Meet Brother Earth: A Brand Born From The Outdoors
By Hugo Douglas-Deane
How do you combine exceptional, high-quality personal care products, an ultra sustainable, circular approach, and a love for the planet and getting outdoors?
The truth is, there aren't a lot of options out there.
This is the very reason why Brother Earth founders Henry Wesson, Nick Trevis and Andy Smith started creating personal care with a purpose.
They were friends who all had a love of surfing, cycling, running and hiking, but they had a problem.
Like many men, they couldn’t find sustainable personal care products that really worked for them.
Brother Earth joined us earlier this year. We were impressed by their dedication to formulating high quality sustainable self-care for men – whether by prioritising natural ingredients or reducing packaging to the absolute minimum.
We sat down to learn more about their mission as founders and what they have planned for the future.
You can also check out their brand page, and shop their product range below:
Can you share with us the story behind founding Brother Earth? Was there a particular moment or experience that inspired you?
It started when Henry and I met up after 5 years apart. We quickly found out that we both were ready to leave the corporate world and wanted to do something with a greater purpose. This led to us sharing stories of the lengths we had gone to reduce waste in our personal lives and the bathroom in particular.
We had common experiences of the number of sites we had scoured to find a few products that we wanted to try and then being disappointed when they arrived. We believed that we weren’t alone in this and we set about building Brother Earth to make sustainable personal care as effective and hassle free as the typical supermarket staples.
What are you most proud of when it comes to the sustainability and impact you’ve made so far?
Number one is that our range reduces plastic waste by 97%. That 3% is the pesky toothpaste tube lid (which we have a plan for when we can invest in it). We have also found a great set of local producers so we can proudly say our products are made in the UK.
Finally to do our bit beyond our shores (until we go global) we partner with a great organisation, CleanHub, and for each box sold we fund the removal of plastic from a community in Indonesia.
What are your long-term goals for Brother Earth what are you excited about?
Our goal is to be the mainstream zero waste personal care brand that is widely available and affordable. We get excited about continually removing waste from our products and processes until we get as close to the zero waste utopia as possible.
How do you see your brand evolving to meet future sustainability challenges?
Circularity is a key principle to us and we want to evolve to a point where as many inputs to our business (raw materials for products or packaging) are outputs from other processes.
How has the journey of building your brand changed you personally?
I’ve gained a lot of respect and admiration for founders of brands, especially in the ‘for purpose space’. I now have a greater recognition that there are few quick wins or wild successes early on and the effort to push on needs continual motivation and dedication.
If you could go back to when you started, what advice would you give yourself?
Be patient, good things take time to nurture.