How long will my order take?
We can normally turn an order round within 3 to 5 working days and all orders are sent either by Royal Mail or FedEx, depending on the weight. If we are experiencing any delays we endeavour to let customers know to avoid disappointment. Custom Made items my take up to a week, depending on the day or order (we try and make them all on a Monday). When you place an order on the site, you'll get a confirmation note so you know we've got it, then when we despatch you'll get another one telling you how it's coming to you so you know when to expect it.
How much is postage?
We charge a flat rate for P+P, £1.50 for a single item and £3.50 for any more than that.
The exception to this is the charge of £7.50 which will be added to cover the delivery of 5 Litre products.
Overseas orders are also simple, just fill in your addresss and we'll contact you by email to confirm what the postage charge will be before we send the order.
Why do you have such a silly name?
Yes, we know, it's a bit strange. We didn't want anything twee – you know, Lavender Lane and all that – and we figure our name reflects our beliefs. Things have to be pure enough to go into our formulations. So it's Pure Nuff Stuff!Why aren't you certified organic?
To be quite honest, there are a number of reasons we haven't gone down the certification route. Number one is because organic ingredients are more expensive because it's a very expensive process. These costs would have to be reflected in the price of the product and we want to make natural toiletries affordable for everyone. Also, many of the raw ingredients we use have never been farmed in-organically - the growers and producers have never had the money to afford organo-phosphates and other chemicals in the first place, or have never needed to because many plants (such a lavender for example) are very resistant to disease on thier own - so organic certification for them is unnesesary expense, it merely means that distributors can make more money. So we've chosen to source as many Fair Traded products as we can instead.
Reason number two is actually because the Soil Association allow the use of certain ingredients we wouldn't dream of using – so organic certification is no guarantee of products being free from things like parabens. We are in the process of joining with like minded companies to form our own trade association with a code of practice that bans such substances.
How do I track my order?
When you've placed an order online, you can see the status of that order is set to Pending. Once we've packed and posted your order, we change that status to Completed, so you can see when it was sent.What if I don't live in the UK?
The postage charges quoted on the site are for the UK mainland only, but if you live outside this area, we will weigh your order and, if it's more than the normal £3.50 UK mainland charge, confirm the charge with you by email before we send it. If it's under that £3.50 mark, we'll charge just that and send the parcel on without the email exchange.What's your animal testing policy?
From day 1 we've been against animal testing for any reason. None of our products are tested on animals, neither are the raw materials and we don't deal with any company that supports or funds animal testing. To prove this, we've been granted the use of the BUAVs "Bunny and Stars" logo to use on our packaging, they're an external body that investigates and randomly audits our supply chain so you can be sure that what we claim is true.
All our products are independently tested for safety but prior to that we carry out our own product tests on ourselves first, then friends and family, then finally on our wonderful group of willing volunteers (all of them very much human, even the teenagers).
What do you mean by chemical-free?
Most natural substances, with the obvious exeption of water, can be chemically synthesised. And many natural substances can be fatal (digitalis for example), even water can be fatal if you take in too much of it. This does not mean that the ingredients we use cannot themselves be defined as chemicals, they can, the rather scary sounding tocopherol acetate is actually Vitamin E for example. So we are not stating that every chemical is bad for us. We just believe that limiting our exposure to things that may do us harm over time is a good thing. We have, as consumers, been grossly misled by people in lab coats too often to simply believe without question everything that they declare is safe, so by creating Pure Nuff Stuff we simply wanted to take back control of what we put on our skin and to give you the same option.
Nature provides for us humans very well indeed. So we choose to use cold processed oils over the cheaper alternatives because the properties of the oils are preserved rather than degraded by heat in other methods. We choose not to use chemical preservatives because we've researched them and got scared by what they can do (Google some of the ingredients you see on bottles in your own bathroom and see if you agree with us). All this said, essential oils do not grow on trees in a useable form, they must be processed first; cocoa butter does not emulsify in water of its own accord, it needs a bit of heat and a wax of some kind to persuade it to to that. So there is some involvement from laboratories to get the raw materials we use, but we make every effort to ensure that their properties are not affected by that processing before they can be applied to your skin.
Pure Nuff Stuff products have been carefully formulated so that you get the best of what nature intended and without getting awfully yoghurt and sandals about it, we like to think that Mother Nature would approve of what we've done with the ingredients she gave us.
What is your environmental policy?
A huge subject, but we'll try and be brief...
We are careful about the provenance of our products throughout their entire lifecycle from plant to jar and wherever possible, we use locally produced ingredients but we do have to be realistic, we don't grow everything we use in this country. So yes, we use imported oils but wherever possible we opt for a Fairly Traded item, even when this costs more. We go out of our way to find importers that use ships to transport goods rather than planes. All of our packaging is recylable and we use recyclable bubble wrap to keep items safe in transport. Any other packaging you may see in boxes such as air bags and foam bobbles have already been used once - we collect it from two other shops here in town to use again. We recycle everything we can from the workshop - the local council do little to help us here, so if we can't re-use items (which is why you may get a pre-used box or envelope) this means we spend quite a bit of our own time at various bottle, paper, plastic and cardboard banks, but it's worth it in our view. We'd like in the future to be able to take bottles and jars back for re-use and when we've saved enough money for the machinery that requires, we'll let you know. Our traditional production methods mean that our impact on the water table is minimised and we don't produce any harmful waste that needs special treatment. We don't throw away any surplus or ex-display stock, we give it to the local Fishermans Mission (so rescued or unlucky fishermen can get clean before they go home), the Salvation Army and the Breadline Centre (a local homeless charity). And we walk to work :)
Like we said at the start, it's a huge subject, so if we've not covered anything here that you'd like to know about then please drop us an email (info@purenuffstuff.co.uk) and ask, we're a friendly lot and will get back to you as soon as we can.
Are your products suitable for vegetarians and vegans?
Happily, pretty much every product we offer is suitable for vegans, with the exception of our Lip Balms and Lip Gloss which both contain beeswax. Vegetarians can feel good about using the range too, we don't test anything on animals at all, ever. And if you're a Viva member, let us know, you get a discount.
Just out of interest, here's a statement from our wonderful beeswax supplier, a local man by the name of Rodger Dewhurst who knows more about bees and beekeeping than I could ever tell you (Google him if you're curious about his credentials). This man truly loves his bees - and his wax, it's all we can do to get him to sell it to us, I'm not joking!
"Beeswax is a natural product ‘produced' by the bees it is not extracted from the bees, They extrude it from their own glands as part of a natural process at particular stages and conditions for their purposes. It is wholly integrated into Natures' life cycle with creatures using it as their food source and requires about 6 grams of environmental biomass, that's pollens and honey, to make 1 gram of beeswax.
The wax I supply you only comes from the cappings wax which is a by product of the process of surplus honey harvesting."
