27/03/2024
A not for profit company in Australia is showing that toiletries can be ethical, sustainable, and support young people's mental health, especially LGBTQIA young people. The brand Unlabelled will be familiar to readers of the Aussie gay men's magazine DNA, for its sexy advertisements. But there's a serious message behind the promotional material. The company says "unlabelled is a not-for-profit social enterprise, registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). While our mission may be simple, our task is enormous, as we aim to help reduce the incidence of youth suicide. To help us achieve this, we have created a range of ethical and sustainable hand and body wash products which are sold nationally through Chemist Warehouse and our website. 100% of profits from unlabelled go towards resourcing the following four organisations whose work is so vital in helping prevent youth suicide, being Headspace, QLife, Kids Helpline and The Black Dog Institute. unlabelled is first and foremost a social enterprise, led by our social mission to help reduce the incidence of youth suicide. We do this by selling ethical and sustainable skin care products to generate profits and then re-investing 100% of those profits back into our community to help save young people’s lives. unlabelled products are better quality, locally developed and manufactured, fully sustainable and ethically produced. We use 100% post-consumer recycled plastic in our bottles, saving our waterways and landfills from plastic waste, certified fully sustainable pulp derived from milling offcuts in our boxes and 90% recycled cardboard in our shipping materials". One of the non-profit company's chosen charities is Q Life, a network which provides Australia-wide anonymous, LGBTI peer support and referral for people wanting to talk about a range of issues including sexuality, identity, gender, bodies, feelings or relationships. Unlabelled say that in the medium term, they hope to be accredited as a B Corporation. B Corps are a movement of ethical and non-profit companies. In their preamble, they say "Together, we are shifting our global economy from a system that profits few to one that benefits all: advancing a new model that moves from concentrating wealth and power to ensuring equity, from extraction to generation, and from prioritising individualism to embracing interdependence."