Dear Friends,
Every day is Earth Day for the Duggan Sisters and that’s the way we like it.
From our simple turn-of-the-century Worker’s Cottage on the Southside of Chicago - where we have lived happily above the shop for 15+ years - we have built our brand from a singular premise: you can not maintain a healthy body on a sick planet. And so we rise each day, firing up one HVAC system, not three, and working to maintain the smallest possible carbon footprint as we go about the business of being a business, working to make a real difference for both people and planet.
Kombucha ferments on a bookshelf in Clare’s bedroom and curious neighbors still come by to watch us preparing our hügel for planting. Employees take breaks on the back terrace - a fancy term we use for a picnic table on the side of the driveway - and Boomer, slowed a bit by his struggles with liver cancer, still greets the UPS guy, the postal gal, and the FedEx drivers as they deliver raw materials to our back door and retrieve your orders for delivery. We are a small family business with our arms opened wide to customers all over the world and we love gathering the stories you share from your city, town, hamlet, high rise, farm, ranch, or dorm as you too make every effort to live healthfully on our very sick earth. Every day is Earth Day for all of us - at least it needs to be.
From day one, every choice we have made in creating a truly healthy and effective deodorant has been partnered with choosing an environmentally responsible lifestyle, eco-friendly packaging and sustainable, responsibly sourced ingredients. Every decision we make as a health-focused family business is designed to honor this hand-in-glove imperative to be a part of healing both people and the planet.
These are exciting and challenging times for our business. Exhausting and stressful post-COVID supply chain problems continue and we are doing our level best to use these ongoing crises as opportunities to up our game. In the next few months we will be rolling out big changes as we meet a long-term goal of customizing our stainless steel decanter; replacing small plastic parts of our product lines with paper options; and introducing a compostable feature as well.
By necessity, progress not perfection has had to be our motto. Do not get me started EVER on the inequities of financing for women in business - just know that when only 2% of available capital is earmarked for women in business improvements come slowly. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel we have been walking through for years and we trust that our plan to roll out some very significant progress aligns perfectly with our consumers desire for eco-friendly packaging. We encourage you to watch this space.
While we know our planet can only be saved by global government-based treaties, laws, and regulations, we are still committed to upholding our micro response as well. And we remain proud of the measurable difference your support of our business has made.
We are proud to announce that as the original refillable deodorant, we have kept a whopping 893,599 single-use plastics out of landfills as of Earth Day 2023.
We hope our products help make every day feel like Earth Day in your home too. Here’s to all of us recycling, repurposing and reusing. Here’s to our imperfect efforts at composting, and our yard left messy for a few extra weeks each spring to protect the pollinators sleeping therein. Here’s to meatless Mondays, and milkweed for the butterflies, solar panels and planting trees. Here’s to the Earth, the mother of us all, receiving both the global and local attention she has been too long denied. Let’s honor her in everything we do - before it’s too late.
Walk in beauty,
The Duggan Sisters
