While Black Friday may be very profitable for companies, it is not always beneficial for our planet. With some people shopping to excess and purchasing and purchasing unnecessary items, there is likely to be greater shipping which leads to higher CO2 emissions. The extra plastic packaging and older items (which might still be perfectly fine to use) often end up in landfills.

Over the last few years Green Friday has become more popular. This movement opposes the over consumption of Black Friday and encourages consumers to think and act sustainably. 

So… How can you support Green Friday?

In many ways really 🙂

For example….

You could practice Mindful shopping

We’re all tempted at times to buy more than we need and to get rid of things that are actually still fine to use. So before going on a shopping spree it’s good to take some time to reflect what you actually need to buy and why. 

• Do you have to replace the item? 
• Could it be fixed? 
• How often will you use the item? 
• Can you buy this sustainably? 
• How is it made?
• What will happen once you’re done with it? 
• How do you dispose of it? 
• What company are you supporting by buying it? 
• Does it match your values?

Mindful shopping is a great way to shop more sustainably.

Another great way of participating in Green Friday is by…

Shopping locally!

Why not support some small local business in your area? Supporting local producers is the easiest way to reduce the carbon footprints of your purchases. It can be so nice to just walk around your neighbourhood to discover local, unique little shops. Lots of them can be family run and provide personalised customer service! 

While this isn’t necessarily an option for everyone today due to lockdown restrictions – some local shops have innovative ways of delivering to the community – such as by bicycle. It’s always worth checking out.

Charity or second hand shops

Charity or second hand shops often contain hidden gems. You can discover so many pre-loved items, often for a lot cheaper than their original price! And by doing this you not only reuse items, but also reduce the demand for new products and their carbon footprint. If you buy from a charity shop you also support a good cause at the same time! 

And whatever you don’t need or want anymore you can donate to the shops yourself.

Borrow or swap

Did you know that there are tons of apps that allow you to share or borrow items rather than buy them new? 

How amazing is that?! 

Apps like Vinted and Swopped make it easy to exchange your pre-loved clothes with others online.

For DIY and gardening tools, travel, music equipment and a whole host of other items you might only need for a short time, apps such as Streetbank and Badlee offer a solution. 

If you’d rather visit a shop in person, the Library of Things in Crystal Palace, London is a nice option with an extensive catalogue of useful products that can be reserved online.

Recycle

Why not buy some recycled items as Christmas presents, better even if they can be recycled again! That way you’re gifting something not only to your loved one, but also to the planet by minimising the waste ending up in landfill!

Christmas present shopping 

We know Black Friday is really tempting for buying Christmas presents. And we understand that. But why not give your loved ones a different Christmas present this year? 

Instead of buying them an item you could gift them an activity you can do together, make a donation in their name, or maybe you could cook a nice meal for them and finish the evening with a games night. 

You could make some of our fantastic natural skin care products for a fraction of the price they would retail in the shops.  Check out some of our recipes, here

Loved reading our Green Friday Tips? Make sure to remember by pinning this!

The School of Natural Skincare was recently crowned as the Best Online Organic Skincare Formulations School in 2020. The Lux Life research team gathered and analyzed customer testimonials, treatments, formulations and product ranges for over three months before picking School of Natural Skincare as the number one online organic skincare formulations school in 2020. 

As a leader in the $4.2 trillion Health, Beauty & Wellness industry, this is a tremendous milestone for the online school and a huge honour.

Since the school was founded in 2010, Directors Gail and Gareth Després have been combating misinformation and correcting inaccurate claims that have spread across the internet regarding skincare formulations. With much of this advice becoming almost mainstream, it has led to many homemade products that are dangerous, unstable or simply not effective. The School of Natural Skincare helps students overcome this false information, teaching them to create their own natural skincare products from scratch and promoting safe practices while following industry cosmetic regulations.

It is such an honor and a wonderful way to mark our 10 year anniversary which we have started celebrating this month!

The merit led process to establish winners’ spanned over three months as the Lux Life research team carefully gathered and analyzed customer testimonials, product ranges, treatments and formulations to establish School of Natural Skincare as one of the very best that the $4.2 trillion Health, Beauty & Wellness industry has to offer.

We are absolutely thrilled to receive this award! 

The School of Natural Skincare has tutors that include cosmetic scientists, cosmetic formulators, aromatherapists, beauty business experts and safety assessors. Every faculty member is extremely passionate about helping students create safe and natural cosmetics that can lead to exciting business prospects in the future. The school has already been featured by the BBC and in print magazines such as Green Parent, Spirit & Destiny, and Country Homes and Interiors Magazine.

Loved reading about this? Why not pin it to remember?

In the 10 years since School of Natural Skincare was started, we’ve managed to achieve some amazing things—not just for ourselves as a business, but for our students and everyone we’ve impacted in that time. We’re so proud to share 10 amazing milestones we’ve experienced!

Where it all began

In March of 2010, Gail received her Cosmetic Product Safety Report for the products she intended to sell, and launched the brand Goodness & Wonder, which was initially a brand of products to sell. Read more about Gail’s leap of faith and how she started her business here.

In April of 2010, Gareth qualified as an IEB Certified Aromatherapist.

In-person workshops

Gail ran her first in-person workshop in May of 2010, in Bristol, and in November of the same year, Gail and Gareth met—the start of a beautiful partnership!

