The oil that both saves the skin and the Amazon

Each bottle helps protect more than four football fields of rainforest, empowers women LXMI 33 Face Oil, $154, thedetoxmarket.ca

Back in 2015, Leila Janah imagined a different kind of beauty brand. It started when she was travelling through Africa for work and came across something called nilotica at a market in Uganda. The unctuous balm was actually a rare, more potent form of shea butter. She slathered it on her face that night before bed and couldn’t believe how great her skin felt the next day.

That’s how she got the idea for LXMI, a skin care line named after her favourite Hindu goddess, Lakshmi. The American-born child of Indian immigrants, Janah had already founded a tech company, Samasource, in her early 20s. It strove to lift people out of poverty in developing countries by teaching basic computer skills and hiring workers to do data entry and image annotation. Over the years, Samasource’s clients came to include Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

The entrepreneur wanted her new venture to follow a similar social impact model. She developed partnerships with women’s fair trade co-operatives in Uganda to source that miracle ingredient she’d discovered in the market. Harnessing its nourishing properties in a balm and day cream, LXMI paid the women three times the local living wage to harvest nilotica. As Janah told Fast Company in 2016, “We can solve poverty while also making our skin better.”

With its clean, comforting formulas, LXMI is accomplishing just that, but tragically, Janah is no longer here to see her vision through. In January of this year, she passed away from a rare form of cancer. She was only 37, but in her short life, managed to help more than 50,000 people get out of poverty.

“It’s incredible what she accomplished and I wonder what she would have done if she’d been able to live until her 80s or 90s,” says Anna-Maja Bjorkenvall, who is continuing Janah’s legacy as LXMI’s CEO.

“We see (the brand) as using skin care as a vehicle to do good,” she says. “With all the products in our line, we’re always thinking about what we can do to create change.”

Ahuge part of that is empowering people, especially women, through work. “It’s at the core of human dignity to feel like you can take care of yourself,” says Bjorkenvall, noting that the impact of employment radiates far beyond the individual.

“You can fight a whole array of societal issues by giving work to women. Research shows that a woman tends to reinvest about 90 per cent of her pay cheque into the health, education and well-being of her family and community.”

The other big piece of LXMI’s mission concerns the environment. Before it began sourcing nilotica in Uganda, the trees would often get chopped down for firewood and sold for pennies on the side of the road.

“It gives the local community a financial incentive to preserve biodiversity and stop deforestation,” says Bjorkenvall.

Now, with its latest launch, 33 Face Oil, LXMI is taking its commitment to sustainability one step further. In a landmark agreement, the brand partnered with non-profit Conservation International as well as the Trio Tribe in South Suriname to preserve a rare kind of Brazil nut oil sourced in the region. The project enables the community to protect about 235,000 hectares of virgin

Amazonian rainforest — the equivalent of 4.8 football fields for every bottle.

“There’s not a lot that we can do individually in terms of climate change that is not restrictive like driving less or eating less red meat,” says Bjorkenvall. “If you can do something that you’re doing already — just getting ready in the morning — and help fight global poverty and climate change, that’s a really cool message to send to the consumer.”

It also makes for a pretty awesome gift. The golden elixir blends a slew of active botanicals (33 to be exact, including that Brazil nut oil), each at optimal efficacy levels to curb inflammation and dryness and stimulate cell renewal.

It’s suitable for all skin types and yields a more supple, glowing complexion (who wouldn’t want that in the middle of winter?). Even better, it comes with the priceless feeling of doing something good.

“Now, in the days of COVID, a lot of us are looking for purpose and moving away from consumerism,” says Bjorkenvall.

“If you’re buying things, having it be compassionate consumerism can actually fuel something better for the world. Those small changes can have a huge effect long-term.”