the desire to share a sustainable body care routine was the main motivation to start Jojo’s Body Care. this motivation has not lost momentum since – rather the opposite. the more time I spend researching the beauty industry, the more environmentally friendly alternatives I find and the more ideas I develop to incorporate them into Jojo’s Body Care. 

 

here is a breakdown of what I currently do to keep my business sustainable​​​

• i source supplies and ingredients from businesses as close to Bowling Green as possible.
  examples: 

  • all beeswax is from local beekeepers  

  • dried flowers for packaging and taking product pictures are from the Community Farmers Market in Bowling Green

  • all butters are ordered from the Etsy shop ShopAfroCosmetics that ships from Atlanta, only 5h away. 

• i purchase ingredients that I use a lot in large bulk quantities to minimize packaging and shipping (mango butter and lavender essential oil for example). 

• i use recycled and/or recyclable packaging to ship your order. small items (like deodorant and knuckle balm) are shipped in compostable shipping envelopes.

• my office is mostly paperless. if I do need to use paper, I use the backside of unneeded printed sheets first. 

• i avoid convenient paper towels in my production process. instead, i go out of my way to use cloths that are properly sanitized between each use.

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my further goals are

• replacing ingredients that are casually used by a majority of beauty product businesses and even homemakers that are not necessarily sustainable just because they are natural and/or organic. instead, I am working on replacing these with ingredients that are either byproducts of another industry (think of grapeseed oil from the wine industry or raspberry seed oil in the jam and juice industry as well as mango butter made from the pits of edible fruits), made of just the harvested seeds of plants so that there is no need to replant (jojoba oil is an example), or simply don’t leave a large carbon foot print in their production (e.g. hemp seed oil. hemp plants grow fast and are resilient to most pests, which means they require less pesticides than other plants). 

• minimizing non degradable labels by using hemp twine with recycled paper tags or compostable labels 

• finding even more regional suppliers to shorten transportation ways 

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tweaking recipes that work well but contain ingredients that meet my high standards of sustainability takes extra amounts of time and experimenting (which can be very frustrating). regardless, I am working hard to get there. 

feeling safe with you as a loyal customer base is crucial for me to venture out into purchasing uncommon, but sustainable and effective (and, of course, typically pricey) ingredients and to invest time into research rather than recruiting new customers. so, if you’ve been shopping with me for a while, THANK YOU SO MUCH, your support means so much to me! if you’re new, I hope you get hooked on these sustainable products that work at least as well as their less planet friendly counterparts!