That climate collapse is happening is undeniable. Every day I'm reading about wild fires turning thousands of acres into a charred wasteland across Canada, Russia, the Mediterranean, Australia, South America and the western United States. Ancient forests destroyed, homes lost, lives wrecked. Ferocious storms batter coastlines with increasing regularity. Increasing CO2 emissions are causing the acidification of our seas and a fundamental change in marine life. Melting ice is changing the salinity of the sea affecting the currents that drive deep, cold currents like those in the thermohaline circulation which regulate our global climate by preventing extreme temperature differences and distributing heat more evenly across the planet.
And yet, with all this sound scientific evidence, politicians are back peddling at an astonishing rate on agreements which attempted to mitigate the catastrophe that is unfolding. Those who control the capital are setting the agenda and calling the shots and feckless political leaders are increasingly clamping down and silencing voices of opposition. I never thought in my lifetime I would again hear professors described as 'the enemy' after Nixon's comments to Kissinger in 1972 but here we are.
In the areas that I work - skincare, herbal teas, coffee and tinctures we have our own set of issues that contribute to climate change and pollution, and whilst I can't influence global or even national politics, I can try to make changes that make our little business more responsible and less polluting.
A few weeks ago I decided to do an audit of A.S Apothecary, it was a comprehensive look at what we do, how we do it and what more can we do. Microplastics are a big problem, our friends at Nini Organics have been talking about their use across the industry particularly in terms of ingredients, but I also wanted to include plastics that may shed or leach into our products from our production process.
In the beauty industry microplastics are in so many products, a study by the Plastic Soup Foundation in 2022 found that 'out of more than 7,000 products from brands including L'Oréal Paris, Garnier, Nivea, Gillette, Oral-B, and Head & Shoulders, 87% contained microplastics.'
Of these, most are an intentional addition to opacify, make products more matt, to add a soft, silky feel and to generally alter texture. The days of the microbead for scrubbing in cosmetics are largely over having been banned in wash off products in the UK, US, Europe, Korea, Taiwan, China, New Zealand and many more. The issue is that in leave on products such as moisturisers, lipsticks etc, ingredients containing microplastics are still allowed.
Beat the Microbead have a list of cosmetic ingredients that contain microplastics - there are 19 pages in the worst red category. If you use large scale commercially produced products, you may want to check your product ingredients against the list, https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/guide-to-microplastics/red-list/
We don't use any of these ingredients in our products because we understand the benefits of pure plants, we know how to alter texture with different oils and butters, we know how to blend oily and 'dry' oils for finish and effect. We know which plants will give a soft silky feel and we understand scent without the need for artificial fragrance or 'parfum' as its described in products to hide a whole raft of horrors.
Beyond ingredients however there is another layer of plastic pollution - this is the effect of leaching and shedding and it's perhaps the more hidden aspect of microplastic pollution that directly affects you. If ingredients are stored in plastic tubs or if making is done in plastic bowls or particularly where machines are used, over repeated use microplastics shed into the ingredients or the product.
In larger scale cosmetic production where products are made by machine, ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), Polycarbonate (PC), and Polyoxymethylene (POM) are used for structural components and parts requiring high durability and specific properties like impact and heat resistance. Materials like PMMA (acrylic) are used for parts needing optical clarity and a high-gloss finish. The selection depends on the part's function, with high-strength plastics like Polypropylene (PP) or specific grades of Polyethylene (PE) used for containers or lower-cost components.
We now store virtually all our ingredients in glass jars. The beauty of being small is that we don't have ton bags of any ingredient, everything is on a small human scale so we can immediately decant into glass. We can't do anything about delivery of making oils such as Jojoba being in non-glass bottles but we can deal with it once it gets to us.
Our essential oils are stored in metal or glass, our Olive oil comes in a metal container and of course all the plants we grow are now picked into baskets and stored in glass. Everything we distil is in glass too.
Our mixing bowls are gradually moving over to ceramic or metal. I hope within the next few weeks to have eliminated almost all microplastic shedding parts from our making process. I'm struggling to find an alternative for our silicone spatulas but at least these don't shed in the same way as other plastics. They tend to fracture over time so we make sure ours are in good condition - nevertheless they'll have to go too.
We have hessian sacks for other plant matter - these work well for short term storage in the warmer months. Up here the climate isn't suitable for longer term hessian storage, it's too damp but in the warmer summer months they are great.
In terms of products, we put almost all our products into glass and always have. We do use a form of plastic for the lids, there's no getting away from this just now. I'm always looking out for an alternative but have yet to find one. Most wooden lids are actually plastic lined, metal lids have plastic inserts. Refill packs drive me round the bend - all seem to need specialist commercial recycling, none are home compostable, all are lined even if they are kraft paper on the outside. At least our glass jars can be recycled or reused and we welcome their return. Again this is something I look at all the time. If you know of a refill pack that genuinely fits the bill and isn't just greenwashing, please do let me know.
In terms of making, everything we do is made by hand. The only exception is our bottle filler that we use for Wild Eve and again because we are small, we use it only once a month or less, so it isn't getting the heavy wear and tear of a big commercial machine and it is the wear and tear that produces the most shedding.
I read an article by Claudia Pratesi, an academic working in the US. She was writing about the amount of microplastics in coffee and tea, not the beans or leaves themselves but the disposable cups they were served in. She cites research showing that 'Recent studies have uncovered evidence that disposable beverage containers release thousands of plastic particles into hot beverages, adding to concerns about plastic accumulation in human tissues. Research from China Jiliang University reveals that a single hot beverage might contain thousands of microscopic plastic particles, with concentrations varying by cup type and temperature.
Testing of 90 commercial disposable cups showed substantial plastic debris release, with polyethylene-coated paper cups releasing 675 to 5,984 particles per liter, researchers found.
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur published research estimating that the average person could consume approximately 0.03 milligrams of plastic debris per kilogram of body weight daily through single-use cups. Over a lifetime this equates to roughly 54 grams (1/4 cup) of microplastic exposure.'
I was horrified by this, so this week we have now stopped serving coffee or tea in takeaway cups at the Apothecary shop. We have cups that you can use on the premises or cups on the shelf you can buy and we'll wash and use for your drinks and we're extra happy to fill a cup you bring with you, but we won't be serving or buying takeaway cups again.
All our teas are loose and made in a teapot because most teabags (with the exception of Clipper) are the equivalent of pouring boing water onto plastic and then drinking it. Polypropylene is used to to seal teabags and/or they are made of plastics from which micro and nanoplastics are released when steeped in hot water. Loose tea made in a teapot also tastes better...
The wellbeing teas that we grow and sell are put into a compostable cellulose bag and then a cardboard tube. We know how biodegradable the cellulose is because we used to put our salt into the same bags but had to stop because the salt broke down the cellulose in a matter of weeks spilling our lovely Sugar Kelp Salt all over the floor.
Microplastics are everywhere, in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. They have been found in every part of our bodies from our brains to our blood to our reproductive organs, so every effort that we can make to reduce that exposure is good even if the overall impact is small.
As small makers, we are in a position to make changes quickly to our working practices to support the health of our customers and our employees and specifically address the issues of microplastics and other pollution within our environment. It just takes a bit of thought and a desire to keep on changing as new evidence emerges.