Hi, we're Anne Altor and Ed LaPlante of One Earth Body Care. We'd like to tell you about our mission and story...
Our mission at One Earth Body Care is to provide fabulous body care products made with respect for the Earth, and to reduce plastic & other toxins in everyday life. Our vision is to bring Earth care into Body care and beyond, and to catalyze positive change and stewardship of self, community and planet. We're committed to:
- Using environmentally and socially responsible business practices, ingredients and packaging
- Providing educational resources that empower personal stewardship of health and planet
- Donating 2% of all sales to organizations that promote social justice, planet care and restoration
Our Story
Kitchen & Back-Porch Magic
One childhood summer in Pennsylvania, Anne's mom initiated a back-porch science project – making soap in a big steaming cauldron with lard from the local butcher and lye from the hardware store. After much stirring, we shaped the magical mixture into lumpy balls of soap dyed with food coloring. Although there were no fancy essential oils to scent it or special fats to make it luxurious, this transformation of raw materials into an everyday product was vividly etched into memory…
A Passion For Ecology
Anne has been intrigued and enthralled with ecosystems, plants and wildlife from a young age. She spent lots of time outside as a child, watching caterpillars, butterflies, fireflies and tadpoles. She also had an early interest in natural health, essential oils and herbs, which she started using to create personalized potions and fragrances while in massage school in her early 20s. Later on, recognizing that industrialized human activity was jeopardizing the planet, Anne pursued a doctorate in Environmental Science, with a focus on wetlands ecology and soil science. After graduating in 2007, she worked in consulting and academia, while continuing to create body care products and potions as a hobby and small side business.
The Beginnings of the Business
An avid rock climber, Anne cooked up a healing balm for climbers around 2012. This product helps heal and soothe dry & damaged skin and it became a hit in regional climbing gyms. When she started making cold-process soap in 2015, Anne became aware that unsustainable conflict ingredients, especially palm oil, are used in most commercial (and many hobby-scale) body care products. The mountains of plastic in body-care aisles also made it clear there was a need for ethical, responsibly packaged products. Anne started blogging more seriously to share ideas about body care and ecology, and the momentum began to grow. In 2017 she shifted her energy full time to the hands-on pursuit of planet-conscious product formulation.
A Business Partner
By then, Ed LaPlante had stepped into the picture. Ed brings a strong background in entrepreneurship and business analysis, as well as an engineering mind to the partnership. In addition, Ed brims with enthusiasm for engaging with people and helping find solutions to their everyday challenges. He is passionate about providing products that respect the planet and that help people look and feel amazing. One Earth Body Care LLC grew out of our shared desire to combine ecology, natural health and science-based formulation, to help people connect self care with care for the Earth, and to provide products people can feel great about and that feel great to use.
