Founders Q+A: Disruptor London
Disruptor London on reimagining personal care and impact-driven design
Sira and Juan founded Disruptor London with a drive to create a product that is driven by its impact. Sira explains how Disruptor embodies its name by shaking the status-quo, offers insights from the personal care industry, and discusses how he and Juan find balance as a small business with a big vision.
ESGmark®: What inspired you to found Disruptor?
Sira Naidu (SN): Many years of frustration with the beauty industry and motivated by our search for a cleaner greener personal care brand, Sira (beauty industry expert and product formulator) and Juan (software engineer) founded Disruptor London in 2021. At that time, we didn't even have any product to offer, we only knew that we aspired to build an entirely ethically minded business, which puts people and planet before profit. We soon learned it wasn't going to be easy, but we're here for the long journey. Since we started and, after more than two years of research and development, we have released a range of products for shampooing, conditioning and shaving that replace many of the unsustainable offerings out there.
ESGmark®: With your focus on sustainable and ethical products, how do you approach sourcing the ingredients that you use?
SN: We tirelessly chose our suppliers as carefully as we choose our raw materials. We source vegan, organic and up cycled raw materials that are traceable and ethically harvested. All our suppliers boast the COSMOS, ECOCERT, Upcycled, BCorp or FairTrade certifications we demand to ensure we can effectively communicate this to our end users.
ESGmark®: In your research and experience, what has surprised you most about the personal care industry?
SN: Having spent close to 20 years in the beauty industry, I was shocked by how wasteful the beauty industry is. Waste is built into beauty’s complex business model. However, most work to eliminate waste has so far been connected to packaging. We wanted to change that by reimagining personal care to be more sustainable and logical. According to statistics from Zero Waste Week research, plastic packaging waste from the beauty industry reaches over 120B units of packaging annually and packaging accounts for 70% of the industry's waste. In the U.S, 7.9B units of rigid plastic were created for the cosmetic industry.
For different reasons, most people are leaning towards plastic-free beauty products, such as zero-waste shampoo bars, solid moisturisers etc. When we ask our customers about their top reason to switch, more often than not, plastic pollution comes at the top of their answers. Environmentalists have been warning everybody about this for decades. In the UK, it took a BBC documentary, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, to bring ocean plastic pollution to light. Plastic is one of the most widely used materials in the world, and for good reason. It's durable, lightweight, and can be moulded into virtually any shape or size. It's also very cheap, something which packaging manufacturing companies most certainly love. However, the widespread use of plastic has come at a great cost to the environment. Plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose, and even then, it never truly disappears. Instead, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics that are nearly impossible to remove from the environment.
The impact of plastic on the environment is far-reaching and devastating. Plastic waste is responsible for killing marine life, polluting our oceans and waterways, and clogging our landfills. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Plastic waste also contributes to climate change, as the production of plastic requires large amounts of fossil fuels. It seems very clear now: plastic waste is a significant environmental problem, and using plastic-free products can help reduce the amount of plastic in landfills and the ocean.
Our response to the challenge is to only make waterless products. We think that not only is water not needed to make efficacious products, we can improve our offering with concentrated active-rich formulas. By removing water from our products, we are doing away with the reliance on plastic packaging. We can instead focus on developing highly-performant formulas containing active-rich ingredients like keratin and plant-based proteins.
Plastic free waterless skincare can help solve the plastic pollution problem in several ways. First, traditional skincare products often come in plastic packaging, which can contribute to the accumulation of plastic waste. By using plastic-free packaging or packaging made from biodegradable materials, waterless skincare products can reduce the amount of plastic waste generated by the beauty industry.
Second, waterless skincare products often require fewer preservatives, which can be a significant source of pollution. Many preservatives used in skincare products, such as parabens, can enter water systems and harm aquatic life. By using waterless formulations, skincare brands can reduce the need for preservatives and help prevent pollution.
Finally, waterless skincare products often require less energy and water to produce, transport, and store compared to traditional skincare products. This can reduce the carbon footprint of the beauty industry and help mitigate the environmental impact of the industry.
Overall, by adopting plastic-free and waterless formulations, skincare brands can reduce their contribution to plastic pollution and promote sustainable practices in the beauty industry. For us, waterless is about realising that natural resources are limited. But we also want to give back where we took from. We're members of 1% for the planet, a movement of environmentalists and organisations that commit to dedicate at least 1% of their resources to solve the many problems affecting our planet.
ESGmark®: It’s refreshing to see a brand advocating buying less, which is radically different to most business models. Can you tell us a bit about why this is important to you, and do you have any advice on how businesses can make this model work?
SN: Our mission is to only formulate multitasking skinimalist products that allow customers to use fewer products as this supports UN Sustainable Development Goal #12 of Responsible Consumption & Production. There are 3 key issues currently facing the beauty industry: Overconsumption, plastic waste and water scarcity. If everyone made a sustainable swap to multi-use, zero waste and plastic free personal care products we can collectively make a huge impact to the clogged landfills and waterways. Not to mention it's easier on your pocket too especially during this cost of living crisis.
However this doesn’t come without challenges. Effecting change in peoples behaviour takes time but we’re committed to this for the long run. For businesses to make this work they need to rethink the traditional founder/shareholder business model mentality and start taking logical decisions that have long term positive impact.
We address these 3 key issues facing the beauty industry: Overconsumption, plastic waste and water scarcity and contribute by donating a percentage of sales via partnerships with 1% for the Planet membership which supports biodiversity projects, Gone West tree planting initiatives and CleanHub.io membership which helps fund ocean plastic waste retrieval as a well as other adhoc people-oriented causes.
ESGmark®: What has been your experience of working in a small team of two people?
SN: There’s never a dull day and never enough time in the day so Juan’s project management tools really help with our productivity. We have very clear boundaries and areas of responsibility but communicate about everything and are each other's biggest cheer leaders. We also know when to call time out and have a good party. We look forward to our monthly WWW (Whinge, Wine and Win) nights with a bunch of founder friends.
ESGmark®: How have you navigated ensuring your manufacturing and distribution is as sustainable as possible?
SN: Disruptor London is a vegan, waterless, skinimalist skin and hair care brand. Our proprietary formulated products are manufactured in small batches in their West London studio. This approach allows us to improve cash flow efficiencies, reduce our carbon footprint and eliminate the middle ‘man’ between manufacturing and end use.
ESGmark®: How do you see Disruptor growing in the future?
SN: We see Disruptor London as a household name and the product development, formulation, manufacturing and packaging full stack vertical in the UK, championing UK Sustainable and Responsible Manufacturing.
ESGmark®: What are you reading / listening to at the moment?
SN: Apart from losing a whole day to Threads yesterday, Sira prefers reading old fashioned paperbacks or 'Key Person of Influence' by Daniel Priestly, and Juan is reading 'Start with Why' by Simon Sinek on his kindle.
For more on Disruptor London, head over to their website.
Speaking to our founders is a fundamental part of how we keep the ESGmark® community connected - read our other interviews with Canopey on ethical buying and building trust through transparency, Booheads on innovation and compromise, or 8 Billion Minds on learning in the 21st century.