Naturally Kate
TV presenter Kate Humble talks about enjoying simple natural luxury and the inspiration behind her natural range of beauty products.
TV presenter Kate Humble shares the inspiration behind her natural beauty range.
THIS MONTH THE editor asked me to tell you about my ethical beauty range, which launched at the end of last year and aims to be as environmentally friendly as possible. But fifirst, I want to tell you a short story. One day, a man was walking along a beach, where thousands of starfifish lay stranded on the sand. Up ahead, the man spotted a boy bending down to pick up the starfifish and throw them back into the sea. ‘Why are you bothering?’ asked the man as he reached the boy. ‘If I don’t throw them back they will die,’ the boy replied. ‘But there are too many of them, you won’t make any difference,’ said the man. The boy threw another starfish back into the water as he said: ‘I made a difference to that one!’ This reminds us that if enough people come together to make their own small changes, the resulting difference can be huge. Take plastic bags, for example. I live in Wales, where shops have had to charge 5p for plastic bags since 2011. It’s been reported that 70 per cent fewer plastic bags have been used as a result. The same charge was levied in England last October and the effect has already been dramatic. Another area where we can make a difference is with our skincare products. Washing is something we all do every day. The ingredients that make up soaps, shower gels and bubble baths get washed down the drain, and if they don’t break down – in other words biodegrade – they make their way into streams, rivers and out to sea. So, every wash can have a small but potentially damaging impact on our environment. This bothered me, and so I was always on the lookout for bath and beauty products that were biodegradable but still smelt lovely, left my skin feeling soft and – forgive me for being frivolous – looked nice in my bathroom. But, I couldn’t find any.
A quest for natural skincare
I love a challenge, so I approached a company in Devon and asked whether they could come up with a range of bath and beauty products for me that would feel like a treat to use but wouldn’t harm the environment. It took two years to devise biodegradable formulas for a shower gel that foamed properly, a fastabsorbing body lotion and a soap that wouldn’t leave my hands looking dry and cracked. Then came the scents. I wanted smells that were natural, uplifting and pampering but not too over-powering, sweet or synthetic. Packages would arrive at my house full of little pots of scented oil. Some would be almost perfect, but not quite, and I would find myself writing notes wine critic Oz Clarke would be proud of such as ‘bit more cut grass needed’, and, ‘less overtone of prune’. The final hurdle was the packaging. There was no point going to all the effort of making a product with good environmental credentials if the bottle didn’t meet the same criteria. While we had beautiful designs for boxes and swing tags, I realised that lovely as they were, they were extraneous. We also struggled to find recycled and recyclable tubes and tubs. When we did, we discovered they were a rather mucky shade of grey and could only take certain colours. Flip top lids, which I for one prefer over screw tops on things such as hand cream and shower gel, don’t come in recycled and recyclable plastic, so we had to compromise there, reasoning that if something isn’t easy to use, no one will use it. Finally, after many tests and trials, we had designs, packaging and products I was delighted to put my name to. OK, so they won’t change the world but I hope it will be my equivalent of throwing a starfish back into the sea.
My big challenge was to create skincare products that wouldn’t harm the environment and would be a treat to use.