Rachel Carpenter, a graduate of the School of Natural Skincare and founder of Good Flower Farm, has created a wonderful organic and biodynamic farm in Tennessee. Along with her partner Jon, she grows organic flowers and herbs that are incorporated into her skincare line – that’s really knowing your suppliers!!
Good Flower Farm is committed to the health of humans and the Earth, and is deeply environmentally conscious. They currently grow many botanicals that become raw ingredients for their skincare products, and have a goal of 100% of the herbs used in their products to be sourced from their land. What an amazing undertaking!
Rachel believes that:
“… organic products are not only better for the people that are using them – especially in skincare, as everything we put on our skin is processed through our body – but also for the environment. Formulating organic products is a revolutionary act that tends to the health of humans and the earth.”
We couldn’t agree more!
Good Flower Farm aims to encourage their customers to develop an understanding of their relationship with plants, investigating how they can care for their own bodies through the particular benefits that certain plants possess.
Ultimately, Rachel and Jon hope that consumers will cultivate more respect for the earth – instead of following the conventional model of buying whatever you want without a thought to the environmental and social costs.
Rachel weaves her commitment to environmental sustainability throughout her work on her farm and skincare line. From growing organically and composting, to employing sustainable water management and passive solar technology in the farm, Good Flower Farm exemplifies good environmental practices from start to finish!
How to make sustainable skincare products with zero waste goals
Good Flower Farm are striving to reduce their waste as much as possible on the farm and in their skincare line.
They minimize the use of plastics in packaging, production process, and shipping; they are mindful of reuse and recycling (including reusing packaging materials that come with containers and ingredients); and they only source from suppliers that they have complete confidence in – enabling them to buy in bulk, cutting back on their ecological footprint by reducing the packaging and transportation of raw ingredients.
Rachel and Jon are keen to innovate, and plan to continue introducing changes that result in less and less waste, including starting up a refill service for local customers in the near future.
It’s so important to be open to change in your own business, and to continue to tweak your practices as you go along. Work is never done when you’re a small business owner!
Making organic skincare products using organic and raw ingredients
“All ingredients come from somewhere, and for us it is vital that we source from organic farmers and producers – ideally from local, small-scale, ethical businesses who we know and trust.”
All the ingredients that aren’t grown on the farm are sourced from suppliers that Rachel is really happy with.
She believes it’s important to properly know your suppliers – to do the research, seek out other people’s experiences and reviews, explore the quality of the raw ingredients and the reputation of the company.
Find out the company’s mission statement, and where they source from. Once you are convinced they’re the right supplier for you, you can be confident in your ingredients and get to work formulating!
And speaking of formulating…
How to start formulating your own organic skincare products
Rachel started her formulating journey via experimenting and reading online how-to blogs, but quickly realised that she needed high quality information she could trust. So many online resources offer information that is out of date, unsafe, or just plain wrong!
“There are definitely right and wrong ways of formulating organic skincare. For example, It took me too long to learn that anything containing water needs a (natural) preservative, or it simply isn’t safe…. I do recommend experimenting, but it’s important to be sure you are getting the right info from reliable sources on formulation.
This doesn’t mean that formulating has to be difficult or hard to learn; on the contrary, it is simply about having proper guidance, which will make your journey exceedingly smoother than completely going it alone. I really do recommend taking a course from a reputable source in the natural skincare realm.”
This is where we come in!!
If you like the idea of creating your own products – maybe your own beauty brand – that reflects your ethics, values and beliefs, then you can take the fast track with our accredited, online Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation!
Our most in-depth training program takes you step-by-step through designing, formulating and creating your own line of natural skincare products
Essentially, formulating is the practice, art, and science of making skincare products following a professional framework that enables you to design a product that is safe, stable, effective, and delivers the result you seek for the person intended.
By learning how to formulate your own products the professional way – whether you want to make them for yourself or to sell – means you will learn how to deliberately select ingredients based on the benefits they offer for different skin types and different needs, as well as discover what ingredient options you have, based on your own values or ethics.
So, if you want to create organic products, vegan products, we’ve got you covered! Or if you want to make products that contain locally sourced or fair trade ingredients, or products that have eco-packaging? No problem.
On the Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation you’ll learn far more than how to make natural skincare products. You’ll learn how to customize them for different skin types and skin concerns, how to formulate them according to your values and how to weave your deepest beliefs and ethical standpoints into your creations.
You see, what our students love about our courses is how much scope there is to be yourself, how much potential there is for your products to be the higher expression of your deepest personal values. On the one hand, it is all about making products that are the very best that they can be, but on the other hand it is also about making products that are meaningful and personal to you and totally unique to everything else that is out there.
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- Choosing the right carrier oils for your beauty products.
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