UpCircle Beauty
UpCircle beauty: A brand that turns natural leftover ingredients into quality and affordable skincare products.
Launched in 2016 by Anna and her brother, William (pictured below), UpCircle Beauty is an innovative skincare brand that seeks to repurpose and reuse waste into skincare whilst creating and providing a circular economy.
Four years ago on his way to work, William asked his local coffee shop about what they did with their coffee waste and was shocked to find that the coffee shop was producing so much waste, they had to pay the council to have it removed and disposed on landfill sites. William knew that this was a great starting point for a business but was not sure what. This is where Anna came in. Throughout her teenage years, Anna had always a keen interest in beauty and skincare and knew that coffee had loads of skincare benefits. This was her lightbulb moment - why not repurpose coffee grounds into sustainable circular skincare products? This is when UpCircle Beauty was born. Fast forward four years, UpCircle Beauty is a brand pioneering the by-product beauty movement. Currently Upcircle Beauty collect coffee waste from hundreds of coffee houses across London.
Their range includes soap bars, made with brewed chai tea spices, exfoliators and nourishing face range made with up-cycled powdered fruit stones. The ingredients are natural and reused from varied industries such as the argan, tea, juice, date, olive, coffee and wood industry. Since launching, UpCircle coffee alone has saved over 275 tonnes of coffee waste and is estimated to save 1000 tonnes in the next 5 years.
UpCircle aims to provide competitively priced, high performing products from up-cycled ingredients which will demonstrate how the beauty industry can become a lot less wasteful by using this innovative approach and a fresh perspective. Their packaging across the range is 99% plastic-free and UpCircle offers plastic-free refill options for the 1%. Further to this, UpCircle’s marketing materials are made from recycled coffee cup paper.
Looking back over the last four years, Anna finds it hard to choose one of her favourite moments so far but her appearance on Dragon’s Den and having three of the ‘Dragons’ fight over UpCircle Beauty certainly is up there alongside winning a live pitching event to Sainsbury’s buyers which ultimately led to UpCircle’s range being launched in stores nationwide. This year, UpCircle launched its range into over 800 stores with a single retail partner in America. However, Anna also loves the small joys that come from running UpCircle, such as when customers take the time to email or send letters showing their ‘before and afters’ of their skin.
Looking forwards, Anna intends to keep innovating. At the moment they are researching how they can begin to rescue flower petals from local florists to turn into a beautiful fragrant bath collection. Anna wants UpCircle to be known as the brand who brought the circular economy to the beauty industry. They want their products to be accessible to all - price should not be a barrier when making sustainable choices.
Sustainability shouldn’t be an elite privilege.
To shop from UpCircle click here: https://upcirclebeauty.com