Gail created our new website, and the School of Natural Skincare was born.

Quitting our jobs and first online courses

2013 met us with some major new creative energies—some we had planned and hoped for, and others which were happy surprises! In May of 2013, we launched our first online course, then called Natural Facial Skincare. In October, we launched a second online course, Beautiful Bodycare. Later down the road, we would eventually merge these two courses together and totally update them, creating our Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products, which is one of our bestselling courses to date.

We were so committed to our business that we both quit our jobs in the summer of 2013.

More than a few people thought we were a little crazy, especially since we had just found out that we would be expecting our first child!

Going global

In 2010, we began with in-person workshops in the UK only, with a typical class size of 10-20 people per class.

By 2016, after just six years of operation, School of Natural Skincare had been able to reach over 3,500 students in 50 countries via our online education portal.

The following year, we had bumped those numbers up to over 5,000 students across double the number of countries, and by 2018, we had over 7,000 students in 120 countries!

2019 brought us over the 10,000 student mark, and this year we are so pleased to reach over 12,000 students in 130 countries worldwide.

New tutors, advanced courses and a growing family

In March of 2014, our daughter was born. Two months later, after being asked by our students, we launched the first edition of our Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation.

Our students were asking for a more advanced course which would teach them formulating, and we were excited to offer it at last! By August of that same year, we had welcomed the first 80 students to the Diploma course.

We decided to take our show on the road, and our baby, too, and traveled around to New Zealand, Australia, and through the United States, connecting with students. This milestone was the first time we’d taken on international travel for our growing business.

We were encouraged and excited to see what the future had in store!

In the years that followed, our business continued to grow, as did our family!

In January of 2015, Build Your Beauty Brand: Marketing & Business Intensive for Beauty Brands was launched. In November of 2015, our twins were born!

In order to continue to provide the same high-quality education that our students had come to expect of us, we began working with Chandni Patel, a Cosmetic Scientist.

We launched our Advanced Certificate in High-Performance Serum Formulation (first edition) in January of 2016, and in May of the same year we launched our Diploma in Formulating with Natural Surfactants.

Accreditations and certifications

In July of 2016, we became a certified fairtrade business, a member of the European Association for Distance Learning, and we became an accredited ethical business with the ethical company organisation.

We also became supporters and donors to the Soil Association.

In October of 2017, School of Natural Skincare became accredited by the CPD certification service. All of these allowed us to really continue to build a business that was in alignment with our ethics and values.

Throughout both 2016 and 2017, we also continued to update existing courses, like our second edition of our Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation, and launch new courses as well. 

Our Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products combined facial skincare and beautiful bodycare courses into one single course. We also launched our Price Your Beauty Products for Profit course, as well as our Certificate in Natural, Preservative-Free Face Mask and Cleanser Formulation in 2017. 

Additionally, Tina Svetek, Scientist and Cosmetic Formulator joined us that same year. 

Diploma in Natural Haircare Formulation

In July of 2018, we launched our first course focusing exclusively on haircare, which was something we’d been wanting to do for some time, and something our students had been asking about as well.

The Diploma in Natural Haircare Formulation launched to great reviews and 175 students enrolled during the first year. Some have even launched their own haircare brands like Cortney Wilder founder of Wilder.

International bestselling book

In may of 2019, we were so excited to finally launch our first book, The A-Z of Natural Cosmetic Formulation, which was co-written with Tina Svetek. It was an international Amazon bestseller in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia simultaneously. 

We wrote the book to dispel a lot of common natural formulation myths, and to give people the correct foundation of knowledge so they could know where to start with making their own products.

Also, in June of 2019, we got married! 

Entrepreneur of the Year and Best Online Organic Skincare Formulation School

In October of 2019, the School of Natural Skincare won the Health and Beauty Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Great British Entrepreneur Regional Finals. This was awarded in recognition of being “entrepreneurs who make a real difference when it comes to bettering our health, beauty and wellbeing.” 

The Health & Beauty Entrepreneur of the Year Award seeks out those not only attaining excellence in their field, but also those who put an emphasis on creating better lifestyles.

We are absolutely thrilled to receive this award! It was a great way to kick off our 10 year birthday celebrations which commenced in January 2020 – marking 10 years since Gail and Gareth founded the School! 

After many weeks of deliberation, the results are finally in for the 2020 Health, Beauty & Wellness Awards! 

School Of Natural Skincare has recently been awarded Best Online Organic Skincare Formulations School 2020. We are so thrilled to learn this and feel so grateful to be singled out for all of our hard work.

Office and cosmetic lab

The past ten years have brought us so many wonderful changes, unexpected opportunities, and powerful avenues for growth that we never could’ve predicted. 

Now, we’re planning for the next ten years and looking to the future by renting our first physical office, setting up a permanent cosmetic lab and expanding our team to help us grow and deliver more value. 

Tina Svetek brought more specialist area expertise into the science of skincare formulation – as a chemist and cosmetic formulator – this enabled us to take our knowledge base to another level and provide more value to our students. 

Ria Gane was already working for us in a small capacity but as a professional editor, we engaged her fully into helping us to create course content. 

Kelly Harcus was focused on designing beautifully designed course materials and Adam Loxton helped us to produce, record and edit video content. 

