06 Sep Growing Goodness
Using the best ingredients is fundamentally important at WashBar. It’s part of our supply chain philosophy. Yep – we’ve got a philosophy for procurement!
Seems like every week we get contacted by businesses telling us they can save us a fortune if we use their oils. For me it’s not about the best price – it’s about making the best products we can. And the only way to do that is by using the best quality ingredients we can buy, from growers and suppliers we trust.
We like to know where our ingredients come from –the provenance of an ingredient allows us to complete the beautiful circle. The best quality isn’t enough – knowing that an ingredient has helped a community or has contributed to the environment is a big part of our philosophy.
A great example is an ingredient we get from Brazil. We work with an organisation that encourages and promotes sustainability in the Amazon Forest. They work alongside indigenous communities helping them generate an income from their land – that isn’t founded on chopping down trees. The ingredient we use is tapped from the tree (much like maple syrup is harvested), and then the tree is left for 5 years to recover before being tapped again. They safeguard the trees as they’re worth more alive, generating valuable resin, than if felled for timber. It also allows people to work in the Amazon where they are culturally connected.
We choose organic, spray free or wild harvested ingredients wherever possible. Our wild harvested Manuka is grown on a remote part of the East Coast of New Zealand, and it doesn’t get much better than that.
We also try to understand the plants we use. A good example is the Lavender variety we use in many of our products – Angustifolia Pacific Blue – we purchase this from growers in the middle of the South Island of New Zealand. We did used to get it from a grower in the Waikato but we discovered that the best quality was grown farther south as Pacific Blue needs the very cold winters to develop its bioactive goodness. We use the variety because it was developed specifically for NZ and has the highest levels of antiseptic active of any of the lavender varieties. We love the traditional smell of lavender which has so many great benefits but we also need it to perform in our Itch Soothe Range where skin has been damaged and needs extra help to heal.
So next time you pick up a WashBar product you can have absolute confidence that every effort has gone into ensuring it not only has the best quality ingredients, but that by using WashBar you are helping communities all over the world. It’s the beautiful circle of life.