Faith in Nature

Faith in Nature is one of the older names in natural personal care in the UK. The business was founded by Rivka Rose in 1974, long before “natural beauty”, refill stations and plastic reduction became mainstream consumer trends. Today the range covers haircare, body care, hand care and household cleaning, but the original philosophy remains centred on using plant-derived ingredients while reducing environmental impact.

The company itself has a substantial history behind it. Faith in Nature Limited is an active UK company incorporated in 1979, originally under the name Faith Products Limited. Unlike many apparently independent natural brands that have subsequently been absorbed into multinational beauty groups, Faith in Nature remains independently owned.

What makes Faith in Nature particularly interesting to me is its attempt to move environmental thinking beyond ingredients and packaging. In 2022 it appointed “Nature” to its board, giving a board representative a formal responsibility to speak for the natural world in company decisions. It may sound eccentric to some of you but I love this principle. My company has a “Customer” on its board who is a person that represents the customer, which we all thought was a ridiculous idea at first. Now I can’t imagine not having that person. Nature, our planet, given the suffering we have been causing for the last couple of hundred years, should well have her voice in our decisions. Environmental impact shouldn’t simply sit in a sustainability report somewhere while every commercial decision is ultimately based on sales and profit.

This isn’t an organic skincare brand in the same sense as some of the smaller certified-organic companies in this directory. Faith in Nature uses some organic ingredients, but its central proposition is natural-origin, vegan and cruelty-free formulations produced in the UK at relatively accessible prices. The company currently states that its products contain a minimum of 99% natural-origin ingredients and 99% biodegradable ingredients.

Faith in Nature has grown into a very broad personal-care and household brand. Its best-known products are probably its shampoos and conditioners, with ranges built around ingredients and fragrances such as rosemary, lavender and geranium, coconut, grapefruit and orange, dragon fruit and tea tree.

The wider personal-care range includes body washes, soaps, hand washes and other bath and body products. There are fragrance-free options alongside the fragranced ranges, which are particularly relevant for people who find essential oils or fragrance irritating.

Faith in Nature also produces household cleaning products including laundry liquid and washing-up liquid. This makes it possible to use the brand across both personal care and household products rather than buying from several different specialist companies.

Refilling is a particularly important part of the range. Large 5-litre containers are available and Faith in Nature products are stocked by refill shops around the UK. I like this because refillability changes the environmental equation of a product much more substantially than simply changing the colour or composition of a disposable bottle. Ethical Consumer also identifies Faith in Nature’s refill strategy and packaging work as one of the stronger elements of its environmental performance.

There is a lot I like about Faith in Nature, beginning with its longevity. This company was talking about plant-derived ingredients and environmental responsibility in the 1970s. That doesn’t automatically make everything it does right, but it gives the environmental philosophy considerably more credibility than a conventional beauty company launching a green sub-brand because consumer preferences have changed.

Its independent ethical assessment is also unusually strong. Ethical Consumer’s 2026 investigation found very few ethical concerns with Faith in Nature and rated it positively across animal testing, climate, packaging, palm oil, tax conduct and workers within its supply chain. That independent assessment is important because it tests whether the attractive environmental story on the company’s own website survives scrutiny elsewhere.

The company manufactures its products itself in the UK rather than outsourcing production. That gives it greater visibility over manufacturing conditions and its supply chain. Faith in Nature also says it tries to source UK ingredients where practical.

I particularly like the refill model and we use this in our home very regularly. We rarely ever buy a single standard size bottle of anything. Our storage cupboard is filled with 5L refill containers, which makes them a lot cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Buying shampoo in a recycled bottle is better than using virgin plastic, but repeatedly buying and recycling containers still requires materials, transportation and energy. Keeping a container and refilling it addresses the problem further upstream. Faith in Nature sells bulk containers and has built a substantial network of refill stockists.

Its animal-welfare credentials are also strong. Faith in Nature is entirely vegan and its own-brand products carry Leaping Bunny certification, providing independent assurance around its cruelty-free policy rather than asking customers simply to accept a bunny symbol or an unverified “not tested on animals” statement. Remember though, vegan doesn’t mean “good”. A lot of human-made materials such as plastics etc are also technically vegan.

Palm oil is another area where the picture is more thoughtful than a simple marketing slogan. Faith in Nature hasn’t pretended that palm-derived ingredients don’t exist within cosmetics. Its palm-derived ingredients are RSPO certified, while the company has simultaneously been reducing its reliance on them. Ethical Consumer reports that reformulation reduced the number of palm-derived ingredients it used from 16 to 13 out of 109 ingredients. It has also supported habitat restoration through the Sumatran Orangutan Society’s Rewild Fund.

Customer experience is overwhelmingly positive overall. Trustpilot has accumulated more than 6,000 reviews for the company, with 87% rated five stars at the time of this review. That is a sufficiently large pool to be more meaningful than a brand with twenty glowing reviews and it’s also harder to fake 6000 reviews. Customers frequently praise the products themselves, value for money, fragrance and the ability to bulk-buy and refill.

The biggest distinction I like to make is that natural doesn’t mean organic and natural doesn’t automatically mean suitable for every skin or scalp.

Faith in Nature’s products contain a minimum of 99% natural-origin ingredients, but that isn’t the same proposition as a product made predominantly from certified-organic ingredients. If organic certification is someone’s main priority, there are stronger brands in my directory. Faith in Nature occupies a different space: affordable, predominantly naturally derived, vegan products with a strong environmental philosophy.