In addition, we hired:

• Lisa Kaufenstein, Marketing & Communications Coordinator to help us communicate our message
• Jon Heavens, Graphic Designer to create the visual representation of our brand and deliver better quality of course materials
• Emilia Macari, Cosmetic Formulator and Lab Manager to support students, do ingredient research, product trials, experiments and create learning materials
• Liz Shepperd, Operations Coordinator, to improve the delivery of our online courses and evolve the student learning experience
• Loisa Despres, Customer Service, to answer the hundreds of enquiries we receive each week!

If you want to get to know our team a little bit better you can read about them here.

Because we truly believe in wellness for all, we have engaged a yoga teacher, Natalie from LoveYogaTree to hold weekly classes in our office for everyone there! 

We are so grateful to everyone who has been with us on our journey these past 10 years, and we look forward to what the future holds, and plan to continue to deliver the best and most accessible courses for all of your skincare education needs.

Enjoyed reading about these amazing milestones? Pin this article to remember them

I remember waiting for the tube early one morning. The tube station was absolutely packed. It was crowded with the usual morning rush, and everyone was drinking their energy drinks. The tube would pull into the station, everyone would pile on, and I remember thinking,

“Gosh, there must be more to life than this.”

In that moment, I realized that I had been living in my little bubble, my little routine, day in and day out. I was spending so much time commuting to and from work, and so much time working, that going out after work or even trying to enjoy the sights of London on the weekends was too much. My lifestyle had really worn me down.

And I knew there had to be more to life than what I was doing.

This moment was what kick-started me to think about what else I might like to do. What else was out there for me? I didn’t really know but I knew I had to do something. I was so inspired to change this pattern that I took what was, at the time, a quite drastic action: I quit my job, and decided to go off exploring and see what else the world had for me, what else I could find. And I decided to follow my instinct, follow my interests, my passion, and my intuition, rather than just staying with the work-sleep-commute grind any longer.

I had always had a fascination with New Zealand, and when I was looking around online, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, I found this amazing-sounding course in New Zealand—a Sustainable Living Internship. It was being run in a community in a really beautiful part of the northern South Island. I took a huge gamble. I bought a ticket and booked myself on this course, not knowing entirely what to expect. In September of 2009, I flew to New Zealand to start this internship.

The program was a 6-month course focusing on all aspects of sustainable living. We studied permaculture design, learned to live off the land, and studied organic farming, learning to grow our own vegetables. I remember one morning after I’d started the course, I was outside, planting seeds, and I looked up and thought what a massive change this was from my lifestyle in London. I was out in the fresh air, sitting in the sunshine, with my hands in the earth, doing something practical and amazing. It was a far cry from commuting on the underground in London and sitting at a computer in an office all day.

This was the first skincare product I had ever made, and it really captured my imagination.

As part of this huge lifestyle change I was undergoing—from very urban to an appreciation of a more natural, organic lifestyle—skincare became part of this. Not only was my diet improving by growing fresh vegetables and learning more about nutrition and cooking, but I had developed a real interest in natural and organic skincare. I started to ask myself, what was in the skincare I was buying and using?

What was in the commercial products I had been using?

Did I even know how to read an ingredient label, and understand what was in the products I was buying?

The more I asked myself these questions, the more I investigated my lifestyle and learned about other, more natural ways of living, the more I wanted to take what I had learned to a much deeper level, especially the herbalism and skincare knowledge.

Towards the end of my stay in New Zealand, I was involved in a minor car accident, and broke my nose. I had to be given general anaesthetic while it was reset, and while I was still groggy and coming around from it, in that dreamy state I had a vision of myself selling my skincare products at a farmer’s market. I remember telling a friend about this when I woke up. It was a bit strange, but it was significant for me! Clearly, my subconscious knew what it was that I was meant to do, what really spoke to me.

Eventually, the course came to an end. I was sad when it was time to return home to England, but I had been so inspired by what I had done and what I’d learned that it caused a massive shift for me. I knew I didn’t want to just go back to the way things had been before. I certainly didn’t want to go back to London, and I was exploring my options to see how I could take the knowledge I’d learned and the passion that I’d developed so I could use this back home.

I continued studying natural skincare.

I also wanted to make preservative-free skincare products, so I developed a small range of products for sale that were preservative-free, anhydrous products, and I used as many local ingredients that were grown in the UK as I could. Although that selection was quite limited, we did have hempseed oil, a variety of essential oils, lavender and chamomile grown in the UK, so I combined those things with things like shea butter from fair-trade cooperatives. My brand back then was called Goodness and Wonder, and I sold these products in local farmers markets and craft fairs and things like that.

I started really small, selling to friends and family who were early supporters.

I went to Christmas fairs and also ran at-home parties. A lot of my friends were very generous and I went to their homes and that’s how I started, with a small but lovely (in my opinion) range of skincare products.

In those early days, selling my products at fairs and farmers markets, I found myself quite often explaining all the ingredients in my products and the process of making them. I began to realize that people were actually really interested in not only buying natural, organic, and locally-made products, but learning how to make them for themselves. This was back in 2010, before there were hundreds of tutorials on the internet.

This was in the very early days of natural skincare, way before sites like Pinterest and YouTube made all these DIY tutorials popular.

It was kind of the start of a natural skincare revolution!

What I realized after explaining this to all these people was that I could combine my background in event management and teaching with my new knowledge and passion for skincare. It was a recipe for running and teaching classes.

