Our Story
Besitos was born out of a love for plants, people, and planet. Passionate about holistic healing, founder Samantha Fisher began exploring herbalism and soon found herself head over heels, concocting new recipes and playing with plants at every opportunity. Visions of farmers markets began dancing in her head as she contemplated sharing her creations and the medicine of the plants with the world. Moved by the catastrophic rates at which our oceans are being filled with plastic, she decided to focus her efforts on bringing a compostable lip balm to her community and develop a product line that was truly earth-friendly, from soil to shipment. Besitos hopes to increase demand for plastic alternatives and help encourage an industry shift towards more environmentally friendly packaging and practices.
What We’re About
Vision
A world in which we whole-heartedly and actionably love the earth, ourselves, and one another.
Mission
To share the love and beauty of the earth with humanity, healing bodies, hearts, and planet with earth-friendly products.
Goals
- Reduce plastic use and increase sustainable practices in the health and beauty industry
- offer eco-friendly alternatives
- foster demand for truly earth-friendly products, from soil to shipment, through supporting awareness of sustainability issues and solutions
- Collaborate with industry allies to increase public awareness on sustainable products and practices as well as develop creative solutions to industry challenges
- Support planet health through sustainable practices and charitable giving
- Promote herbal education in local community
- Foster symbiotic relationship of plants and humans through phenomenal products and transformational educational events
- Create delightful, nourishing, earth-friendly products that bring joy and wellness
- Share locally grown ingredients with community
- Source best-for-earth, best-for-you ingredients and packaging
Our Standards
About organic
It would be easy to simply find ingredients labeled “organic” and leave it at that, but we know sustainability extends beyond a USDA sticker. Many farmers adhere to high organic and sustainability standards that exceed USDA protocol, but they are not certified. Meanwhile, even organically-certified products can still be grown using herbicides and pesticides. The issue is not cut and dry, so rather than relying on a sticker, we’ve taken to asking a lot of questions and trying to get as close to the direct source of our ingredients as possible. We prefer to take a holistic evaluation, gathering as much information about the cumulative sustainability practices involved in each in ingredient, from farmer to distributor, to guide our sourcing decisions. That’s why we include ingredients that are both certified and non-certified organic.
Factors that are taken into consideration when sourcing include:
On the farm:
- local
- non-gmo
- herbicide and pesticide use
- bee-friendly practices
- water-wise and soil friendly practices
- fair-trade practices
- certifications (organic, ecocert, COSMOS, fair-trade, etc)
Distribution
- direct-to-source
- cumulative distance traveled
- number of times product has changed hands/packaging
- environmentally-friendly packaging (recyclable, compostable, reusable)
- environmentally-friendly shipping materials and distribution methods
- ability of distributor to speak to the sustainability and growing practices of product
- local availability and option for bulk refill
Taking all of these factors as a whole, we source our ingredients as best as we are able. We are committed to growing in awareness of sustainable practices and improving our sources as better options become available. We welcome any input, advice, or stories you may have regarding sustainable practices. If you have a resource you want us to know about, send it our way! In addition to improving our own practices, it is our goal to disseminate information and resources to make it easier for others to make shifts towards sustainability. We’re all in this together, thanks for being a part of it!
with love,
