ABOUT
The Verdant Lab is a homegrown artisanal lifestyle brand that focuses on creating distinct products that are good for your body, perfect for your home and kind to the planet. Every ingredient in their quality products and luxurious scents are meticulously sourced and elegantly put together in thoughtful packaging. They create products that make you feel great while keeping the focus on sustainability, clean beauty, and transparency.
IMPACT
People
The Verdant Lab’s factory is located in Singapore. The current team is lean and production relies heavily on machinery instead of manual labour. The co-founder, Xi-Ming, takes part in the production work too. Their factory has policies that ensure a safe working environment (proper PPE required, SOP for different scenarios), and staff are treated fairly (living wage, adequate rest time, open channel for feedback).
Product
They produce their products in-house, using materials sourced from all around the world through local chemical distributors. When sourcing for raw materials, the team evaluates them with the following criteria: source, mildness/irritancy potential, efficacy and compatibility with formulation, ecotoxicological fate, concentration, MOQ and cost. They are able to achieve a more sustainable production by reducing the energy required for their processes, reducing transportation by purchasing concentrated raw materials when possible. Even through the simplicity in their formulation and reducing the amount of non-renewable/petrochemical raw materials they use makes a huge difference.
Packaging
They offer refill packs for customers to promote less packaging waste. The brand prices their refill packs lower to incentivise customers to purchase them instead. The Verdant Lab has also recently resized their mailer boxes to fit their most common purchase sizes. This is to reduce the number of materials used and also cut down on filler material required to protect the contents. The brand uses non-printed, unbleached kraft paper mailer boxes. These are sturdy enough for customers to reuse for storage and organization. The label uses packing slips and other materials made of recycled paper, and completely compostable sealing tape. Only their small document pouch is plastic, which they intend to switch to a compostable label in the near future. The brand also avoids plastic as there is no plastic recycling in Singapore.
Planet
The Verdant Lab take the steps stated above towards environmental sustainability. They look at the purpose and fate of each raw material to evaluate if it is the better alternative to use. Certification is something they are working towards, but it’s expensive for a young company to undertake at this point in time. Currently, they do not possess the resources to track carbon footprint or water usage. Regarding waste, the brand is working with an overseas partner to find a way to sell products close to the ‘best before’ date.
Principles
The brand’s core beliefs centre around sustainability, clean beauty and transparency. They share sustainability issues with their followers and recognise that everyone is on a journey towards a greener lifestyle. How they communicate their desire towards sustainability is by being open to dialogue. They share about their ingredients and acknowledge current shortfalls and also how they rectify them. As a brand, The Verdant lab wants to be transparent and authentic. This means being upfront with their ingredient and packaging choices as well as the challenges they face.