Once all of that clicked, I started organizing some workshops and classes in Bristol, where I was living at the time. I remember putting fliers and leaflets all around the city, contacting all my friends and anyone I thought might be interested.

In May of 2010, I ran my first workshop, and it was an amazing experience!

I loved leading it, and it was great to see how much the participants enjoyed it. Everyone finished the class with this amazing range of products they’d made themselves, and it was really a wonderful, positive experience.

Funnily enough, though that first workshop nearly never happened. I had a run of unfortunate events that led up to it, including my car breaking down the night before. I didn’t know how I was going to get to the workshop with all the equipment and everything I had spent weeks preparing. At the last minute, my brother loaned me his car, which was this really old, clapped-out car that I didn’t even feel confident driving, and didn’t even know if it would get me to the venue, but luckily (thank goodness!) it did get there. And then, during the workshop, we got to the point where we had to heat some ingredients, and I couldn’t get the cooker to work, and I had about 15 people there who were ready and waiting to make some products… it wasn’t always smooth sailing! But we found our way through it, and I learned quite a lot, and ultimately the class was a great success.

I had a good few years of running live workshops like these, taking what I had learned each time and incorporating it into my classes. I ran them in Bristol, and then started running them at colleges, and even ran some corporate events when companies started asking me to come in and teach. I went to all sorts of different venues around the UK, and was excited to get a job with the magazine called Country Homes and Interiors to run a series of workshops for them during one summer. I traveled round to York, Bath, London, all sorts of places to run workshops on their behalf, and that was really fun.

Along the way, I had built my first website by teaching myself how to get a very simple one up and running. In those days, I was a one-woman show! I also had a part-time job on the side to help support me, so it was a real juggling act to work that job, keep the website up to date, refine my courses, make and sell my own products, do some marketing, all of it by myself. But not for long.

By November of 2010, I’d been running workshops for about six months or so.

My best friend from university said she’d started a new job and was working with a guy she thought I’d really get on with. She said he’d just finished an aromatherapy qualification, and he’s really into his essential oils and natural products, so she set us up on a blind date.

Of course, this guy turned out to be Gareth.

We had a joint passion for teaching people and sharing our natural skincare knowledge.

After a while, we began running weekend workshops together, evolving and expanding our half-day courses across a whole weekend. One day would be facial skincare, and another would be bath and body care. These workshops were really popular, and we had people traveling from all over the UK to attend. And then one weekend, we had a student that had flown all the way from the Philippines to join us for a weekend workshop. That was what made us realize there really was a global market for what we were doing. We had other students fly in from Portugal, Ireland, all sorts of places, and we knew that there were a lot more people who were interested who might not be able to fly to the UK, so we decided to turn the courses that we’d created into online courses.

We took all the materials that we’d been using, created videos and workbooks, and set up an online classroom. This was in the very early days of online education, and there wasn’t the same availability for software as there is now. It wasn’t easy, but we did it, and as soon as we launched online, our reach expanded enormously.

We had become a global, international skincare school.

From all of the in-person workshops, and all of the studying we had done and experience we had gleaned, we developed our workshops into online courses that really brought what our students were learning to life. We had experience teaching our practical workshops, and we know what kind of questions came up and what kind of challenges students might face, so we worked that into the online classes, which went on to become what’s now our Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products. We knew our students wanted a great course for beginners that were very practical and came with loads of recipes to help them make their own products.

From a question in the middle of a crowded tube station to an epiphany half a world away, School of Natural Skincare has grown from a tiny, one-woman shop to a global school serving students every day. We are so proud to help our students learn, expand their skills, and launch their own skincare businesses. Since those early days, and even since our first official online launch, we’ve added so many courses and broadened our availability to include so many more kinds of skincare products, bodycare, and even hair care as well.

It’s been ten tremendous years, and in that time we’ve achieved ten milestones we never thought possible. Our team has expanded to include other experienced cosmetic formulators and cosmetic scientists, plus all of our support team—editors, videographers, customer service, marketing, everyone who helps keep School of Natural Skincare going.

We couldn’t have done it without you!

So, from our home to yours, thank you for being with us on this tremendous journey. I hope all of us can continue on learning, making, and changing the world, one product at a time.

Liked learning about the beginnings of the School of Natural Skincare? Pin this to remember!

The natural world is at the heart of all that we do at the School of Natural Skincare, and it has always been of the utmost importance to us that we set ourselves high standards of ethical and sustainable practice as a business.

The Ethical Company Organisation prides itself on setting the benchmark for corporate social responsibility, and awards Ethical Accreditation to successful candidate companies based on a number of key factors. 

Commitment to animal welfare, progressing human rights, and building a greener future are values that we are proud to share with the organisation, and so we were delighted to see our own school achieve Ethical Accreditation in July of 2016 (and every year since).

As people and as a business, we are deeply conscious of the impact that humans can (and do) have on our environment. To that end, we’re constantly looking for ways to become more ethical, sustainable, natural, and organic, both in our personal and working lives.

It isn’t an easy task and there are definitely constraints, but we make conscious and concerted efforts to improve every day, and that is a great starting point!

The Ethical Company Organisation conducts in-depth research audits in order to assess eligibility for Ethical Accreditation, ensuring that companies meet the standards of a broad range of ethical criteria. 

