Hello, Earthlings! We’ve all been there: staring at a shelf—or scrolling through a website—full of personal care products, completely overwhelmed by a sea of green leaves, earthy color palettes, and buzzwords like "eco-friendly," "all-natural," and "green."
If you’re anything like us, you want to make choices that are genuinely good for the planet. But in an era where "greenwashing" is all too common, vague marketing terms just don’t cut it anymore. You deserve transparency, and the planet demands accountability.
If you’ve spent any time exploring The Earthling Co., you’ve likely noticed a specific badge that we wear with an immense amount of pride. We are a Climate Label Certified brand.
But what does that actually mean for your hair care routine? Is it just another fancy industry buzzword, or does it hold real weight? Today, we are pulling back the curtain to give you a complete, transparent explainer on this certification, why it’s the gold standard for carbon neutral beauty, and exactly how it impacts the shampoo and conditioner bars sitting in your shower.
The Greenwashing Trap in the Beauty Industry
Before we dive into the certification itself, we have to talk about why it’s so necessary in the first place.
The conventional beauty and personal care industry has a massive environmental footprint. Every single year, the beauty industry produces over 120 billion units of packaging globally—the vast majority of which is virgin plastic that ends up in landfills or oceans. But packaging is just the tip of the melting iceberg. When you factor in the energy required to harvest ingredients, manufacture liquid formulas (which are mostly water), and ship heavy plastic bottles across the globe, the carbon emissions are staggering.
Because consumers are waking up to this reality, brands are eager to appear sustainable. The problem? Terms like “eco,” “bio,” and “green” have virtually no legal regulation. A brand can package a synthetic, chemical-heavy liquid shampoo in a green plastic bottle with a picture of a leaf on it, call it “earth-friendly,” and put it on a shelf. This practice is known as greenwashing.
This is exactly why third-party certifications matter. They cut through the marketing noise and require companies to prove their claims with hard data, rigorous audits, and financial investments.
Demystifying the Badge: What “Climate Label Certified” Actually Means
The Climate Label Certified standard is overseen by Climate Neutral (now known as Change Climate), an independent non-profit organization dedicated to solving climate change by making corporate carbon accountability accessible, transparent, and rigorous.
When you see the Climate Label on our website or our packaging, it isn't just a stamp of approval we paid for. It is a guarantee that we have successfully completed a demanding, data-backed, three-step process: Measure, Offset, and Reduce. Here is exactly what that three-step process looks like behind the scenes at The Earthling Co.
Step 1: Measure (Leaving No Stone Unturned)
You can’t fix what you don’t measure. The very first step in becoming Climate Label Certified is calculating our entire carbon footprint from the previous year. Guided by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, we have to collect and analyze data across three distinct categories, known as Scopes:
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Scope 1 (Direct Emissions): Emissions from sources that a company directly owns or controls.
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Scope 2 (Indirect Emissions): Emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, heating, and cooling consumed by the company.
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Scope 3 (Value Chain Emissions): This is the big one. Scope 3 covers everything else in our supply chain. It includes the carbon emitted during the farming of our ingredients, the manufacturing of our products, the packaging materials, and every single shipment—both upstream (from our suppliers to us) and downstream (from us to your doorstep).
During our initial certification process, measuring our Scope 3 emissions led to a massive aha! moment for our team. While a lot of companies focus heavily on downstream shipping (the package traveling to the customer), our rigorous measurement revealed just how much carbon was tied up in upstream shipping. Because we operate as a fully remote team—which beautifully eliminates employee commuting and office energy emissions—our supply chain logistics were our biggest area for improvement.
Step 2: Offset (The Path to Carbon Neutral Beauty)
Once we know the exact tonnage of greenhouse gases we’ve emitted, we take immediate financial responsibility for it. This is where the concept of carbon neutral beauty comes to life.
To achieve carbon neutrality, we purchase a carefully vetted portfolio of verified carbon credits to offset 100% of our footprint. This means that for every ton of carbon our operations emit, we fund projects that remove or prevent an equivalent amount of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
We don't just throw money at random initiatives. We invest in deeply impactful, certified climate projects, often partnering with 1% for the Planet nonprofits. For example, some of the specific initiatives The Earthling Co. has funded include:
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Landfill Methane Capture in the US: We fund initiatives that capture methane gas—a greenhouse gas significantly more potent than carbon dioxide—from landfills before it can escape into the atmosphere, converting it into usable energy.
