Plantioxidants is More Than Great Formulas
For this blog post, we are shifting gears a little bit. We are confident and proud of the abundance of antioxidants in all Plantioxidants products. And by self-regulating to ensure our formulas are clean according to USDA organic certification standards, we know we are providing you with the healthiest ingredients and formulas possible. If you follow us on social media or regularly read our blog posts, you are constantly learning about what makes our formulas unique, efficacious, clean, and important for your health; however, what you may not think about because it is fairly obvious is that when you buy a Plantioxidants product and our amazing formulas, you are also getting a bottle, an outerbox, the shipping box, etc. We've put a lot of thought into those for a purpose.
The most important part of any product is the entire product. ~Josh Wadinski, Founder and CEO
For that reason, we are dedicating today’s post to the green beauty pillar of Plantioxidants (i.e. anything that isn’t the formula) and our newest solution to help all of our consumers practice a more sustainable lifestyle when it comes to product purchases. We feel guilty when we purchase products just to throw them away, especially if they come from single-use materials (e.g. plastic straws, to-go coffee cups, etc.). Plantioxidants is founded on the idea of #guiltfreebeauty. This means that not only are we providing you with the healthiest formulas possible, but we are also offering them to you in a way that makes it easy to “take care of the planet and others” without feeling the guilt of being wasteful.
How Plantioxidants Takes Care of the Planet
This past April was a very important month, not just for us at Plantioxidants, but for everyone living on this big beautiful rock. It was a chance to think about our role as consumers and provide solutions on how we can make changes that positively impact the Earth. In case you missed it, here are a few highlights about how we celebrated Earth Month:
Overall, our goal was to show Mother Earth how much we care, and this doesn’t stop at the end of April. By donating 1% of our annual sales to 1% For The Planet, we are helping to take care of the planet all year-round. We are constantly revising and continuously working towards being as sustainable as possible in every way at the company, so we are thrilled to share with you yet another way you can celebrate our beloved Earth the other 364 days of the year.
How You Can Take Care of the Planet
Another great way we are ensuring our impact extends beyond one day or one month each year is through our mail-back program, which also rolled out in April. We started our mail-back program to account for a very upsetting reality. Currently, about 30% of all recyclables (including glass, metal, and plastic) are actually recycled. When we started Plantioxidants, we set out to be a zero-waste company where little to nothing was wasted and we instilled cradle-to-cradle design in everything. Zero-waste is a goal and a process because, much like being sustainable, it requires daily routines and rituals, just like your skincare. The goal is to leave no, or at least as little, waste as possible while at the same time instilling design and processes that consider the entire lifecycle of both our products and our processes (cradle-to-cradle).
We will explain zero-waste and cradle-to-cradle design in more detail in an upcoming blog post. For now, here’s everything you need to know about our mail-back program:
Plantioxidants Mail-back Program
Step 7: Cherish your body!From there, just keep on being you and taking care of that beautiful face of yours. Once you’re ready, repeat the process!
A Plastic-free Future
With the Plantioxidants mail-back program, everyone wins. After many calculations and considerations, we decided to go with 100% post-consumer recycled plastic instead of several other options simply due to the responsibility we have as a company to help clean up the environment. We don’t need to use alternative forms of packaging until we use up the excessive amount of wasted plastic that already exists on our planet. In an ideal world, other companies will adopt this strategy and we will all use 100% non-virgin materials and downcycle them until we don’t have waste in the environment. We can then move on to a different packaging material, and after all of those single use, non-virgin materials are removed, we will start looking at new virgin resources. We feel strongly that this mail-back program and your implementation of it is imperative in helping us achieve this goal. And for those wondering about the carbon offsets, if we recycle all of our bottles the carbon footprint is lower than if ~10% are recycled without our mail-back program, and that includes the shipping (which we do with hybrid vehicles).
We will keep you updated about our usage of the plastic, but we are already looking at partnering with a start-up that uses recycled plastic to help build homes for the homeless, working with start-ups that are using recycled plastic in road reconstruction, and (which we feel most excited about) recycling your bottles into future Plantioxidants products. No matter the final use, together we can clean up the planet and extend Earth Day to be honored every day.