Our Values: Ethical Natural Skincare

Ethical skincare, to us, means being as kind to people and the planet as we are to your skin. Here's how we go about it, and what we're still working on.

Made by hand, by people paid fairly

Every Lyonsleaf product is hand-made in small batches at our workshop in Wells, Somerset, by people earning a living wage.

Ingredients we can trace

Herbs like calendula and comfrey come from our local growing collective, whose growers use no pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fertilisers. They're harvested and infused while fresh. Everything else comes from trusted suppliers. Almost all our carrier oils, which make up the bulk of every product, are organic, and most of our products are 98 to 99% organic. Some ingredients simply aren't available organic, such as vitamin E, activated charcoal and white willow bark. For those we choose the most natural version we can: our vitamin E, for example, is natural rather than synthetic and petrochemical-derived. Each product's exact organic content is listed on its page. Read more about our pure and natural ingredients.

No animal testing

Lyonsleaf is against animal testing, and we never test our products on animals.

Undiluted, multi-tasking products for less packaging

Our moisturising products are all water-free. Most high street products contain up to 80% water, which only serves to water down the active ingredients. Ours contain only the good stuff, so they're used very sparingly. That means far less packaging, and far less weight to ship. A small pot lasts for ages, and because our products are designed to multi-task, one pot can do lots of jobs, further reducing waste. Read about the water-free skincare revolution.

Single-use plastic

We have almost completely eradicated single-use plastic from our products, and all our product packaging is recyclable at the kerbside. The exception is the facial oils, which have a plastic dispenser pump. On our website you can buy them as a refill with a recyclable aluminium lid (and reuse your pump), or choose to do without the pump altogether.

Postal packaging

All our postal packaging is biodegradable: cardboard, paper packing tape, brown paper and corn starch packing chips. But biodegradable waste in landfill can produce methane, because organic material breaks down without oxygen. Some landfill sites capture the methane and burn it for energy, but we ask our customers to compost the packaging where possible, and to put the corn starch chips in their food-waste bin if they don't have a compost heap.

Reducing carbon emissions

Recycling isn't enough on its own. Everything we use has a carbon footprint (a paper bag often has a bigger one than a plastic bag), so we're always looking for ways to make our resources go further. We shred a lot of the cardboard that's delivered to us and use it to make compost and no-dig beds for herbs and vegetables.

We're all keen gardeners. We grow salad and tomatoes at work for our lunches, veg at home, and some of the herbs that go into our products.

Re-using jars

We're often asked whether we take back jars to re-use. We don't have a formal returns system, but if you'd like to send yours back, we'll clean and re-use them. If you're local, you can drop them into our parcel shed at any time, day or night. Or post them to us, wrapped carefully: our postal address is on our Contact Us page.

Of course, you can re-use them at home too. They're dark glass with metal lids, airtight and endlessly useful, and the low-tack glue on our labels means they peel off easily.

Working with suppliers

We work with our suppliers to reduce waste too, asking them to use sustainable packaging and suggesting ways to cut waste, and we favour those with an eco conscience.

Renewable energy

We're committed to making our workshop at The Cheese Yard in Wells as energy efficient as possible, using renewable energy wherever we can, and becoming carbon neutral as soon as we're able. Watch this space.