Beauty For The Mind, Body & Planet

How many times do you wash your hair each week? The answers might range from once to four times. Let’s say that, on average, one person in the UK will wash their hair 3 times per week. One bottle of shampoo lasts between 25-35 washes, which equates to about 5 bottles per person, per year. That means that each year, approximately 347 million plastic shampoo bottles are manufactured and subsequently discarded. We can double that figure if we use conditioner, (not to mention the hair masques, oils, mini-travel bottles, smoothers, curlers and so on!) which many of us do.

Plastic pollution is not a new conversation. Nor are the figures we hear about the amount of plastic and micro plastics that make their way into the oceans. The devastating impact that this is having on our planet and its inhabitants is heartbreaking. So what can we do, as both producers and consumers, to alleviate the sheer amount of single-use plastic that gets dumped into landfill and our oceans? The answers are actually endless! The difficulty is that we all lead busy lives, and while lots of us do care, convenience usually triumphs over our desire to make good choices. 

When we first set out on our journey of development, it was important for us to think about what drives people to make consciously positive choices for the environment. Why is it that some people aren’t as bothered about looking after the planet? 

We believe it is a lack of understanding, appreciation for and a connection to nature that is the barrier between making positive and negative choices.

As a business and as individuals, our aim is to instil a love of nature in others, and consolidate the understanding that in nurturing nature, we nurture ourselves. With sustainability at its heart, our collection of breathing and bathing products eliminate throwaway plastic and significantly reduce our personal carbon footprint.

Studies show that our wellbeing is intrinsically linked to that of the natural world and it has long been established that nature inspires and nourishes, and that spending time outside has many positive wellbeing effects. Through our scents and stories, we aim to transport our community to wonderful places, immerse them in nature and inspire a love of the wild. 

Habitats such as woodland and water meadow thread through our collections and celebrate the nature we cherish – from the rolling Cotswold hills where our brand was born, to wild spaces in far flung corners of the world. In one square meter of wild flower meadow, the diversity of plants which in turn support the wildlife is astonishing, with meadowlands being arguably Britain’s most biodiverse habitat. With a glorious diversity of flora and fauna, the water meadows at Thyme form an important wetland habitat. They are home to some breathtaking plant and wildlife. In the summer months it is a sea of wild orchids and birdlife - from a family of native barn owls to the reed warblers who have travelled thousands of miles from sub saharan Africa to hatch and raise their young.

With sustainability at the heart of what we do, we aim to eliminate excessive packaging made with plastic from everyday bathing regimes. A typical shampoo or conditioner bottle carries 85% water, demanding the use of plastic bottles and dramatically increasing the carbon footprint of transportation. Our shampoo and conditioning bars are designed with minimal packaging and concentrated formulations, eliminating excess water to significantly reduce our carbon footprint.

We cannot know for certain what happens to our empty bathroom bottles once they have left our houses. What we do know is that it can take up to 450 years for them to decompose in a landfill. Making the switch to use products that won’t harm the environment seems like an easy win! Will you join us and be the change?