drift, perspectives in surfing

Listen up chaps, this isn’t some kind of girly skincare thing. Even the hardiest man has to admit to owning a little pot of Vaseline or some lip balm, right? But do you ever think about what goes into your grease of choice?

As an avid consumer of all things moisturising, and considering myself to be pretty well-educated in the environmental basics, I’ve been concerned at the number of products that contain derivatives from the petro-chemical industry. If I can run my car on waste vegetable oil in place of diesel, why the hell am I going to start slapping that crap on my face?

So I dug around and found the amazing Pot of Gold, made right here in the UK by the lovely Claire Leavey and co. It’s completely petrochemical/petroleum free and is made with all sorts of ‘good’ ingredients, like English beeswax, almond oil, calendula and cocoa butter, and although it contains palm oil, this is sustainably sourced from Columbia.

I’ve always been pretty sceptical about companies’ claims to be ‘green’ ever since it became such a huge marketing tool. I’m not an ideal customer – I like to ask questions – but Claire was a sport and gave some very thorough answers. In addition to telling me all about her source of palm oil, she also explained why she chose to package her ‘gold’ in aluminium pots rather than plastic: “plastic not only degrades through the recycling cycle and ultimately has to be thrown away, but also releases potentially harmful VOCs into the contents - which then end up on the user’s skin. Aluminium, however, maintains the quality of the virgin material through an apparently infinite number of cycles – so in theory it could go on being used for all eternity!”

So now you can grease up with a clean conscience.