Here are some of the factors that contributed to our business successfully qualifying for the award:

1. We’re a green business

Ecotricity and the Good Energy Company power our business at both locations. 

Both of these companies are dedicated investors in the development of renewable energy. This way, even when the energy we receive does not come from a renewable source, we are still helping to fund and grow the renewable energy sector. We are proud to support these companies that are seeking to move us all towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future.

2. We’re an online business and are almost completely paperless 

Any paper we use is recycled paper. We also ensure that any paper coming into the office is recycled at the end of its life, and that confidential paper waste is shredded and recycled, too.

3. We teach people how to make how to make skincare and cosmetic products using only natural and organic ingredients

 Where possible, or required, we also help our students to create vegan, halal, kosher, Fair Trade, sustainable, ethical, and Rainforest Alliance products.

4. We only recommend reputable and ethical suppliers

who are specialists in their domain and who seek to provide organic, natural, and ethical ingredients. These are suppliers who share our vision of a green and sustainable future that cares for and respects the natural world.

5. We actively promote using ingredients that are ethically sourced

One example is our promotion of sourcing sandalwood essential oil from Australia rather than India, as Indian sandalwood is an endangered species. We also encourage our students to seek sustainable sources of palm oil or, where possible, alternatives to palm oil for their cosmetics. We encourage students to identify and use locally sourced ingredients where they can, or to use ingredients from co-operatives, communities, and Fair Trade sources.

6. We’re Rainforest Guardians and a certified Fair Trade business

We are proud to support the Rainforest Foundation as Rainforest Guardians. We also use fair trade tea, coffee, sugar, chocolate, biscuits and other goods in our office. To our audience, we promote the importance of Fair Trade and of protecting our rainforests, and demonstrate that every one of us can impact our world for the better, no matter how small the steps we take!

We believe in constantly improving!

Since being awarded Ethical Accreditation in 2016 we have not stopped in our efforts to become more ethical! 

Rather, we have continued to raise the bar for ourselves and our business by setting ourselves new sustainability goals, and seeking to improve the systems that we already have in place.

Here are some of our favourite examples of ways in which we’ve evolved our business in recent years:

1. We’re Corporate partners to the Soil association and the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil)

We help them to campaign for and raise awareness around organic farming, agriculture, land management, food, drinks and cosmetics, and sustainable palm oil.

2. We hold weekly yoga classes

in our office! We strongly believe in the importance of all of our health and wellness and are proud to give our staff the opportunity to join our weekly yoga classes. Our yoga teacher, Natalie, from Love Yoga Tree, comes in every Thursday to host an hour’s yoga class which is popular with the whole team.

3. We’ve twinned our Toilets

2 billion people don’t have somewhere safe or hygienic to go to the toilet (WHO/Unicef). Toilet Twinning enables families living in poverty to have lifesaving loos that improve sanitation, health, and wellness. We have two toilets in the office, and Gail and Gareth have two at their home. All four toilets are twinned with toilets from around the world through the Toilet Twinning organization.

4. We are an approved Brand of Inspiration

We’re delighted to have teamed up with Positive News as one of their Brands of Inspiration. Brands of Inspiration are purpose-led organisations with positive stories to tell and Positive News journalists report on the positive social and environmental change that we are passionate about contributing to.

5. We’re doing what we can to be a plastic-free business by 

• Removing and not bringing single-use plastics into the office.
• Making better purchasing decisions so that we can choose alternatives to plastic.
• Highlighting alternatives to plastic to our audience.
• Ensuring that what little plastic does come into the office is either used for as long as possible or is recycled.

 6. We’ve also teamed up with a number of organizations in 2020 to deliver some valuable training to our audience about sustainability!

The RSPO are delivering training to our audience this year on the subject of sustainable palm oil.

Baraka Shea Butter will also be delivering a number of different training sessions over the coming few months! They will be sharing the importance of sustainable community projects like theirs and explaining the process of creating sustainable palm oil production with smallholdings.

Wayne Dunn, President & Founder of the CSR Training Institute and former professor of practice in Corporate Social Responsibility at McGill University will be delivering training to our audience about how businesses can make a difference in the world and become a force for good.

7. In addition to that, we’re creating a new course this year

oriented around reducing plastic waste and packaging in cosmetics. It also answers the call amongst consumers for more waterless beauty products (click here to find out more about what waterless beauty is).

Our Certificate in Making Zero Waste Cosmetics is coming soon!

As our global audience continues to grow, and more and more students enroll in our courses, we are raising awareness of natural and organic skincare as an ethical option for consumers. 

In addition to this, our students and graduates are contributing to the availability of beautiful, safe, and effective natural skincare products across the globe.

Achieving our Ethical Accreditation was a proud and important moment in the history of our company, and we are so excited to continue exploring the many ways in which we can keep expanding our commitment to running a green business and having a positive impact on our world!

The excitement of getting the keys to our new office was immense.

Quick to follow was the daunting task of kitting the entire place out… and, for a business like ours, that meant a little more than just finding desks and chairs.

First of all, we wanted our office to serve as far more than just an administrative function – we wanted to build a cosmetics lab and video recording studio, too!

Most importantly, we wanted the School of Natural Skincare to be ethical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. It was of paramount importance to us, therefore, that we were running as plastic-free an operation as possible. 

Our goal was to create an office environment that would prioritise not only the wellbeing of our staff, but that of the planet, too.

