What does sustainability mean when you’re running a business? We catch up with Friends with Nature founder Elaine Wan to find out.

“I look at sustainability from a different perspective,” business owner and organic and ethical living enthusiast Elaine Wan, tells me when we meet on a busy August morning. “To me, it’s about reducing, reusing and recycling. People might think that’s counter intuitive, because I’m encouraging them to sell less, use less, to buy less. But I’m not here to sell a seven step beauty routine. I’d rather people had one product that really meets their needs.”

It’s not an approach you’d expect from someone running a small business, but Elaine isn’t afraid of leading by example and putting her values first. “I encourage people to look at all the products they use and ask, what could I eliminate? And then to swap whatever’s left for organic. Reusing is much better than recycling so I ask customers to give me back their glass bottles and give them to local glass workers so they’re not having to buy blue glass. Sustainability is more than just doing the easy task of recycling, it’s also helping other people in business.”

Convenient versus considered consumerism

Even as a GCSE geography student studying topics like urbanisation and flooding, understanding the effect on systems of even the smallest components fascinated her. It was a fascination that helped her to bounce back when her educational bookselling business was drowned out by Amazon’s drive towards convenient consumerism. “I’ve always been interested in how things work, and helping to find solutions for people,” she tells me.

Changing the world one blue bottle at a time

While on a parenting break from her career as an engineer she spotted an opportunity to work as an independent consultant for Neal’s Yard Remedies. The company was encouraging people to change the world one blue bottle at a time, to switch from synthetic skincare and beauty products to their ethical, environmentally-friendly and certified organic products. It was an ethos of considered consumerism that Elaine knew she could get behind; here was the potential to make a living and have a positive impact for the planet. It turned out to be the first step in the creation of Friends with Nature, her small business working with sustainability at its heart.

Sustainability means thinking about where we are putting our money

Elaine is keen to challenge our ideas about shopping and buying organic.“The perception is,” she says, “that if it’s certified organic, it’s going to be more expensive. But we all know that you can go and pick up a cheap hand wash in a single use bottle with a picture of a fish on the front and a nice synthetic smell. With a certified organic product you only need a really small amount. And you’re going to need less hand cream too, because what you’re putting on your hands isn’t going to strip them; the environmental impact is going to be way less. It’s about thinking in a new way, thinking about where we put our money.”

An organic approach to organic products

“Increasingly, I’m finding that people don’t want to just buy online or to have to search and scroll for things,” she says, “they want to find the right product that fits with their values. They could buy those products online or from a retail store, but I understand what people are looking for and can put together a collection of unique products for them. I think people want to connect with a human being.”

The biggest impact comes from individual action

When I ask her what one thing she can suggest we do to live more sustainably, she says, “Take one thing that you don’t need and give it to somebody that does. I think that the biggest impact we can have isn’t through the government or on a large scale, it’s through individual action like this. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed so we need to make it simple, to produce more in our communities, and to help people feel that they can make a difference. And it will make a difference if people adopt the simple things and pass that message on.”

Buying less and buying well

Elaine’s focus on connection and community-building, on supporting others in business has led to the development of a strong base of workshop hosts and independent consultants across the UK and Europe. She runs regular workshops helping people get to know and understand the value of buying less and buying well. The workshops are one of Friends with Nature’s three strands encompassing ethical retail, business support and consultancy. Supporting others remains a vital component of sustainability for her. When the Covid pandemic struck in 2019 and many of her customers, face-to-face therapists, lost their incomes, she helped them to start their own businesses and today offers free guidance and support to the consultant community.

Sharing the love

At regular Monday morning catch ups there’s the opportunity to share insights and knowledge across the Neal’s Yard Remedies Consultant Community. At one of these she recently discovered that Micellar cleanser also works as a certified organic feed for houseplants. At Kew Gardens, she says, “there’s a whole library of botanics, and signs reminding us that pretty much everything we need as human beings is provided on the planet. If we destroy it, then we’re going to lose it, and this drives the need for us to produce things artificially.”

The real environmental heroes

Before she leaves I ask Elaine about her environmental heroes. “It’s not one person,” she says, “it’s the people who pick litter up off the street, the people planting wildflowers on public land; those people planting vegetables in community spaces for others to help themselves to when they need them.” She goes on to cite the Kindersley family, the owners of Neal’s Yard Remedies, for the positive impact their business has had and for their pioneering environmental campaigning. “But more than that,” she says, “it’s the everyday people taking that message on, telling others about the simple things they’re doing, the little changes they’re making, and encouraging others to do the same. They’re the real heroes.”

To find out more about Friends with Nature click here.

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