scenes with us
Watch how our Foaming Baths are made at our eco-manufacturing facility in Dorset, England.