As was to be expected, we came up against a number of challenges along the way. 

Some essential kitchen equipment (namely our dishwasher, fridge, kettle, toaster, microwave and water filter) were items to which plastic-free solutions simply didn’t exist, and so we had to make a concession on this point.

Financial constraints and practicality came into play, too, specifically with regards to choosing chairs and tables. We hold weekly yoga sessions to which all of our staff are invited, and so we knew we would have to be able to move the office furniture as quickly and easily as possible.

As a result, the chairs and tables that best suited our needs included elements of plastic coating, but we ensured that these elements were kept to a minimum. The chairs were primarily metal, and the tables a combination of metal and wood. 

Delivering the fit out to a budget, and building a space that worked for all of our specific needs was a demanding project, but we maintained the mentality throughout that no step is too small to be taken seriously. 

From our daily cups of coffee to the kitchen roll we used – we were determined to find the most ethical solutions to everyday tasks.

Let’s start with the kitchen and bathroom

Wherever possible, we avoided plastic completely – turning to natural materials, metal, and wood, instead.

There was no need for plastic to come into play when we were eating or drinking. Bamboo is an excellent natural alternative to plastic, and a highly renewable material. So, for the kitchen, we purchased a cutlery drawer, table mats, and chopsticks all made of bamboo.

The rest of our cutlery is either entirely metal, or a combination of metal and wood. Our crockery is ceramic, and we provide glasses rather than plastic cups. 

Tea and coffee are at the heart of any office! 

We ensured that our teapot, cafetiere and milk frother were all metal, as well as our containers for sugar, coffee and tea. 

Our coffee is provided by Percol – the first ground coffee to be Fairtrade certified. The brand’s beans are organic, climate-neutral, and delicious, to boot!

Washing dishes is a plastic-free process, as we installed a sink, draining board, and cutlery holders that were all metal. Our EcoForce dish brush is recycled, and our washing up pad by LoofCo is a 100% plant-based, biodegradable product. 

Supporting like-minded businesses whose ethical values we admire was a fantastic bonus as we worked on fitting out our new space.

Ecover is another company whose environmentally friendly ethos is reflected in their products. Our dishwashing liquid and all of our cleaning sprays are from Ecover, and we utilise the brand’s refill service in order to cut down on packaging waste even further. 

For the toilets, we use EcoLeaf toilet roll, made from 100% recycled paper. We also use their kitchen roll, and both products come in compostable packaging.

We take care to recycle wherever possible at the office, and made sure upon purchasing recycling and general waste bins that we chose the metal options, rather than plastic.

And now for the office itself…

The yoga equipment for our weekly classes comes from Yogamatters – another company that endeavours to minimise its carbon footprint wherever possible. 

We use yoga mats that are all natural, and made from sustainably harvested tree rubber. Our yoga blocks are made from sustainably sourced cork, and our cotton yoga blankets are organic. 

As we all work mainly from MacBooks, it is important to ensure that we look after our posture, and so we procured bamboo laptop stands to prevent unnecessary discomfort or strain for ourselves and our staff.

We have very little need for storage at our workstations, but made sure that the containers we did buy were metal, wood, or bamboo.

The School of Natural Skincare is an almost entirely paperless business, as so much of our work is conducted online. What paper we do use is always recycled, recyclable, or both!

Looking to the future

As we begin the exciting process of kitting out our very own cosmetics lab and video recording studio, many more decisions will have to be carefully mulled over. 

For now, we’ve invested in some stainless steel workstations, as well as plastic-free storage solutions, and a metal breakfast style bar.

We are well aware that new projects present new challenges, and we are already gearing up to meet these with energy, enthusiasm, and creative solutions.

Our vision is for humanity to live in harmony with nature.

The essence of our business is one of inspiration. We want to inspire ourselves and others to 

• innovate and create sustainable change.
• be individual; to stand up for what we believe in and create the lives we want to live.
• act with integrity, honouring both ourselves and the environment, and making a difference in the world.
• approach life intuitively, in alignment with the natural world.

That means we take it upon ourselves to ask the big questions, and to find solutions that will keep taking us closer to leading a sustainable, ethical and natural way of working and living.

We’re not perfect, and sometimes the right answers can be difficult to find. Sometimes we have to concede or compromise – just for the time being, but our goals of sustainability and integrity remain resolute.

As part of our 10th anniversary celebrations we thought we’d offer you a little peek ‘behind the scenes’ of our organization with a fun Q&A session!

We’re a small, global team, with our HQ in the south-west of the UK; a beautiful region called Devon.  

You’re probably familiar with the founders and Directors of the School of Natural Skincare, Gail and Gareth Després, and if you’re studying with us then you’ll know Tina Svetek, our Formulation Tutor. 

You might have emailed us, and contacted Liz Shepperd or Loisa Després in customer services, or perhaps you’ve joined our online communities and enjoyed one of Geraldine Quinlan’s online challenges. 

You may be totally new to the School of Natural Skincare and have no idea who any of these people are! If that’s the case, it’s ok! 

We’re going to introduce everyone, including some staff who you probably won’t have heard of: Jon Heavens (our Graphic Designer), Lisa Kaufenstein (our Marketing and Communications Coordinator), Ria Gane (our Publications Manager and Editor), Emilia Macari (our brand-new Formulation Tutor) and Jemima Brash (our Social Media Coordinator). 