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Global Reforestation & Clean Energy: We also contribute to projects that protect existing forests and build out renewable energy infrastructures like wind and solar farms.
Step 3: Reduce (The Most Important Step)
Offsetting is crucial for taking immediate accountability, but true sustainability requires structural change. A company cannot simply "buy its way out" of a carbon problem forever. That’s why the final—and most important—requirement of being Climate Label Certified is creating a time-bound, actionable Reduction Plan.
We are required to establish near-term actions to physically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions within a 12-to-24-month window. We don't just make vague promises; we set hard targets.
Here is a look at some of the aggressive reduction goals The Earthling Co. is actively working toward:
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Revolutionizing Downstream Shipping: By Q4 2026, we are committed to shifting 40%+ of our US last-mile shipments to low-emission carriers that utilize electric vehicle (EV) delivery networks.
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Eliminating Air Freight: We have implemented strict order placement systems and better inventory forecasting to drastically reduce the percentage of upstream shipments sent via aircraft, shifting almost entirely to ground freight, which has a remarkably lower carbon footprint.
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Bringing Manufacturing Closer to Home: We are actively decreasing the percentage of products sourced internationally, moving our manufacturing closer to our Earthlings to cut down on the miles our products have to travel.
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Maintaining a Remote Workforce: We have committed to keeping our company fully virtual, keeping our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions incredibly low by eliminating daily commutes and corporate office energy drains.
The Earthling Co.’s Impact: Let’s Look at the Metrics
When you combine our low-waste product design with our strict Climate Label Certified standards, the real-world impact is extraordinary. Sustainability isn’t just a core value for us; it’s a measurable outcome.
Because of our incredible community choosing plastic-free, carbon-neutral alternatives, here is what we have accomplished together since 2020:
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6.9 Million+ Pounds of Carbon Emissions Offset: By operating with carbon neutrality, we’ve kept nearly 7 million pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. That is the equivalent of taking nearly 700 cars off the road for an entire year.
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3.8 Million+ Plastic Bottles Diverted: Every time you reach for an Earthling Co. Shampoo or Conditioner Bar, you are keeping a plastic bottle out of a landfill. To date, we’ve diverted over 3.8 million bottles from the waste stream.
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335,000+ Gallons of Water Saved: Traditional liquid shampoos are up to 80% water. By creating super-concentrated, waterless formulations, we cut out unnecessary water use in production. That’s more water than 5,500 people use in a month!
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$125,000+ Donated: We continuously invest in environmental justice, frontline organizations tackling plastic pollution, and climate equity initiatives.
What This Means for Your Daily Hair Care Routine
So, how does all of this corporate carbon accounting actually affect your morning shower?
It means that when you wash your hair with one of our Shampoo or Conditioner bars, you are participating in a radically different beauty ecosystem.
Think about the life cycle of a traditional bottle of liquid shampoo. It requires petroleum to create the plastic bottle. It requires massive amounts of fresh water to fill it. Because water is incredibly heavy, it requires excessive amounts of fossil fuels to ship that heavy bottle across the ocean, onto a truck, and to a retail store. And when you squeeze the last drop of soap out, that plastic bottle will likely sit in a landfill for the next 400 years.
Now, look at an Earthling Co. Shampoo Bar. It is entirely waterless, meaning it is compact and incredibly lightweight, which drastically reduces the carbon emissions required to ship it to your door. It is wrapped in unbleached, 100% recycled, compostable brown kraft paper—zero virgin plastic required. The ingredients are ethically sourced, the operations behind the brand are 100% carbon neutral, and the product itself will seamlessly wash down your drain without leaving a trace of microplastics behind.
When you purchase a product from a Climate Label Certified brand, you are casting a vote with your dollars. You are telling the beauty industry that you demand transparency, that you care about supply chain emissions, and that you support companies actively investing in global climate solutions.
The Future of Beauty is Accountable
Sustainability is not a destination; it is an ongoing process of learning, adapting, and innovating. We don't claim to be perfect, but we do promise to be perfectly transparent.
Being Climate Label Certified isn't just a marketing win for us; it is a profound operational commitment. It dictates how we design our products, how we select our vendors, how we ship our packages, and how we view our responsibility to this beautiful planet we all share.
Thank you for believing in our mission, for embracing carbon neutral beauty, and for proving that small, daily choices—like switching to a plastic-free shampoo bar—can collectively change the world.
Ready to make your shower routine officially climate-friendly? Explore our plastic-free, Climate Label Certified hair care collection today.
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