Sustainable Practices for Natural Beauty

These days it’s quite fashionable to be sustainable and eco-friendly. Brands from all industries are concerned with how their products and practices are impacting the planet. At milk_shake, sustainability has always been the foundation of not just our brand, but our business practices as well.

To us, being a sustainable company goes beyond using natural ingredients, or recycled packaging. Instead, we opted to adopt a sustainable mindset from the very beginning. To us, it’s less about focusing on one or two individual sustainable practices and more about having a holistic view of health, wellness, and impact.

We believe in being accountable for the impact that we have, both as a manufacturer of products and as a brand that is part of a larger industry and ecosystem. We are committed to consistently re-evaluating our methods and practices, in order to not only increase our positive effects, but also to reduce our negative impact.

In order to better understand our impact, we monitor and assess the ingredients and technologies that we use, our behaviors and practices as a company and how we how up in the world, as a global brand.

Natural Beauty

The core of our business is haircare, and this is where our practice of sustainability begins. We operate from the standpoint that the only way to guarantee beautiful hair is to support healthy hair. This is why we only offer the highest quality ingredients in the highest percentages, possible. This helps to ensure that our products are consistently effective.

We choose organic ingredients wherever possible, and when organic or natural ingredients are not available for a particular formula, we are transparent in our communication about using a synthetic ingredient.

Oftentimes it is necessary to use a synthetic ingredient—such a preservatives—to ensure you and your clients’ health and safety. Preservatives help protect against dangerous mold and/or fungi from growing in products, which could have a hugely negative impact to your health.

While it would be more “on-brand” to only offer natural or organic ingredients, ensuring your health and safety takes priority over our brand image, every time.

Sustainable Technology

We have been committed to developing new ways of working with our ingredients that are more effective and ecologically sustainable. We are approaching the ability to use biotechnologies, which is a type of natural engineering process.

This process not only gets the most out of our raw ingredients—which helps us to deliver consistently high-quality products—but it also reduces waste and human impact. Not just on the materials themselves, but also on the surrounding soil. This ensures a long-lasting, eco-friendly supply with minimal impact to our surrounding environment.

 Eco-Friendly Packaging

Sometimes classic advice is the best advice, and our packaging is reflective of that. All of our packaging is made of at least 50% recycled materials and our product formulations are adjusted to ensure compatibility and making sure there are no barriers to being reused.

We wholeheartedly believe in a circular economy approach to reducing environmental impact and making sure our packaging is recyclable is a main component to that.

We are also always exploring innovative ways to approach how we package our products. Case in point? Our K-respect line uses refillable containers, which helps keep plastic out of landfills.

We work clean

Our headquarters uses 100% certified, renewable energy from sources like wind, solar and geo-thermal energy. We operate within the strictest EU guidelines (FYI: there are more than 500!!) for sustainability.

We encourage our corporate employees to work from home when possible, and also to print as few materials as possible. To offset the impact from the paper products that we do use, we have a partnership with the Print Releaf reforestation project. To date, we have planted over 150 trees, which makes us paper neutral!

 We are part of a larger world

Sustainability has a lot to do with the environment, but it also has to do with relationships and citizenship. Our partnership with Print Releaf has had a positive impact on local communities and their economies, by providing additional jobs.

Print Releaf is one of several charitable organizations that we have partnered with over the years, including Polar Bear international, Amazonia Onlus and Caritas Charity. We are also annual supporters of breast cancer awareness.

As a global brand we recognize our responsibility and unique ability to contribute to making the world a better place for all. There is no better way to practice sustainability than to work towards providing health and wellness where it is needed most.

While an increased awareness of ecological impact and sustainability practices is an integral part of who we are as a company, it is also part of a larger whole. At the end of the day, the beauty industry is all about relationships. The way we see it, our business is to ensure a healthy, sustainable, relationship with you, your clients' hair, the world we live in, and the planet we live on.

Thank you for being a part of our mission <3