I’m also more cautious about the fragranced products than the overall “natural” positioning might suggest. Natural fragrances and essential oils are still biologically active substances. A fragrance being derived from plants doesn’t guarantee that sensitive skin will like it.

That isn’t merely theoretical. Among the overwhelmingly positive independent feedback are customers reporting itching or scalp irritation after using particular Faith in Nature shampoos. One recent Trustpilot reviewer reported significant itching, and similar experiences appear in independent online discussions, including a user describing redness and inflammation after using the Wild Rose shampoo. These are personal experiences and can’t establish which ingredient caused the reaction, but they illustrate why I don’t equate “natural” with universally gentle. Their shampoos are regularly used in our household and the only person who can’t use it is my daughter who has eczema.

Looking at the Wild Rose formulation helps explain why individual assessment matters. Alongside plant oils and extracts, the shampoo contains cleansing surfactants and fragrance components including citronellol and geraniol. There is nothing inherently contradictory about these ingredients appearing in a natural-origin shampoo, but someone with a very reactive scalp may prefer a fragrance-free formulation.

Faith in Nature does offer fragrance-free products, which substantially improves my view of the range. I would choose these first for very sensitive skin rather than assuming a heavily botanical-smelling product is automatically the gentlest option.

The independent customer-service picture is also less impressive than the product ratings. Recent Trustpilot feedback includes complaints about damaged or missing deliveries and difficulty obtaining timely responses. Trustpilot reports that Faith in Nature responds to 66% of negative reviews and typically takes more than a month to respond. With more thdan 6,000 reviews and 87% giving five stars, this doesn’t look like a fundamentally problematic business, but direct-order customer service appears to be an area where experiences can vary.

I also think the language of “99% natural origin” needs to be understood rather than treated as a health guarantee. The origin of an ingredient is only one piece of information about it. I care about what the substance actually is, why it is present, its concentration, how it is processed and how my body responds to it. Conversely, an unfamiliar chemical name doesn’t automatically mean something is dangerous. I prefer ingredient transparency to both conventional cosmetic marketing and simplistic “chemical-free” marketing.

Faith in Nature has a strong collection of independent environmental and ethical credentials.

The company is a Certified B Corporation, meaning its wider social and environmental performance is assessed rather than certification applying only to an individual ingredient or product.

Faith in Nature’s own-brand products are Leaping Bunny certified through Cruelty Free International, providing independent assurance of its cruelty-free programme. Ethical Consumer describes Leaping Bunny as the strongest certification standard in this area.

The entire brand is vegan, and Faith in Nature identifies vegan production as one of its core standards.

Its palm and palm-derived ingredients are RSPO certified, although I particularly welcome the fact that the company is also working to reduce its overall reliance on palm derivatives rather than treating certification as the end of the discussion.

The company is also a Living Wage employer and works with the World Land Trust as part of its carbon-balancing activity.

These credentials shouldn’t be confused with organic certification. Faith in Nature uses some organic ingredients, but I wouldn’t describe the overall range as certified-organic personal care.

Faith in Nature is an Approved Brand in my list, although I approve it for somewhat different reasons from a small certified-organic skincare producer.

This isn’t a brand where I expect every bottle to contain five organic ingredients that I could find in my kitchen. Its shampoos, conditioners, washes and household products are functioning formulations containing surfactants, preservatives and, in many cases, natural fragrance components. For particularly sensitive skin or scalps, I would pay close attention to the individual product and favour fragrance-free formulations.

What is impressing for me is what happens when I look beyond Faith in Nature’s own marketing. Independent investigation by Ethical Consumer found very few ethical concerns and rated the company well across several areas that matter to me, including animal testing, packaging, palm oil, climate and supply-chain practices. More than 6,000 Trustpilot reviews provide a large body of customer experience, and despite some recent delivery and customer-service problems, 87% are five-star reviews.

The environmental work also goes deeper than putting leaves on bottles. Faith in Nature manufactures in Britain, supports refilling, uses recycled packaging wherever possible, has reduced its use of palm derivatives, maintains vegan and Leaping Bunny standards and has gone as far as formally giving Nature representation in its corporate decision-making.

I particularly respect the fact that the company has been pursuing this philosophy since 1974. Faith in Nature wasn’t created to take advantage of today’s clean-beauty market. It helped create that market. My teenage daughter has always been a tough nut to crack in the usage of natural products; she thinks they are not good enough and she finds it very boring that I keep talking about harmful chemicals in cosmetics. The fact that she’s buying Faith in Nature products is a very strong sign for me that we’re on the right path here.

My main qualification is simply not to confuse natural with organic, or natural with automatically harmless. Plant-derived fragrances can irritate. A botanical shampoo can disagree with someone’s scalp. And a 99% natural-origin formulation still deserves exactly the same ingredient-level scrutiny I would apply to anything else.

Taken as a whole, however, Faith in Nature offers something I value enormously: a relatively affordable way of moving everyday shampoo, conditioner, body care and household products away from conventional formulations while supporting a genuinely established environmental business. It isn’t the purest or most organic brand in this directory, but purity isn’t the only measure that matters. On transparency, animal welfare, environmental thinking, refill-ability, independent ownership and accessibility, Faith in Nature earns its place here.