Certifiably Sustainable, Yet Not Certified
We built Activist Skincare with environmental responsibility as a core value from the very beginning. That’s why we haven’t prioritized certifications like Climate Neutral or B Corp. While these programs serve a need to hold corporations accountable to consumers, they’re primarily designed for large companies working to retrofit their operations toward sustainability goals. These businesses almost always need to buy offsets to make up for negative impacts they can't remove from their operations.
Certifications involve extensive paperwork to give auditors visibility into large, bureaucratic brands whose operations are not transparent even to the people working there. They also come with annual licensing fees that are easily absorbed into a large brand's marketing budget, but create a disproportionate financial burden for small, handmade businesses like ours (even when they give you a discount for earning under X million in annual revenue).
At Activist, we prefer to focus our efforts and budget on the core of what we do — making great sustainable skincare — because it’s already Earth-first by design. Below, we outline the details of how we operate behind the scenes to deliver on our commitment to people and planet.
Made in House, to Our Ethical Standards
At Activist Skincare, we make every product in-house in our own lab in Southern California. Our founder, Allison, personally oversees and manages everything that happens in the lab—from formulation and production to waste, water, and labor practices.
This hands-on approach gives us complete control over how our products are made, from the ingredients we use to the way we manage waste, water, and labor practices. It allows us to stay true to our values and minimize our environmental impact.
Energy Efficiency
While our small-scale operations naturally use far less energy than traditional manufacturing or office facilities, we’ve also made intentional choices to keep our energy use low:
- We operate out of a small lab and home-based workspaces in a mild climate, reducing the need for heating and cooling for most of the year.
- Lights in the lab are on motion sensors to avoid wasted energy.
- Computers and devices are set to auto-sleep when not in use.
- Mixers used in production have built-in timers to avoid running longer than necessary during extended processes.
- We don’t maintain a separate office, reducing building-related energy use and commuting emissions.
- We use hybrid transportation (personal and business) for errands and commuting to the lab.
- We haven’t published a carbon reduction target because we’ve intentionally designed the business from the very beginning to avoid emissions wherever possible, eliminating the need to retrofit.
Water
While we don’t operate at a scale that requires industrial water systems, we’ve built responsible habits into our daily production process:
- We use water-efficient cleaning methods in our lab.
- All cleaning products and ingredients used in our products are biodegradable and safe for aquatic life.
- We strictly follow hazardous waste protocols to ensure no sensitive materials enter the water system.
Waste
We take a practical, low-waste approach throughout our operations, from lab practices to shipping:
- We reuse shipping boxes and packing materials from our suppliers when fulfilling wholesale orders, avoiding the need to purchase new materials.
- In our lab, we minimize single-use plastics by using washable, reusable equipment; pipettes are the only exception for microbiological safety.
- Raw ingredient containers like bottles and buckets are repurposed for storing finished products or recycled after use.
- Plastic bags from powdered ingredients and customer-returned refill pouches are sent to specialty recycling programs such as Terracycle or Ridwell.
- We use biodegradable cleaning agents along with reusable sponges and towels to reduce cleaning waste.
- We don’t maintain a separate office space—our small team works remotely or from the lab, eliminating the waste associated with traditional offices.
- Damaged or unsellable products are shared with friends, family, or community members rather than discarded.
- Because we produce in small batches and maintain a focused product line with no seasonal releases, we avoid overproduction and have zero excess inventory.
Packaging/Shipping Materials
We design our packaging and shipping materials to minimize waste and environmental impact.
Product packaging:
- Our bottles and jars are made from recyclable + refillable glass.
- Our refill pouches are lightweight and durable, and they ship with no padding for less waste and emissions.
- We avoid using product boxes when we can.
Shipping packaging:
- No bubble wrap, foam, polystyrene peanuts or plastic tape.
- We don’t use decorative tissue paper, stickers, etc.
- Our product boxes are made from post-consumer recycled content.
- Our glass products ship in paper-based boxes with paper-based filler and FSC-certified tape.
- Refills ship in paper envelopes.
We’re currently exploring ways to increase third-party certifications like FSC for our paper-based materials, while continuing to prioritize recycled content and low-waste design.
Biodiversity
Ingredient sourcing of natural materials like plant oils has an impact on nature. We work to reduce ours:
- We avoid endangered or biodiversity-sensitive essential oils like frankincense, sandalwood, and rosewood (often marketed by other brands as being exclusive and luxurious), instead formulating with widely available botanicals such as chamomile, lavender, geranium, and pink grapefruit.
- Our grapeseed oil is an upcycled byproduct of the wine industry, helping reduce agricultural waste.
- We’ve eliminated palm oil wherever possible. Any palm-derived ingredients we use are RSPO certified.
- Our coconut oil is sourced from southern India, where smallholder farmers grow coconuts in biodiverse, traditional agroforestry systems. Our supplier is USDA organic-certified.
- We also support biodiversity and reforestation through annual donations to Rainforest Trust, a nonprofit that protects critical habitats and endangered species.
Diversity, Inclusion and Representation
Sustainability is meaningless if it's only about plants and animals, and not about people. Here's how we use our influence:
- We prioritize working with women and people of color when choosing vendors, partners, and collaborators.
- Our lab space and supplemental labor (our two largest monthly expenses) are contracted through a Black-owned business.
- We consistently seek out women and people of color for marketing, photography, and freelance roles.
- Our product line is intentionally formulated and photographed to suit a wide range of skin types and tones.
- We work with diverse models and content creators to ensure our storytelling reflects the richness of our community.
Human Rights
When labor is outsourced to third parties, especially off shore, human rights can suffer. We run our own lab so that we have complete visibility into how our products are made.
- All of our products are mixed and filled in-house by a small team in Los Angeles. We do not use third-party manufacturers.
- Our founder, Allison, personally manages and oversees the production process to ensure high standards for both product quality and working conditions.
- Everyone involved in our production is an adult who is paid a living wage, has access to health benefits, holidays and PTO, and is treated with respect. We do not use unpaid interns for any kind of work.
- We choose ingredient suppliers based on their transparency, organic certifications where available, and alignment with our values, but we do not have a formal auditing program.
- As we grow and have more purchasing power, we aim to continue building relationships with suppliers who prioritize ethical sourcing and fair labor practices throughout their supply chains.
