The Green Woman

The Green Woman is a British natural skincare and personal-care company best known for Fit Pit, its certified-organic natural deodorant. The Green Woman was founded in 2013 in Ludlow, Shropshire by sisters Eve and Suzanne Carnall. Eve has a chemistry degree and a Master’s in Environmental Decision Making and had started making her own natural toiletries. She gave some of her homemade deodorant to Suzanne, who apparently found it so effective that the sisters decided there was a business in it. Fit Pit launched commercially in 2014.

I like a story where product comes first. They weren’t entrepreneurs who identified “natural deodorant” as a growing market and went looking for a formulation. One sister was already making it because she wanted an alternative to mainstream toiletries. The environmental side was built into the company from the beginning. Products are made in small batches in Ludlow, formulations are plant-based, packaging is designed to avoid plastic and the business has deliberately pursued certified organic status rather than simply putting the word “organic” on the label. In 2021, it achieved COSMOS Organic certification.

There has, however, been a very recent and significant ownership change that isn’t yet reflected in much of the older material about the company. Companies House records show that Suzanne Carnall ceased to be the person with significant control on 5 December 2025. Since that date, Oscar Theodorus Geertrudes Charles Van Rooij has held 75% or more of the shares in The Green Woman Limited. Suzanne remains an active director, while Eve had already stepped down as a director in 2022.

So I wouldn’t currently describe The Green Woman as the 100% family-owned business it used to be. That claim still appears on older retailer and media pages, but the ownership records have changed.

The range is pleasingly small. Fit Pit Natural Deodorant remains the hero product. It’s an aluminium-salt-free deodorant supplied in a glass jar rather than a conventional plastic stick or aerosol. Different versions offer different natural scents alongside an unscented option.

Then there is Green Cream, a collection of organic face and body moisturisers including day and night products and richer body creams. The formulations use ingredients such as shea butter, coconut oil, hazelnut oil and aloe vera rather than building a conventional water-based cream around synthetic emulsifiers and texture enhancers.

White & Green Mineral Toothpaste takes the same philosophy into oral care, while Freedom Mineral Sun Cream SPF20 provides mineral sun protection. The latter took considerable investment to develop because a sunscreen can’t simply be mixed in the kitchen and sold with an SPF number attached. The company crowdfunded laboratory testing before launch, raising more than £3,000 towards the cost.

There is also organic coconut oil. That’s largely it, and I rather like that. There are a few other brands I know like this, where they created one or two incredible products and they stuck with it, instead of expanding into a full spectrum of skincare or makeup products and lost their identity.

Fit Pit is the product I’m interested most in. Healthy and clean while also effective deodorant is very hard to find in the market. Fit Pit is a deodorant rather than an antiperspirant, so it deals with odour without using aluminium salts to block sweat ducts.

The formulation is extraordinarily simple compared with a conventional aerosol deodorant. Rather than propellants, aluminium salts and complicated fragrance systems, Fit Pit is built around ingredients such as coconut oil, bicarbonate of soda, shea butter and essential oils depending on the variety. Most importantly, people say it works.

That was apparently what turned the founders’ homemade deodorant into a business in the first place, and effectiveness continues to come up in independent discussions. One independent zero-waste retailer described Fit Pit as becoming a bestseller after stocking it, while the sisters themselves have accumulated multiple awards for the product.

I also like how uncompromising the packaging philosophy has been. The Green Woman says it doesn’t use plastic packaging, choosing materials that can be reused, recycled or composted instead. Fit Pit comes in a glass jar rather than an elaborate refillable plastic mechanism that still requires manufacturing multiple components.

The organic certification is another major positive. Plenty of beauty companies describe themselves as organic because a formulation contains some organic ingredients. The Green Woman actually went through COSMOS certification, completing the process in 2021. The founders themselves made the point at the time that thousands of products use organic language while relatively few obtain independent organic certification.

Animal welfare appears to have been considered beyond simply avoiding animal testing. The company has specifically said that it selects coconut-oil suppliers that don’t use monkeys to harvest coconuts. I hadn’t previously thought about monkey labour when buying coconut oil, but once I know it happens, I want companies to care about it too.

The products are vegan and cruelty-free, and palm oil and petrochemicals are excluded from the formulations.

I like the company’s willingness to connect its products with environmental campaigning rather than treating sustainability purely as a packaging exercise. Historically, it has stated that 10% of profits were donated towards work against climate change, while 3% of proceeds from its mineral toothpaste have supported Breast Cancer UK.

The recent ownership change is the biggest question mark for me. Older articles repeatedly describe The Green Woman as an independent, family-owned business, and that was genuinely part of its appeal. In 2022, the company was explicitly talking about having resisted external investment. That is no longer the ownership structure recorded at Companies House. Since December 2025, Oscar Van Rooij has controlled 75% or more of the shares, while founder Suzanne Carnall’s previous controlling interest has ceased.

I haven’t found enough reliable public information yet explaining why the ownership changed, what the deal involved or what it means for the future of The Green Woman, so I’m not going to invent a story around it. Suzanne remains a director, which suggests continuing founder involvement, but the company is no longer controlled by the sisters in the way it once was. I’ll be watching what happens next.

My other reservation is product-specific: bicarbonate of soda deodorants don’t suit everyone’s skin. Bicarbonate is one of the reasons natural deodorants such as Fit Pit can be so effective against odour, but some people develop redness or irritation from bicarbonate-based formulations. I don’t have such an issue myself.

The Green Woman achieved COSMOS Organic certification in 2021, providing independent verification of qualifying organic formulations rather than relying on the company’s own definition of “organic”.

The range is described as vegan and cruelty-free, and the company states that it uses no animal or insect-derived ingredients and doesn’t test on animals.

Products are also formulated without palm oil, aluminium salts, parabens, BPA and petrochemicals. These are formulation policies rather than certifications.

The products themselves are almost exactly what I want to find when I research a small natural personal-care company. Short formulations, certified organic ingredients, no aluminium salts in the deodorant, no petrochemicals, no palm oil, vegan, cruelty-free, plastic-free packaging. Products handmade in Britain rather than an enormous catalogue outsourced to anonymous manufacturers.

Fit Pit particularly appeals to me because natural deodorant has to work. I don’t care how beautiful an ingredient list is if I need to reapply it every two hours and spend the afternoon worrying whether everyone else can smell me. Fit Pit built its reputation precisely because people found it effective. If I had to try one single product from their range, it would be Fit Pit.

Having said that, I’ll come back and investigate in the near future the ownership change and what it means for the formulations, certifications or environmental commitments.