🛒 The Check-Out: Grace & Green
+ 5 climate events + what's in our basket - Suri, Simply Gum and the Perfect Matcha...
Happy Thursday! Welcome to The Check-Out - your weekly dose of climate x consumer goods inspiration, and your discovery box of products and events the Following the Footprints team are loving this week. It’s great to have you here.
It’s that time. Temperatures rise, apprehension creeps in, you know what you need to do. No, we’re not talking about election day in the UK. We’re talking about when it’s that time of the month. For too long we’ve been stuck with the same, uninspiring solutions…. Our hero? Grace & Green! This week, FTF team member Jenny takes us for a spin through the coolest and chicest sanitary solution she’s found.
After we look at Grace & Green, we’ll share what the Following the Footprints team has loved and consumed this week and 5 Climate x Consumer Goods events coming up. Let’s dig in…
> Brand Spotlight
Death to Aunt Flo: Grace & Green’s Refreshing Approach to Period Care
Is anyone else tired of traditional period product branding - bouquets of flowers, pink everywhere, a lack of innovation, and many different “cutesy” phrases to allude to menstruation (crimson tide, strawberry week, time of the month, etc)? If you’re someone with a period, chances are buying tampons or pads is a mildly unpleasant experience: spending more money than you want to on a product that does not spark joy, month after month after month.
Stumbling upon Grace & Green’s website was a notably different experience. Whats more, last year alone they stopped 6,300,808 plastic filled products from going to landfill and our oceans. Let’s dig in…
I was loving:
No pink products, anywhere (thank god).
Their loud and proud B-corp status (they’re the highest ranking B-corp in the disposable period care space).
Their use of 100% organic cotton and bamboo, and recyclable (or disposable) plant starch to wrap products.
While carbon offsets don’t address the root cause of emissions, they are carbon neutral across their entire supply chain via ClimatePartner and take it one step further to fund tree-planting projects with Ecologi.
Their “Period Dignity” initiative to improve the lived experience of people with periods by providing free period products to workplaces. This matters because conventional period pads, as an example, contain up to 90% plastic and the average person uses over 10,000 pads and tampons in their lifetime, likely flushed down the toilet or thrown away.
Grace and Green’s founder, Frances Lucraft, spent six years in the UK’s water and sanitation sector witnessing the lifecycle of flushed period products and overwhelming amount of waste. Frances and her team have a two-fold challenge: needing to entice consumers to pick their product over competitors, while also combatting societal shame and confusion (that conventional products have done little to address).
Here’s what brands in a similar position, regardless of discipline, can take away from their excellent approach:
Your marketing is just as much myth-busting and educating as it is about promoting your product. Grace & Green have honed in on personal and easily digestible social content (see IG grid below) to help consumers make more informed purchases, with deeper dives on their blog. This builds trust as you guide your audience through the noise.
Consumers are tired of products that align with traditional gender norms and want to see fresh (i.e. chic) approaches to branding. Bye-bye, pink razors (that are, of course, often more expensive than their marketed-at-men counterparts).
Don’t boil the ocean with community impact initiatives: a strong, mission-aligned program like Period Dignity can achieve success via focus and engaged partners, versus feeling pressure to “yes” to every single opportunity that arises, even if they aren’t as aligned with your goals.
Keen to learn more? Dive into…
Love what you see from Grace & Green? Check them out!
> In Our Basket
🔎 What we loved and consumed this week:
From Katherine in London: I got completely influenced by Instagram to buy a Suri toothbrush, right when I needed to replace mine. Suri is making the “last toothbrush you’ll ever need” by trimming excess bells and whistles and making it easy to repair with brush heads (purchased via subscription service, which I love - a la smol). So far, I’m impressed by the clean, how little noise it makes, and the gorgeous sage green color. Oh, and they also claim 40+ days of battery life, which I’m currently testing!
From Jenny in New York: I recently internalized that gum is made partly of synthetic plastic, and opting in to ingesting plastic is the opposite of what I want to be doing. I was sad about the loss of getting to chew a stick of Trident Sweet Mint gum to death until I tried Simply Gum. It is made from tree sap - not plastic - with great flavors, so I think it’ll scratch the itch (even though it only stays chewy for a few minutes)!
From Indira in Glasgow: I have always loved matcha lattes, but it’s expensive to buy them from coffee shops all the time. Found PerfectTED Matcha Powder in the supermarket one day - and now I love it! Very easy to prepare with a nice smell and taste, even in small quantities (half teaspoon per serving). It’s a great, naturally caffeinated coffee alternative!
> Monthly Events Roundup!
📆 5 Consumer Goods x Climate Events:
Browse 20+ upcoming consumer x climate events, and submit yours.
Organisers: Keartland & Co, The Spiral Hub
Location: Virtual
10th July - Nudging Sustainability: What Really Drives Behavior Change?
Organisers: Climate Designers Seattle, Indigo Slate, The Soapbox Project
Location: Indigo Slate, Seattle, US
11th July - Better Business Breakfast Networking
Organisers: The Better Business Network
Location: Projects The Lanes, Brighton, UK
17th July - Carbon Budgets Masterclass: How Swiss Re Achieved More than 50% Reduction in Air Travel Emissions
Organisers: Clarasight
Location: Virtual
17th July - PurposeFest Summer Special
Organisers: Belmont
Location: Belmont Estate, UK
That’s it for today!
Know a brand we should spotlight next? Let Leone know!
Have links that can make the team learn or laugh? Share them with us, we might just share them in The Check-Out next week.
Hungry for more? You’ll see us on Monday! That’s when we suit up and get serious, digging into a topic that is guaranteed to make you look smart at standup.
Much love,
Team FTF