No matter what, PLASTIC We just never will be a
Jo means business when she says it’s time to ‘turn off the plastics tap’
From a modest unit on the perimeter of land once occupied by an Irn Bru bottle-washing facility, a Lanarkshire entrepreneur is waging a one-woman war against global plastics giants.
Since co-founding, with husband Stuart, a sustainable beauty products business in 2014, Jo Chidley has been voicing the need to challenge “the great pretenders” – the global brands whose fat marketing budgets allow them to pay lip service to the swell of opinion towards a transition to a plastic-free future.
From selling natural, effective and sustainable skin care products and running DIY beauty workshops in a shop in Glasgow’s Saltmarket, Beauty Kitchen owner Jo has gone on to address the government and business leaders about the plastic pollution crisis to which the beauty industry has, to her shame, significantly contributed.
Her not-so-secret weapon in her David and Goliath battle against the global plastic giants is that Jo is a woman who’s walking the talk.
From her small plant just a stone’s throw from where she grew up in Wishaw, Jo and her team are finetuning a bottlewashing and reusing process like no other – one which is now used and trusted by brands like M&S and Unilever.
The new arm of the business is fast overtaking the beauty products offering.
And within two years, the firm’s innovative, detergent-free method of washing for re-use bottles containing home cleaning and personal care products, soft and alcoholic drinks and coffees, is forecast to be boosting its workforce from 15 to 100 employees.
Jo, Stuart and their team have learned much from the people who were made redundant when the state-ofthe-art Irn Bru bottle-washing facility in Cumbernauld closed its doors in 2018.
Jo explained: “Through an introduction by Scottish Enterprise, we spent time with the team that ran the former facility. They gave us information about how it worked, how we could start small and grow. They shared bottle return rates. It was all still fresh in their heads.”
Glasgow-born Jo was six when she moved to Wishaw housing scheme, Pather.
The former Garrion Academy pupil went on to graduate from the University of Strathclyde with a degree in Chemistry.
Having drifted into HR, she became Avon’s head of department, with responsibilities for the UK and western Europe.
In 2010 – at the height of the financial crisis – she set up Nestle’s youth programme for anyone aged under 30 who was deemed to be ‘unemployable’. The programme still runs today.
With Jo and Stuart having enjoyed successful careers as professionals employed by someone else, they harboured an entrepreneurial yearning and a sense that if they were to go it alone, they’d do things differently. Having gravitated back to Scotland, it was no accident they chose Saltmarket as the location of their shop – it was an area that “needed some loving”.
Producing products that not only make the skin look and feel hydrated, their moisturisers, oils and serum actively stimulate collagen, with immediate and longterm effects.
Rather than aragon oil which is extracted from plants in Morocco, the company uses abyssinian oil from the south of England and France.
It also calls on by-products from other industries, such as blackberry, blackcurrant and raspberry seeds left over from juice production processes.
Its top-selling cream is the award-winning Seahorse Plankton + Really Radiant Moisturiser which, like all of the brand’s 60-plus products, is inspired by nature and its healing properties.
Beauty Kitchen products soon piqued the interest of health foods chain Holland & Barrett, which gave them its first retail listing in its initial year of trading.
“The ethos of what we wanted to do was to share our business, build a community,” said Jo, who set up home with Stuart in Overtown, Wishaw, with their three children.
“That ethos helped us secure listings with other retailers over the years, and tackle some of the big problems our industry creates.”
Jo cites the British Beauty Council’s first sustainability report, calling on the industry to embrace a sustainable approach to responsible consumption processes.
The Courage To Change report, which includes a survey of 3,000 UK residents, highlighted confusion about which products can be recycled, with too much plastic, cruelty to animals and ocean pollution being among consumers’ top concerns regarding the beauty sector.
It set out a vision for a sustainable beauty sector in the UK and the role government and consumers might play.
Such findings spurred Jo on in her crusade to make an impact by persuading other businesses in the beauty industry to play their part in waste reduction.
Jo’s drive as a planet-focused business owner helped put her products on the shelves of retailers ranging from Boots and Sainsbury’s, to small independents, Zero Waste outlets and specialist stores like The Refillery in Edinburgh.
The Saltmarket shop closed in 2019, when Stuart, Jo and her mum, Josie Smith – an aromatherapist who still runs the firm’s DIY workshops – decided to breathe new life into another area in need of
some loving: her home town of Wishaw.
Leasing premises in Netherton Road, much of the workforce is drawn from within a three-mile radius.
A firm believer in inclusion and diversity, Jo also employs people from Greece, Portugal, Indonesia and Poland.
For clients like M&S – which has seen a significant increase in the sale of products which come in reusable packaging – the company washes and cleans containers and returns empties, which then go back into the supply chain.
Through the use of digital QR codes, Jo and her team can trace the packaging’s DNA – from when it was filled and with what, to where it was sold, when it came back to the Wishaw facility and how it was cleaned. Return rates at M&S now exceed 75 per cent.
Said Jo, 50: “It’s proof that you don’t have to be in London, Paris or New York to make a difference.”
She is immensely proud of her company’s early B Corp certification – verification that it is meeting high standards of performance, accountability and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving, to supply chain practices.
Last year, the business was named a Top Innovator and invited to join the UpLink Innovation Network of the World Economic Forum – a community of planetfocused entrepreneurs, fund owners and experts who are accelerating the transition to a sustainable world.
In January, Jo gave a presentation at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland. Jo, who insists it’s time to “turn off the plastics tap”, went on: “The plastics industry is ramping up production. We do engage with them.
“My opinion on that industry is it has to change, and if that means we have to speak to these organisations – even though we know they do not want to change – it’s the right thing to do.
“Anything that can help amplify the message we need to do things differently is really what we’re all about. And we can do that from Wishaw, that’s the thing.”