The Clean Collective is a company with conscience; a retail platform bringing together information and solutions to creating a healthy, eco-friendly lifestyle all in one spot. Watch our Game Changers interview with cofounders Charlie Thompson and Georgia Lawson and discover more about what they are doing to drive zero-waste and a toxin-and-plastic-free Earth.
It all began for Charlie Thompson after she started to focus on a healthier and more sustainable way to live. To lead a healthier life, she started the process of reinventing her consumption and lifestyle habits, but at the same time was frustrated by the lack of information and online stores with toxin-free products. In short, nothing was in one place. Worst of all, she discovered the ‘toxin-free’ solutions that were stocked on the shelves of some natural stores weren’t as toxin-free as they claimed to be.
“I was double-checking every ingredient on natural websites against my own research, and realised that there was a gap in the market for something different; something more authentic that was truly toxin-free and eco-friendly, that brought everything together all in one place,” says Charlie, the CEO and cofounder of The Clean Collective.
At the time of her epiphany, Charlie was working as a Digital Strategist for a Fortune 500 company. “I loved the work in lots of respects but the product didn’t align with me,” she recalls. “I wanted to put myself in service of the causes that I really cared about: the health of people and the planet.”
Together with her business partners, Georgia Lawson and Charli Ferrand she brought The Clean Collective to life in October 2017. Within 18 months of launch, the business had become the fastest growing retailer in the sector.
Among their many proud achievements, they have the strictest ingredients and materials policy in the country.
“We really champion brands that are doing the right thing and pushing great positive change (for the environment),” adds Georgia. “We’ve had brands actually change things to be part of the collection. Things don’t need to be synthetic to be beautiful.”
Combined with the Collective community of customers and partners, they’ve also made a difference to the environment by removing thousands of pieces of plastic from the ocean; and they’ve offset Australia’s Christmas wrapping paper consumption through their tree-planting initiatives. In the last 12 months alone, the company has prevented approximately 2M litres of toxic chemical products being consumed, diverted 1.9M single-use items from landfill, planted 54K trees, and removed 6K pieces of plastic from the environment.
Like Charlie, Georgia swapped her corporate role of 13 years at both the Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie Group to put her BA Health Science degree to good use at The Clean Collective. Her role is to lead the company’s biochemistry policy.
Georgia has a two-year old son and being a mum sparked her interest in making a difference to the world in which her son would grow up. “Charlie ignited a passion within me about the amount of waste I was producing,” explains Georgia. “I already had an interest in toxins and was quite passionate about that. I also had a newborn and he and I created a lot of waste in the day. And I felt a responsibility to help out new mums wth this problem as well as making sure I was healthy and my son was going to grow up healthy.” Not surprisingly, Georgia said that since she and Charlie started their journey they have ‘never looked back.’
About The Clean Collective
The Clean Collective is Australia’s fastest growing retailer and publisher for healthy, eco-friendly living. They maintain the country’s strictest chemical and material procurement policy. They believe it is the responsibility, as a collective, to drive real, tangible change through our everyday habits and actions. The Clean Collective was founded on the belief that no action is too small and even the tiniest change, when made together, can result in a huge, champagne-popping difference to the world.
Your Chance To Become Part of The Clean Collective Business
The Clean Collective is currently taking part in crowd funding with Equitise. Check out the link below if you are interested in becoming part of this exciting business.
