Welcome back to the Clean Sailors podcast. Let's talk about sea, marine, sailing and
keep it clean. I'm your host Holly, founder of Clean Sailors and a sailor myself with
a passion for the health of our mighty oceans. Through conversations with experts, innovators
and activists, all working towards improving the health of our seas, we're showcasing
the people and projects, changing the way things are done.
Now the golden rule when spending time in the sun is to cover up and sunscreen up. These
tips are generally the best when it comes to protecting our skin from potentially harmful
UVA and UVB rays and any secondary health impacts they can cause such as skin cancer.
These tips are well known, however perhaps less known is the harmful effect that personal
care products including sunscreen can have on our marine environment.
I'm really delighted today to welcome Stuart to our conversation. Stuart is the founder
of Himea, a revolutionary sunscreen working to leave the oceans as we found it. Thank
you for joining me Stuart. Thank you.
Now Stuart, tell me a bit about Himea. What do you do? How big are you? How old are you?
And what are your values? Himea is still relatively small in the scale of things. I started the
concept back in 2002 when I was doing a lot of surf photography, basically because at
that time I could not find a sunscreen which was truly waterproof as opposed to water resistant
and was a high enough SPF because in those days people still wanted a suntan and I think
the big boys like the Niveas or whatever were only doing a maximum of an SPF 30. So it gave
me the idea of making a sunscreen which would be at least SPF 60 plus and 100% waterproof.
So I did that and the concept was that the sunscreen is also with mineral filters and
the idea is if it stayed on your skin then nothing would go into the ocean. I did that
because also I had noticed whilst doing a lot of in-water photography, so in the water
in waves, that sunscreen was actually coming off of me and I could see it glistening as
it went away. So that was where the idea came from and once started then also with the company
I took a philosophy of trying to be responsible as a company and make sure as much as possible
and we're still trying to make a better solution all the time that the company has no impact
on the environment or society. The pretty tall orders, I mean obviously you mentioned
the first being that making a sunscreen that was truly waterproof, eg that stuck to your
skin and didn't get washed off was your primary focus and that secondarily obviously you wanted
to be a really environmentally minded, ocean minded company from start to finish including
your packaging and otherwise. But let's start from the beginning. So how is sunscreen traditionally
made? So basically there's two forms of sunscreen. You have sunscreens, well three nowadays I
suppose, and you have sunscreens which are lotions which means they only have oil phases
using your normal sun cream and to use the word cream it should have a water and a oil
phase and then you have these spray on sunscreens as well. The spray on sunscreens are very
easy to put on and very easy that they come off. So therefore when you're using a spray
sunscreen although it might say water resistant which is the English definition of what you're
allowed to say, it only has to pass a test for 20 minutes and then it can be coming off.
So when you use a lotion or ointment it's basically oil. It would stay on the skin because it's
oil but it will leave you with greasy hands so if you're doing sports or anything like
that it's not really practical. And then you have the creams and the creams again are traditionally
fluid and the mixture of the water and the oil makes it easier to rub in. But also if
you formulate it slightly differently you can make sure that the oil phase stays on the
skin very very well and if you put the let's call them the offending parts of the sunscreen
in the oil phase then they will stay on your skin and therefore stop anything going into
the ocean. The problem is, or the problem was at the time, nobody was even thinking about
that so that's what I did and made sure that all the offending parts stayed in the oil
part which stays on the skin and basically pioneered that way of making sunscreens which
has now been copied by many companies over the last 20 years.
I think that's incredibly exciting. I mean you mentioned, you say the word the offending
elements of sunscreen. What is the issue? Why does sunscreen gets a bad rep and how can
it be damaging?
The offending things we're talking about are basically the chemical filters which we use
traditionally in sunscreens and they basically absorb the UV light with a chemical reaction
and a lot of them are what we call hormonal filters because they can have an effect on
hormones as well. As a sunscreen they enter the first layer of the skin and then absorb
the sun from there and as you say having chemical reactions so therefore you can get things
like skin reactions to such sunscreens and things like that. The offending parts of the
filters, the basic ones are the three which were banned in Hawaii, Mexico, Palau and some
of the countries and small islands around the world. They were known about already at
the late 90s. It took a while for this refriendly status to come through and it's basically people
saying that their sunscreens are refriendly because they don't have these three ingredients.
