Ep 59 - Revealing hidden truths: the world of natural fragrance, with Liz Cook

Liz Cook launched One Seed in 2009 after first building and selling three natural skincare boutiques in South Australia. Liz has been a part of the natural and organic beauty world for over twenty years, formulating natural fragrances for her own brands, as well as for other skincare and wellness brands worldwide. Liz has a passion for organic living and wellness, and, aside from her work with One Seed, is also a practicing clinical nutritionist and speaker. Liz lives in the beachside suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, with her two kids and one ageing little shaggy dog.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and more.

Broadcast: March 15, 2024

Duration: 1:00:16

Here is a snippet of our conversation…

What sets One Seed apart from conventional perfume brands.

There's a couple of major, major things that set us apart from conventional perfume that you'd find at David Jones or Mecca, or anywhere else - any of the brands that you might be buying for the last 20, 30, 40 years... First is the ingredients that we use. So we use a palette of 100% natural ingredients. Whereas 99.9% of the perfumes that are on the market are 99 - 100% synthetic. We don't use synthetics and I'm absolutely adamant about that. Even when I do custom work for companies, which I still do, I make it really clear at the start that these are the parameters. We will never, ever use synthetics..

Number two is transparency. And this is a massive one because the perfume industry has always been, even for thousands of years, since ancient Egypt, shrouded in secrecy and it's part of its appeal, I think…

Synthetic perfume whilst bad for our health, lasts longer and is cheaper to produce..

So that would that be one of the main reasons they continue to use some of these synthetics, so they can sit on our skin and last. It’s also around a 10th of the cost on average to create a synthetic perfume than it is to create a natural one… and everybody who's currently loving their $400 bottle of perfume - I don't want to make anyone feel bad about this, there's a lot of things that go into that $400 bottle of perfume that make us want to be part of the story - but I think it's important for people to know that the cost of the actual juice in that bottle, even for your high end perfumes is around $3 to $5 a bottle.

Potential health risks associated with synthetic fragrance...

A massive one is the effect of synthetic ingredients on hormones. Now, when I say hormones, people automatically think about menopause or childbearing or whatever, but hormones is such a blanket term. It also includes things like insulin, for example. So what we're seeing as a result of this is not just our exposure to perfume, but synthetic fragrance is so ubiquitous. Now you can't walk into a mall without being squirted with something, it’s every time you wash your hands. Sometimes it's put in a bin liner and it's like lemon scented, which is not actual lemon for anybody who's wondering. Everything seems to be scented and to that end, we're finding out now that synthetic fragrance is now contributing as much to disease as car pollution.

More:

Follow Liz on Instagram at @oneseedperfumes or visit her website here. You can listen to Liz's 'On-Conscious' Podcast on iTunes or Spotify.

Grab your very own One Seed Perfume here and enjoy a Perfume that smells good and does good too.

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