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.  

From Left to right Sira Naidu and Juan J. Jiménez-Anca Founders of Disruptor London.

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.