To clarify, I’m not actually thanking anyone in this post. I actually want to tell you about the brand Thankyou. As I’ve travelled around Australia for the last month I’ve seen Thankyou products everywhere: in homes, cafes, restaurants, even church loos. Everywhere. I noticed the claims on their bottles to be free from parabens, SLS, SLES and EDTA and I decided to do a little more digging on this brand, and today I’m happy to tell you they are totally my new favourites if you ever find yourself in this part of the world. Like Who Gives A Crap they’re currently Australia only, but hopefully that will change in the future, so why not get to know them now.

Thankyou began in 2008 in response to the world water crisis. At that time, over 900 million people didn’t have access to safe drinking water on a daily basis, yet the Australian bottled water industry was worth an estimated $600 million a year. Co-founder Daniel Flynn pulled together a group of friends in Melbourne and together they launched a line of bottled water that would fund water projects overseas. In 2013 they rebranded as Thankyou with two new ranges: food and body care, today Thankyou has over 40 products available in 5000 outlets in Australia.

While I’m never going to be a big fan of bottled water or food in plastic packaging, I think Thankyou do excel at body care products. On my travels I’ve had opportunities to try their geranium and rosewood body wash and hand cream, their grapefruit hand sanitiser and their foaming hand washes, and I have loved all of them. As well as being free from the nasties listed earlier their products are made in Australia, not tested on animals and are vegan friendly. Their website includes full ingredient break downs (hooray for transparency) and their packaging is 100% recyclable. They also have a pretty strong stance on palm oil, something which can so often be ignored by companies:

‘We’ve been working closely with industry experts, advocacy groups and ethical supply chain experts to ensure we understand this complex issue. We’re really proud to be leaders and innovators in the palm oil free category, and after months of trials and tests in September 2015 we released our new palm oil free hand and body lotions. They are currently the only palm oil free lotion in the category at Coles and Woolworths. It’s a real breakthrough to have these products hit the shelves. Sourcing palm oil free replacements is a complex task, and these particular formulations have taken our factory ten years to develop. Our goal is for all of our products to contain either Certified Sustainable Palm Oil or be palm oil free, so we’re committed to continued research and development with our manufacturers to achieve this.’

As well as their products, Thankyou is unique in its business model. The idea of Thankyou was to take a more holistic approach to combating poverty, with 100% of their profits funding safe water, food and hygiene and sanitation services around the world. The Thankyou 100% model works as the business is owned by the Thankyou Charitable Trust, a registered charitable entity. After Thankyou’s costs are taken care of, they give 100% of profits to the trust, which then distributes the funds to food, water and health and sanitation programs around the world. While this may seem like a slightly vague statement, you can view their independently audited Charitable Trust financials on their website, as well as their strategies for growth (another yay for transparency), meaning that they are accountable in their actions instead of greenwashing whichever way they want. They also have a neat little Tracker ID feature; every Thankyou product has a unique tracker ID, you can enter each ID in on the Thankyou website to see the exact details of the project your product is assigned to fund.

In the impact section of Thankyou’s website you can also track your impact through an app with exact GPS coordinates of areas being impacted, plus detailed information on the projects. Thankyou uses a project-based model, funding projects that are put forward to them instead of automatically giving funds to organisations each year or forming exclusive partnerships. More info can be found here for the values they look for in partners and projects.

All in all, they’re pretty darn great. Thankyou has been serving me well here on tour, and it seems to be serving the larger earth good as well. If you’re in Australia, or find yourself here, definitely think about investing in their products over others. I’m pretty smitten with these guys.

Until next time, stay magic y’all.