Brand Spotlight: Dr Bronner, Organic And Fair Trade Skincare
Dr Bronner is the USA's number 1 top-selling natural soap brand and the leader in organic and fair trade skincare. The products leave you with a clean and clear conscience, as well as refreshing your body.
The brand was started by Dr Emanuel Bronner - a third-generation soap maker - who started making peppermint liquid soap in 1948. Dr Bronner would give away soaps at his lectures. Thanks to word of mouth, the sales shot through the roof and over time, the soaps became more readily available in mainstream stores and is now distributed worldwide.
Dr Bronner is a brand that's highly popular and loved by consumers and celebrities alike. Famous figures such as Lady Gaga, Natalie Portman, Bobbi Brown and Kate Hudson totally rave about its products.
Most importantly, Dr Bronner's products are multi-purpose, recyclable, vegan, cruelty-free, natural, organic. Ingredients are ethically and sustainably sourced. You can find the products on the website, Whole Foods, Planet Organic and John Bell & Croyden.
So if you're looking for an organic and fair trade skincare brand, Dr Bronner is the one to try.
I recently contacted Dr Bronner for an interview/Q&A piece, and thankfully I received responses from Lauren Bronner, who's the granddaughter of the founder!
Hello! Please introduce yourself. Who are you, where are you based and what is your role?
I am Lisa Bronner, the granddaughter of Dr Bronner’s company founder Emanuel Bronner. I am based in San Diego, California, near Dr Bronner’s Headquarters. As a writer and consumer advocate, I produce a blog, Going Green with a Bronner Mom, and speak to a variety of audiences about transitioning to greener lifestyles and using healthier products for food, body, and home.
What is the ethos of Dr Bronner?
Our Mission Statement says it best:
“In all we do, let us be generous, fair and loving to Spaceship Earth and all its inhabitants. For we're All-One or None! All-One!”
What are your top tips for those who want to transition into ethical and eco-friendly beauty, especially organic and fair trade skincare?
Keep it simple. We have to remember that our skin is our body’s largest organ. On average, a woman who wears makeup daily can absorb over 2 kilograms of cosmetics. We better make sure that what’s in those cosmetics is something we want in our bodies.
Steer clear of some of the worst ingredients like Parabens, Phthalates, Ethoxylated and Quarternium compounds. Parabens are a common preservative linked to endocrine disruption.
“Fragrance” in the ingredient list can hide a proprietary blend of over 3,000 possible chemicals, the worst among which are Phthalates. It's a substance that has been linked to everything from male reproductive issues to autism spectrum disorder to Type II Diabetes to breast cancer.
Ethoxylated ingredients – known by their “-eth” endings – carry a high risk of contamination of a carcinogenic by-product called 1,4 Dioxane. Quarternium compounds release formaldehyde - a known carcinogen - into products the longer they sit on the shelf.
What's your favourite Dr Bronner product?
I could maintain my entire beauty regimen with Dr Bronner’s Pure Castile soap (Citrus is my current favourite) and Dr Bronner’s Coconut Oil. The soap keeps me clean from head to toe. It keeps my adult-onset acne well in-check and makes my hair very soft and healthy.
The Coconut oil is what I use for nearly everything else – a moisturizer, a shaving gel, make-up remover, hair masque, deodorant ingredient, sugar scrub ingredient. And you can eat it. I could probably be stranded on a desert island with it and do just fine.
What inspired you to start working for Dr Bronner?
As with many family businesses, when there’s a job that needs doing, any family member might get roped into doing it! Throughout the years, I have been involved in many ways. In high school and college, I would spend my summers in Dr Bronner’s office – which was located in a bedroom of my grandfather’s house – where I would fill in for the two women who staffed it while they took some time off.
Another time there were some bottles – and by “some,” I mean several thousand – that needed to go to Canada but didn’t have the required bilingual label. So I spent a couple of days carefully placing French/English stickers on the labels to bring them up to code.
In more recent years, I have been part of the customer engagement team – answering emails, upwards of 100 a day, but now focus mainly on the “Going Green” blog.
What's been your biggest achievement since working for Dr Bronner?
What I’ve built in the “Going Green” blog itself has been my greatest achievement. I have had a lot of help from very talented people to do it. In the blog, I try to get to the root of matters that affect our every day, finding the scientific basis for claims, breaking down complex chemistry, and presenting it to busy consumers in easy to digest ways.
I’m glad people use it as a resource, and I love it when people ask me completely random questions because it indicates they trust me, even on topics not directly related to Dr Bronner’s. That is very humbling.
What's next for Dr Bronner?
I am in the process of producing more short videos for my blog’s “Going Green” series that give busy folks quick, easy ways to detoxify their homes and bodies.
As a company, Dr. Bronner’s as a company is moving forward with a huge Regenerative Organic Agriculture education campaign. It is committed to having our main ingredients Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) within three years.
Along with other like-minded businesses, we are seeking to revolutionize the way America and the world farms to replenish the soil instead of depleting it, improve the living conditions of farm animals, and sequester carbon out of the atmosphere and back into the soil, reducing Greenhouse Gasses in our air.
We are looking to have our Virgin Coconut Oil be ROC by 2020. These are all part of our efforts to leave the Earth better than we found it.
