At Abel we believe we are the generation of businesses and consumers who have the power to turn the tables on the global climate crisis. But we need to act now. Below is a list of (just some of the) things we care about and what we are doing.
Every single ingredient, in every one of our perfumes, started its life as a plant and is readily biodegradable back into our ecosystem. Our fragrances are made entirely of essential oils, extracts and plant-derived scent molecules in a base of organically certified, food-grade grain alcohol. That’s it. We believe in full transparency and as such, you can read our full ingredients and origins list for each fragrance here and more on the lack of transparency in the fragrance industry here.
We choose natural ingredients for their olfactory beauty and their therapeutic, mood-enhancing qualities. Alongside these positive reasons for choosing natural plant-derived ingredients are tangible reasons we don’t use synthetic fragrance molecules derived from fossil fuels – a nonrenewable resource that pollutes water and air, as well as having links to several health concerns. You can read more on this choice here.
We do not do any animal testing. All our products are 100% vegan and cruelty-free and are Vegan Society certified.
We have always shared our full ingredients lists with our customers, however most perfumes only share a catch all “parfum” on the ingredients list. This is because fragrance labelling laws were designed decades ago to ‘protect trade secrets’ something that is no longer relevant with modern science – as the number of perfume knockoffs available, contests.
The current labelling laws essentially act as a “hide all”. Not everything being hidden is bad, but some ingredients are. We believe you have the right to know what’s in your perfume – read more about the changes we’re campaigning for in the industry.
Our major supplier Symrise has a focus on sustainability and ethical sourcing. Some of the community driven projects they manage include minimum wages, health insurance, training and biodiversity projects. These are particularly active in areas where there have traditionally been problems, such as Vanilla sourcing from Madagascar. Where possible we source fair trade and organically certified ingredients (these are denoted as such on the ingredients lists).
If you don’t want to use your beautiful Abel boxes for another purpose, you can place the entire box in paper recycling, or home compost. FSC certified paper comes from regenerative forests sympathetic to indigenous sacred sites where the forest owner is required to employ local workers, provide training, safety equipment and a proper salary.
Chemical dyes pollute waters (and thus our food chains) and pose health threats to the people who work around them. It’s estimated that a staggering 70% of rivers in China are contaminated by wastewater – from the textile industry alone. We use only Vegetable Dyes and Soy Ink in our packaging. These natural alternatives are less toxic throughout the supply chain, from the factories and people working in them to the recycling or composting of your used packaging at home where plant derived natural inks and dyes are readily biodegradable.
Our perfume caps for the Vita Odor collection are made of a bakelite thermoset resin which is not derived from petroleum. Instead it is created from a combination of natural gas and plant-based cellulose (32%) derived from wood grown in sustainable managed FSC forests.
60% of our European online orders are shipped Carbon Neutral, 100% of our New Zealand orders are shipped Carbon Neutral and we are working towards 100% Carbon Neutral shipping worldwide by 2023. Alongside this, we favour the much less carbon-intensive sea freight over air freight as much as possible for all components and stages of the production and fulfilment process.
In 2019 we introduced a one-in-one-out policy, taking a stance against the avalanche of “stuff” in the world. The restriction forces us to “kill a darling” in order to launch something new – a way to guarantees our base collection doesn’t balloon, and that we only launch things that are truly awesome. Read more about our philosophy in the journal here.
In 2019 we introduced a biodegradable cellophane to our line in our effort to eliminate plastic from our packaging. Much to our regret, the quality of the cellophane didn’t hold up and we had to remove it from circulation. You can read more about this journey here. Long may we continue to try and fail in order to take steps forward.
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