The problem is if you look and research there's many more chemicals which are also bad and
nano mineral is also just as bad and a good way to see a reliable list let's say is on
the NOAA website they have a list there. What I did was made sure from the start we couldn't
make a 100% mineral sunscreen in those days because the technology wasn't there in the
zinc at the time. Well it was, it just made you completely white like Casper the ghost
so we didn't go that way. We had to incorporate some chemical filters right at the beginning
for our first sunscreen which we made already by the second we'd gone completely away from
that and those filters which we had we had them encapsulated as well which meant if
they ever came off the skin and were in the ocean they're encapsulated in like a silicon
so therefore they'd have no damage in the ocean as well. So right from the start I tried
to address this issue of the filters and to get as quick and as fast as I could to a
cosmetically pleasing zinc based sunscreen. That's an incredible journey and I think also
quite a noble one and just as a slight footnote NOAA the NOAA is the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.gov in the US. But to your point around coming to a sort
of a setically or cosmetically useful products as well as a more ocean minded one. I mean
the issue with sunscreen as we've come to hear about it particularly over the last
5 to 10 years is that because it's made of those variety of substances and chemical stabilizers
that you talked about all which are geared to either absorb or reflect and scatter the
UV light. It isn't a natural substance and whether it's on our bodies or whether it's
getting washed off it is a substance which can potentially contaminate water and research
has shown that around 14,000 tons of sunscreen end up in our oceans every year which is not
an insubstantial amount. If you think about all of us who wear it whether it's sports
people sailors surfers or sunbaters hopping in to cool off in the water. What is it about
do you understand that it's been the topic of sunscreen? Why is it so popular and what
is it about the coral reef impact in particular that's garnered so much attention more recently?
The coral reef impact which has been the sort of height of sunscreens and everything like
that in the last I'd say 5 years. What is quite incredible is some of the big brands
are still using some of the offending filters even though they know they shouldn't be using
them. They're using them because they're the keepers filters. That's the point. Let's
get down to the basics of this and why they're using them. It's they are absolutely the
keepers filters. The reef friendly hype comes since Hawaii made the rule that the sunscreens
cannot be imported into Hawaii. Some other countries joined. The big boys have eventually
changed and got rid of most of those filters. Some still don't and they write on their sunscreen
that they are reef friendly. Some are even using the term ocean friendly. Are they truly
reef friendly because they've removed those three offending ones which are listed by those
countries? No, because you'll see all the other ones listed by NOAA. Actually, most
of them aren't in any way shape or form. But because there is no certification for using
the reef friendly word logo, it's still a lot of reef washing as opposed to washing
going on by the big brands. Unfortunately, that's how it is and they won't change until
something else changes. They only did change because the markets which changed and didn't
allow it to be imported had the financial effect on them and then they did actually change.
And until that point, they wanted to use the cheapest sunscreen filters available. They
bleach the reef. They affect the DNA of the reef and it is relevant when you're swimming
or you're near an area where there is a reef. Although it does travel quite some kilometers
or lots of miles, if you're hundreds of miles away and you go for a swim in the water with
the offending sunscreens, does it do much damage? Not really. And also we have to put
it in perspective. The real damage to the reef is coming from temperature and acidification
in the ocean. Those are the real culprits of killing the reef. So although, as you mentioned,
the 14,000 tons or so sunscreen which goes in, how relevant is it in the global picture
of bleaching reefs? There hasn't been a study done on that yet.
