Faith in Nature is known for its award-winning natural beauty products, as a proudly B Corp Certified cruelty-free alternative. Now, the company has given a place on its Board to Nature. Creative Director Simeon Rose and Sustainability Director Laura Ford explained to Hannah Barnett what this revolutionary move entails.
INAugust 2022, Faith in Nature became the first company in the world to appoint Nature to its Board of Directors (NOTB).
“We are engendering an eco-centric view of the world,” said Simeon Rose, Creative Director. “Sustainability targets are, by definition, a human-led activity. That is not how the natural world functions. We want to nurture an understanding of our place within nature, where there is cause and effect in everything we do. So, we are developing that alongside the sustainability conversation. The two things go handin-hand.”
Invention from the start
Faith in Nature was founded 50 years ago by Rivka Rose, to provide natural products at affordable prices, a fairly revolutionary idea in 1974. So convinced was she of the necessity to fill the gap in the market, and with no outsider backing, Ms Rose pawned her jewellery to start the company.
“Rivka wanted to remove the choice between ethics and price,” said Simeon Rose, Creative Director. “She thought it was crazy that natural products were not affordable. And that mindset, a strong belief in how things ought to be done, has carried us forward for the last 50 years.”
In line with Ms Rose’s original pioneering spirit, all Faith in Nature’s standard bottles were made from recycled plastic by 1999 and the company has run on 100% renewable energy since 2018.
“The big conversations around renewable energy are happening now, but we’ve been doing it for years,” said Laura Ford, Sustainability Director. “It’s inspiring to work somewhere where the Founder says things like: ‘There’s no point being in business without helping people.’ That’s not how the average businessperson thinks. But that ethos runs through everything that we do.”
Faith in Nature has offices in central Manchester and two sites nearby in Ratcliffe, where all its manufacturing takes place.
The company is in the process of moving to larger premises to satisfy customer demand, supported by its 105 employees and a turnover of £16 million.
The origins of NOTB
Faith in Nature was never an average business, so the progression towards an initiative like NOTB is clear.
“Everything we do, we do with the natural world in mind,” said Mr Rose. “The NOTB idea is about environmental personhood. There were already legal frameworks giving the natural world agency to represent itself, so we thought: ‘Why can’t we have that structure within a company?’”
Working alongside Lawyers for Nature and Earth Law Center, the company was able to overhaul its corporate structure
to create a legally binding framework, meaning the rights of Nature are at the heart of all operations. Despite an initial idea to make Nature legal CEO, board director proved more workable.
“NOTB is way more powerful,” said Mr Rose. “Because every company can do it. This is about bringing Nature’s voice into all decision-making processes, so no one can be wilfully blind. It’s a really helpful tool.
“We’ve changed our articles to legally recognise Nature as a stakeholder, and we’ve inserted a purpose clause, which means that we exist for the protection of the natural world as well as for our own sake. There’s no business on a dead planet , so those two things are not in conflict.”
In practice, NOTB requires a guardian; an autonomous figure to speak on behalf of Nature. A guardian is independent and, though they are paid for their time, they are not employed by the company.
Brontie Ansell of Lawyers for Nature has been a guardian for the last 18 months, providing a robust system with solid legal foundations. And a new guardian was recently appointed in the form of Dr Juliet Rose, Head of Development at The Eden Project.
“The idea is that, ideally, no guardian be in place for more than two years,” said Mr Rose. “That’s to avoid Nature’s voice becoming one person’s view. The whole point is to bring in different perspectives. When one guardian’s tenure is up, the other one is six months in. Then they have a year and a half left, during which time they’ll be joined by another guardian. So, the baton is constantly passing.”
Open channels
To give Nature sufficient opportunity to genuinely influence decisions, the company holds one board meeting and one ‘Nature-related-matters’ meeting each
month. To date, there have been several large strategic votes which Nature has contributed to.
“And discussion is important,” Mr Rose explained. “If there’s a vote about packaging, then Nature consults with whoever it impacts. Or if it’s something that affects rivers, Nature speaks to the relevant people there. We are bringing voices to the table where there wasn’t space for them before. It’s not about targets and metrics and achieving business goals. It’s about changing the lens through which everybody can see the decisionmaking process.”
At the end of each year, Faith in Nature reports publicly to share the impact of what it is doing. It has also made the full framework for NOTB accessible online.
“It took us 18 months to figure out how to do this, but anyone whose curiosity has been piqued need not go through the pro -
cess we did,” said Mr Rose. “A large chunk of that work is already out there. Another company might need to consult with Lawyers for Nature to tweak it slightly, but it is all freely available. We want this to grow.”
“Other businesses are already taking it on,” Ms Ford added, “some of them in a very close approximation of what we’ve done, some slightly differently. I recently heard that Herefordshire Council is looking to incorporate the voice of the Wye River into its meetings, which is very exciting. It’s an idea that’s really spreading.”
The mindset shift within Faith in Nature itself has also been significant; staff have been empowered with the motto: ‘What would Nature say?’
“We’ve given them a way of questioning day-to-day business decisions through a nature-focused lens,” said Ms Ford. “I’ve had people challenge me
The rights of Nature:
• To access information
• To time (to understand and research)
• To consult with others (to gather perspectives)
• To a budget (to use however Nature deems necessary)
• To attend meetings
• As a director, Nature has the right to direct the actions of the company
on certain things. Sometimes that’s hard because we’ve spent time exploring the best possible way of doing something. But really, it’s heartening, and quite groundbreaking to enable our staff from the factory floor right up to the boardroom to question the decisions that the business is making.”
The latest step in Faith in Nature’s development is more continuation than transformation, as it is fully aligned with the same ethos the company was founded
with 50 years ago. “We’ve just got different tools today,” Mr Rose concluded. “We always set out to make it easier for people to make better decisions for themselves and the planet. And we will adapt to new tools in the future too.
“It’s a privilege to be part of a company that’s willing to try new things. This is why Faith in Nature exists in the first place: to be able to experiment with, and to reimagine, how things are done. It is truly liberating.” n