They work on our courses, on our social media, on the articles we send you and the videos we share, and much more. 

But we’re not going to ask ordinary questions; we aimed for something a little different here, things you may not already know (or could have guessed) about our wonderful team!

(If you are looking for our professional bios instead, you can find those here: Our tutors and team).

We’d also like to give a quick shout out to two people who have made big contributions in the past, but don’t play such a major role at the moment, Hils and Chandni. We also work with Anja and other very valued members of our wider team, on a less regular basis. We love you all!

Masters of their craft all have one thing in common: they never stop learning. But how do they do it? How do they pursue their passion whilst keeping on top of everyday life?

Whether your dream is to start a natural skincare business, or simply to create products for yourself, your family and friends, we know it’s not always easy to find the time to develop your passion.

To help you with this challenge, I (Gareth) will be sharing my own experience and advice when it comes to the art of juggling life with doing what you love.

1. Start with your passion – your ‘why’.

The School of Natural Skincare grew from just two people and a shared passion for natural skincare.

Gail and I founded the business whilst both working full-time jobs. And as if that wasn’t enough, we then went on to start a family, including twins!

Somehow, amidst all these commitments, we managed to turn our shared vision into the wonderful, thriving community and online business that you see today.

It wasn’t easy! But it is possible.

So, how did we do it?

We have always believed in what we do, 100%. We find joy in doing it, and we look to the future with unwavering faith. What we needed was focus.

Finding out that we were expecting our first baby got us VERY focused indeed.

Now, we only had eight months to get things moving! Otherwise, we knew our dreams would only be pushed further and further down the line.

So, ask yourself, what is your passion – your ‘why’? What do you love to do, and why do you love to do it?

2. Figure out a way to do it around your family.

Our business grew dramatically after the birth of our baby girl. We had both quit our full-time jobs, and I can still remember vividly working on material for our flagship courses well into the early hours of the morning. My office hours became 9pm-4am!

Gail and I shared night shifts looking after our daughter, feeding and changing diapers – and writing course material in between!

It was the best and hardest experience of my life.

Being able to do work that I loved, as well as having quality time with my baby daughter was wonderful, and a joy I’m all too aware is not always possible for working dads.

Figuring out a way to work around our family was extremely important to us. We have always sought to find the fun and the excitement in our job – the things that get us going – and to incorporate these things into family life.

We even took our business and our baby travelling the world for 8 months – going from the USA to Australia, and then New Zealand.

Though balancing a baby and a business was definitely daunting at times, these months were our commitment to living the one life we have to the fullest. This was a time we will always treasure.

Juggling parenthood with starting a business taught us that if you want something badly enough, you will find the time to do it. Sometimes that means staying up late – after the family’s gone to bed – or waking up early.

Whilst doing this crucial work, remind yourself that these challenges won’t last forever, and that nothing feels as good as seeing your hard work pay off.

How could you make your passion for natural & organic skincare work around your family commitments?

3. Find your focus.

Our business was growing, and demanding more of us than ever before. And then… the twins arrived! OMG!

We weren’t sure how we were going to cope – but we did! And you know what?

Our business grew because of our children.

There’s no doubt about it: looking after three children under the age of two, as well as running a relatively new business, gave us no choice but to focus!

What could have been an obstacle became a strength! Without any spare time to waste on procrastination, we found our minds, senses, and energies more centered than ever before.

And the focus and hard work paid off.

In that time, our business more than quadrupled in size. In 12-18 months, we went from what was a very part-time business, to becoming a fully fledged, internationally recognized online school, with students all over the world who loved what we did and were as passionate about natural skincare as we were.

4. Listen to your customers.

For those of you aiming to start or grow a business, feedback is your best friend. Early feedback from friends and family is especially helpful.

Of course, because this is your business – your passion – feedback (especially the critical kind!) may be hard to hear. It may even make you feel defensive. But never forget that your customers can teach you so much. This is why having a platform where your customers can connect with you is vital to success.

When you create a platform to connect with your customers, you open yourself to a wealth of constructive feedback, and, in turn, your customers can connect with your vision and with you.

We believe that when you communicate with passion, belief, and honesty, people can sense that you speak from the heart, and this resonates with them. Whilst building our business, we focused on problem solving, and in maintaining an unwavering faith in what we did. We aimed to stay calm in times of stress. And to figure things out together, as a team.

Listen to your customers’ comments and criticisms. Take in their praise and answer their questions. It is your gift to be able to deliver solutions to their problems and to create a community of customers who truly love what you have to offer.

What feedback would be helpful for you and who could give it to you? How could you receive this feedback in a way that helps you improve and grow?

5. Embrace mistakes – no one is perfect and you will mess up!

Nobody’s perfect, and we all mess up from time to time – we’re only human, after all! We’re sorry whenever we do and we do our utmost to correct the mistakes we’ve made.

We also recognise that mistakes offer an important opportunity to grow.

Now, when Gail and I look at the past, we cherish our growth and the work that we’ve done. At the same time, we are always aiming to improve and to grow, to evolve and develop, and to find the best solutions possible to any new challenges that arise.

6. Seek help!!!

You can’t do it all on your own. Seriously. You’ll likely experience burnout if you try to. We did it alone for a while, until we realised we needed help in order to stay sane.

