At the beginning of June we asked journalist Lizzie Rivera to investigate the beauty sector and the risk of greenwashing in the beauty industry.
Following up on that extremely eye-opening article, we now want to discover more about one of the ethical, sustainable, and organic beauty brands that truly lives up to its green credentials: Wild Beauty by Rhug Estate.
Wild Beauty by Rhug Estate is a new skincare and body care collection made with organic and wild foraged ingredients from North Wales.
The founders and estate custodians, Lord & Lady Newborough, have championed the highest standards of organic and sustainable farming at Rhug for many years and the award-winning farm is the only one in the UK to hold the Royal Warrant, of which they are immensely proud.
Made in the UK with integrity and care for the environment using recyclable materials and certified by the Soil Association, the Wild Beauty skincare collection includes ingredients from the estate, including organic crops, honey, beeswax and an abundance of Wild Forage ingredients such as Heather, Nettle and Elderflower, which have all been carefully chosen for their skin boosting properties. It is clear that Wild Beauty has its roots firmly planted in this unspoilt landscape where the air is fresh and the nurtured organic land supports an abundance of wildlife.
It is a unique story of organic security and provenance, blending modern principles of function and sustainability.
The Rhug team has harnessed natural, wild foraged and organic ingredients with the benefits of natural actives for the collection.
The chosen ingredients contain essential vitamins and minerals, with 100% natural fragrances made using essential oils. Each element from the ingredients through to the packaging goes through a considered process to ensure it meets the Estate’s long-established high sustainability standards before being approved for use.
But what of the forage itself?
Foraging, or Wildcrafting as it has come to be known in recent times, refers to the practice of collecting plants and other resources in the wild, such as herbs, plants, fruits, nuts or even shellfish etc for food or medicinal reasons whilst understanding and caring for the natural environment, avoiding depleting the natural reserves or wiping out rare species.
Many of us will have done a spot of foraging in our youth with our families, such as blackberry picking or elderflower harvesting to make delicious and nutritive preserves and cordials at home. We are lucky in the UK to be blessed with a vast range of edible plants, mushrooms and fruit growing around us, not only in the forests but in our immediate surroundings and you can find many of them on local paths and walks, sometimes even in parks or our own gardens.
Foraging is not new, and indeed dates back to the start of the human race, where hunter-gatherer tribes sustained themselves by hunting animals and gathering plants from their natural environments to survive and has continued through the centuries growing more popular in times of trouble, such as WWII when rosehips provided a source of vitamin C when fruit was scarce and acorns or dandelion root made an acceptable substitute for coffee.
Rhug Estate’s Resident Forager, Richard Prideaux has been foraging since he was a child - it was something his family instilled in him from an early age and he has grown up with an innate understanding of the countryside and is passionate about what nature has to offer.
Richard works with his team at Rhug throughout the year to source wild forage for the Wild Beauty skincare, waiting for particular plants to flower and mature so that they can be collected for inclusion in the collection. It is labour intensive as some plants, such as Gorse, need careful handling as their fragile flowers must be harvested from in between sharp thorns.