I think it's a really fascinating conversation around coral bleaching and I appreciate that
it's impacted by a variety of different factors and metrics. I hadn't appreciated actually
one of the most interesting things I learned on the topic was that the corals are actually
animals. I appreciate they're not inanimate or even plants, but they're living, breathing
just like you and I, like your pet dog or pet rabbit and obviously highly sensitive to
stress temperature changes like nutrients. I mean, going back to your point, maybe sunscreen
isn't the biggest factor impacting coral reefs. However, it is a substance arguably, which
is obviously blocking UV light, right? Scatters and refracts it and absorbs it. So if you
have that substance in an ecosystem which uses light or needs light, whether it's on
seagrasses or anything else, it would be fair to say you'd imagine some impact even
if it's not been measured or studied yet. It's not supposed to be in the water.
No, ideally not. I mean, especially if any plants or anything in the water survive on
photosynthesis. Yeah, that's pretty important that they get there. New researchers is coming
out all the time now. And what we're following quite tightly is the freshwater impacts as
well. There is definitely an ecosystem impact from sunscreens in freshwater to do with the
fish, to do with the freshwater lakes. It does have an effect on the fish and it does
have an effect on algae. That is known. How much is still studies going on? And Canada's
the one who's actually doing the research in this right now.
What's been the most perhaps shocking factor statistic that you've learned so far on the
Himea journey? Yeah, the biggest shock from the start to now is the effect on the coral
reef, which is often northeast coast of Australia heading up towards Asia. There's an area
there which is just by chance somebody was doing a time lapse photography project there
and recorded it. And basically he was recording over a month and during that month there was
an increase of approximately close to one degree. And you see the whole reef bleaching
in that one month. The area which was affected was the size of the UK. There was absolutely
incredible. That's very sad. And the other thing that really surprised me actually is
99% of people never put enough sunscreen on. And a lot of instructors and people who work
in the sun on a daily basis also don't use sunscreen. And those factors are quite scary
when you think about it. I mean, I try to explain sunscreen to people as similar to
brushing your teeth. When you're young, you won't see any effect. You just pay later
in life when you don't use it. So we've often seen those time lapse videos of people and
their skin naturally. Obviously we get a little bit softer in the face and the features. But
yeah, obviously exponentially by having excessive exposure to UVA and UVB rays in particular.
It is quite surprising to hear given what we know today about the effects of the sun
on our skin, particularly prolonged exposure to it. Stuart, tell us about your packaging.
Because I appreciate at the very beginning, there were two things that were important
to you with Himeo and creating this product. One was obviously to create a sunscreen that
didn't wash off effectively that actually anything stayed on your skin, protecting your
skin, but also protecting the water more readily. And secondarily was developing a company,
a brand, a value based product, which was as sustainable as it could be. How have you
worked on your packaging with that in mind? That was an issue from the start, which I
wanted to address because I always thought tubes aren't the best thing. And I knew from
following it personally that tubes just are never recycled, although, you know, they have
recycled stamp on them. I spent a lot of last 20 years in Austria, which has been very good
at recycling and sort of probably one of the pioneers in Europe of how much stuff we personally
have to take and put it in the recycling ourselves and divide it out and everything. And that's
been here over 30 years now. How much was actually recycled is the interesting part. The whole
waste system is rather corrupt. It is actually run by the mafia in Italy because there's
so much money involved in it. And one of the things was that tubes are never recycled.
That's what I found out. They're basically sent off to, it was China, but recently China
has stopped taking all that rubbish. Basically what they do is they sell it off in cubic sizes
or pallets or whatever the measurement is, whoever they're doing it, and then they pay
for it to be recycled and it's exported and it's gone. And it's off their hands and they
have a certificate and the stamp saying it's being recycled. And that's it. Fine. They get
their money as a refuge company for removing the refuge from the local council. So I didn't
want to use tubes and I haven't used tubes and I've always tried to select the correct
plastics, which are easily recycled locally. Since almost 10 years now, we've gone to every
single package we have is designed that it can be refilled. Also, just recently, actually,
I found that somebody wrote a PhD on the matter of recycling and refilling and they came up
with a number of, it's 171% better for the environment to refill than to recycle, which
is quite an interesting statistic. It's just logical. There's no energy involved when you
just refill it and recycling takes energy, has a footprint. So yeah, with the packaging,
we've tried to minimize it as much as we can and it is refillable since 10 years and we're
still continuing in this direction. We're a bit blocked by laws. For example, about
four years ago as the first time, I managed to find some kinds of packaging which were
made from recycled ocean plastic. But the problem is when you're putting cosmetics in
it, it comes under the same category as basically food. So therefore, contamination is an issue.
