I desperately wanted to do something that would create positive change for the environment.
I really believe that business is the way to do that.
Business created so many of the problems we have today, so I believe business can fix it as well.
Hi I am Brianne West. I'm the CEO and founder of Ethique and I like to consider myself an
environmentalist. It seemed to me that the cosmetics industry is, well it is absolutely full
of waste but it's also full of really horrendous practices. Most people are aware of what palm oil
is and most people know generally that it's bad but people don't typically know that it's within
95% of your typical cosmetics. It's devastating for forests and it's a horrific industry for labor
abuse. Plastic is a big thing - we are a plastic free company, it's what we were founded on.
Most people know the plastic issues nowadays; there'll be more plastic in the sea than fish
by 2050, we all know the horrendous statistics. So we need to we need to stop using plastic for
things that there are better alternatives for and we absolutely need to get better recycling methods
and systems in place because the ones we have now are woefully inadequate. Picking the cosmetic
industry as frivolous as it might seem, it's something most people buy and most people use,
so it's something that I could have a genuine impact on.
Ethique makes bars, everything you can imagine in your house and kitchen and bathroom so shampoo,
conditioner, moisturisers, kitchen cleaners, pretty much everything you can think of
we do but plastic free. It doesn't make sense to me at all to make products that are 60 to 95%
water, so your conditioner is typically 95% water; by removing the water you do a couple of things.
Not only do you save water, you also save plastic which is a very water intensive product itself
and then you've got the weight, water is heavy. There's already water in our bathroom,
let's ship the light active ingredients to someone and they can use the water they already have at
home and you're saving a massive amount of carbon emissions. One bar, which is equivalent to three
bottles, is about 8% of the carbon footprint of a liquid product. So I started back in 2012
which feels like a lifetime ago. When I was still at university I desperately wanted to
do something that would create positive change for the environment in particular and I really believe
that business is the way to do that. I also wanted to prove that it was possible to be as ethical
and environmentally friendly as possible whilst running a sustainable and successful business.
That all sort of culminated in creating a company that was completely waste free but also operated
you know, so living wage certified, donations to charity, all those sorts of things that
make Ethique what it is. About a year and a half I operated out of my kitchen, moved out into a small
factory after doing a bit of testing on friends and family, getting really good feedback and then
really it just grew from there. I got a lot of support from various investors around New Zealand
and we did a couple of equity crowdfunding rounds and now we're in 24 countries around the world and
it's gone quite well. If you want to convince people that sustainability is the way to go
there are two ways of doing it; so one is consumer pressure, so you educate the consumer and you get
them riled up and you get them excited about something, the other way of doing it is proving
it and showing that it is financially valuable to do so. And that's kind of what I say about
Ethique is we do tackle that in two ways. So we are the 22nd fastest growing company
in the Asia-Pacific region and I guess that goes to prove that not only are we profitable
but we also grew fast or growing still fast and in a way that is financially sustainable
and yet we're not compromising on anything from the environment or for people. So when other
companies see that and they see that little bit of consumer pressure on the side that is building,
they will start to put those changes in place but there's always things we can do better at. There
is always changes out there in the environment, so we're always very aware of how we can do better
and carbon emissions are something everybody can do. It's as simple as changing from air
freight to sea freight for a lot of companies for example. We do a lot of research into how we can
continue to be what we call ourselves, which was the world's most sustainable cosmetics company.
The fashion industry is the second biggest polluter in the world.
We offer people the opportunity to come and learn to sew,
to learn to repair, to make more sustainable choices than their fashion consumption.