For our business, we sought expert advice from across the board. From graphic design to advertising, from book-keeping to tech support, from business coaches to life coaches, and online courses of one kind or another.

Over time, we gathered a team of freelancers who have helped our business go from strength to strength – beauty business experts, cosmetic formulators and scientists.

Now, with a number of full-time staff members, we can reach and inspire more people than ever before and give opportunities for more people to learn and grow!

At home, when our twins were three months old, we hired a childminder for 12 hours each week. This carved out dedicated time for work. As our business has grown, we’ve been able to increase the amount of support we have at home in order to continue to grow our enterprise.

This means that a cook, a cleaner, and our childminder all play integral roles in helping us to juggle life with what we love.

Let me be clear though, we are still hands on parents – we still cook, clean, and tidy every day.

We dry tears, wipe bums, clean up sick, and deal with sleepless nights and very early mornings. We do the shopping, play with our kids, organise family adventures, and do as much as we possibly can to ensure that we are able to live our most authentic truth as a family and as a business.

As well as this, it was important to us that we could home-school our eldest daughter. She is now nearly six, and we intend to do the same for the twins. There’s no question that it’s all hands on deck, but still we do it!

And why?

Because this is the path we choose. It may be hard, but our faith is unwavering, and at the end of the day, we know that we believe in what we do.

What help do you need? Who can help you to achieve the dreams you have? What training could you get and what support would be most helpful?

7. Don’t wait around.

It’s easy to put our dreams on hold because we feel that we need more knowledge, more money, more time. But the truth is that with this mindset the ‘perfect day’ might never arrive. Realising that NOW is the time to connect with your passion is the only way forward.

Harness your passion! Be consumed by it! And work hard to find ways to bring your goals to life.

Ask yourself what’s stopping you. What is standing in the way of you progressing, learning, and dedicating time and energy to your passion for natural and organic skincare?

Not enough money and time are always big reasons we hold ourselves back. But money and time are problems that may never go away. What we can choose to do is to find a way to pursue our passion regardless.

How could you help yourself to keep going, to keep working on your passion, no matter what the obstacle?

8. Plan Ahead

A few years back, Tara Gentile (now Tara McMullin), shared with us this golden nugget: design your business now as if you were already achieving your three year goals. That is to say, dream big, and as you dream of your future, put the required infrastructure in place now. Then you can start the next dream, and the next!

By following Tara’s advice you are setting your business up to grow. And this works for learning a new craft, too!

Here’s why:

1. You’re more likely to successfully achieve your goals because you feel as if you almost already have.

2. Upon achieving your goals for your business/craft, you will already have made sure that the necessary people, processes, and systems are in place for your next goals to be reached.

And so the cycle of success continues!

Planning ahead is also about cultivating the art of dreaming, ofImagining the future and mapping out what it could be like, then making a plan to make it happen. Everything starts with an idea! And planning ahead is what allows our ideas to take flight.

Without needing to rely on anyone else, think right now how you could plan ahead.

9. Cultivate the art of marketing

If you want to start and grow a business, you must cultivate the art of marketing. It doesn’t matter how good your product is – if no-one knows about it, how will your business grow? Who will come knocking at your door? And how will your business endure?

Start small, by dedicating an hour a week to finding customers, then build that up to an hour a day.

Find experts to help you with everything. We’re talking web design, photography, advertising and selling online; don’t take bad advice or engage with anyone who will devalue your offering and limit your sales.

10. Find your tribe!

Most important of all, find people who want to buy from you – who listen to and are inspired by you, and who enjoy being part of your business.

The customer enables your business to exist – so get searching for people who will love what you do. Ask yourself, how will you find and connect with potential customers? And how will you help them to find you, too?

With hard work, a good attitude, and plenty of nurture and care, the rest will take care of itself.

What tribe could you join? Where can you get support? Who can help you to learn, grow, develop and progress? Who could help and support you to do what you want to do?

11. Never forget your ‘why’.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing more important than your ‘why’. Whether natural skincare is your hobby or your career, always remember the real passion that put you on this path in the first place. Never forget your love for what you do.

In times of challenge or uncertainty, find pockets of time (they can be big or small!) for learning more. Then, watch and take pride as your newfound knowledge elevates your creative endeavours to a whole new level.

What is your ‘why’? Try writing it down.

Ask yourself, why do you make your own products? What is the underlying meaning and joy of your passion for natural skincare?

Why do you do it, and what does it give you, in turn?

12. Be a lifelong learner AND be kind to yourself.

Masters of their craft are lifelong learners. They invest their time and money into their craft because they know they’re investing in more than just learning.

An investment into your craft is an investment for your heart and soul, your health and wellbeing, and ultimately, your happiness.

Because we’re happiest when we’re learning, developing, and making progress. We’re happiest when we do the things that make our heart sing. We’re happiest when we allow ourselves to see how good we are at what we love.

What steps will you take to become a lifelong learner?

If we could only all spend more time doing the things we love, spending time with the people we love the most – surely life would be that much more pleasant.

This is why we choose to be lifelong learners. To never stop growing and never stop trying new things.

The most important thing in all of this life juggling?

Be kind to yourself. Seriously.

Take pleasure in treating yourself from time to time – in practising self-care, and just remember: follow the fun, speak your truth, and practise unwavering faith in yourself. 😊

How could you be kind to yourself?