Shop your ethical values with HealthPost
Making it easy to shop natural health and wellness by your ethical values since 1988.
In a market where greenwashing is rampant and products claiming to be the next best thing around, shopping for your health can be bamboozling. That’s why Good is proud to partner with responsible retailer HealthPost, whose robust vetting processes take guesswork out of the equation.
HealthPost executive director and sustainability lead Lucy Butler, daughter of the company founder Linley, has grown up in the business, which has been valuesbased for more than 30 years. Looking after community and the environment underpins HealthPost’s ethics and over the years it has raised the bar in Aotearoa’s natural products industry.
“We assess and evaluate all of the brands and products that we work with,” says Butler. “Our mindful values are a filter and the standards that we apply across the range include eco packaging, transparency, social responsibility and environmental responsibility as well as the ingredients.”
HealthPost has its own team of natural health experts led by registered naturopath Liz McNamara, whose job is to check ingredients are safe and not part of HealthPost’s Red List* as well as keeping abreast of new research related to ingredients that may be harmful for human or environmental health. “We make that information as accessible as possible and allow people to dig deeper if they are inclined, but best of all we want them to know that they can shop with us knowing that we have done the work and the information they are given will be accurate,” says Butler.
Behind the scenes, HealthPost – which stocks 5,500 products – has long worked with big and small brands to improve their offerings and positively influence their sustainability practices, and it won’t stock products that don’t meet its standards. Some brands have improved their ingredients as a result of the Red List and value alignment standards.
HealthPost’s “Shop Your Way” allows consumers to shop by their ethical values and dietary preferences, with 40+ filters from BPA-Free Packaging to Certified Organic. “Mindful Brands” are also championed on the shopping platform, to boost brands leading the way.
HealthPost aims to have a lasting, positive impact on the wellbeing of people and planet, so it’s no surprise it was a finalist in the “Restoring Nature” and “Social Impactor” categories at the 2021 Sustainable Business Network Awards.
Over the past four years, the HealthPost Nature Trust has been working with the Department of Conservation and Manawhenua Ki Mohua to restore biodiversity to Onetahua Farewell Spit, and they are looking forward to reintroducing endangered seabirds to the ecosanctuary in early 2022. “We’ve been trapping, planting and building burrows – it’s kind of like a little Hobbiton for birds,” says Butler.
HealthPost also has its own 10-hectare government-registered indigenous forest just 10 minutes’ drive from its Collingwood HQ. And it recently became Ekos Zero Carbon-certified. They chose Ekos for its connections with the local area and because it offsets with indigenous forest projects, which have the added benefit of creating native habitat to enhance biodiversity.
HealthPost’s sister brand BioBalance was the first natural health company in Australasia to be B Corp-certified. HealthPost is now on track to becoming B Corp-certified in 2022 – an important and rewarding sustainability step.