And if it's coming from ocean plastic, there's no way of controlling what could be a contaminant
within that plastic and therefore can then contaminate the cream inside. These things
will hopefully change over time as and when things change, we move with them and try and
to push the refilling as much as possible because that seems to be the best way to reduce
all impact of the packaging. Also, what I wanted to do was make sure any impact we did
have, which hopefully we don't because people refit. I started the idea of offsetting the
plastic and what can we do with the plastic we've been producing. And through one of my
team riders who's also a very ecological person and does eco architecture around the world
has been involved in many projects of bamboo schools built down in Brazil and places like
this. She's very up to date on this stuff. And they had a project they wanted to start
down in Bali and I spoke with them and came up with the idea is can we offset the plastic?
So my idea was for every bottle we sell, can we then remove a bottle from the ocean? And
they said, yes, they can do that. And then they also knew about this. It's an old process
called paralysis where you can change plastic back into diesel. And because also you produce
some sort of dust particles off this and this is used in the building industry is apricots
also in her eco buildings. That's why she knew about this process. So the idea was then
could we set this up? And then they spoke with a couple of other companies and they
came in on the idea as well. And then now we have a paralysis machine down there, we
collect the plastic out of the ocean. We saw what can be recycled and what can't be recycled
and what can't be recycled goes in the machines turning to diesel and then diesel basically
goes into that the bigger which digs the plastic out of the ocean. It's a sort of a secular
offset system. And basically for every bottle we sell, we remove double that weight in plastic
from the ocean. So therefore we're having actually a positive effect on that part of
the environment.
It's an incredibly difficult scenario, isn't it in a way? Because obviously you've got
to create a product, you've got to package that product in a way that meets regulations
and obviously health and safety standards for, as you mentioned, the very nature of the
product being cosmetics and a consumable. Obviously you face the dichotomy about recycling
and the fact that it's plastic. Also trying to be an environmentally minded sustainable
based company. It's a quagmire, isn't it? I appreciate there are so many tensions in
this and actually I did want to flag something that I know that you do and I'm really intrigued
for our listeners to hear about it as well is that obviously when it comes to offsetting,
which I appreciate is a longer difficult and different topic. Actually the fact that we
use the internet and digital tech so much creates obviously so much of an energy impact
also. So how is Himea even dealing with that? Tell us a bit more about how you found out
about it and why that's also important to you.
I mean, the other area we do just go back to the packaging. With the European requirements
that you have to have everything in all the languages and everything, you have to put
everything in a box or you have one of these foldout labels. We put it currently in a box
which is totally recycled cardboard and we do this with a project for people who are
mentally handicapped and some of these are actually often ex-drug or criminals coming
out who were drug dependent and we work with that place. I personally work with that place
since 94. So it's just been a personal thing of mine. I've always had packaging done there,
leaflets in envelopes and stuff like this. So that's another thing we do. Then to address
the CO2 impact of the company, we calculate the CO2 impact of the company as everybody
else does but what we also do is try to calculate as much as possible our CO2 impact through
digital media or conference calls, stuff like this exactly what we're doing now. I mean,
for example, a conference call which is 13 minutes or longer produces the same amount
of CO2 as driving in a car for 10 kilometers. So actually sometimes it's better to drive
to the person if you know you're having a meeting for an hour and they're less than
10 kilometers away. That's crazy. Yeah. Then the other thing I found out, I was doing a
project during my degree in Falmouth or my master's when I was doing that during the
lockdown and this was one of our projects. We were actually looking at the amount of
photos stored in the cloud facilities and then we did some research and I think another
one which seems to astound a lot of people is, so Ronaldo has 626 million followers on
Instagram and when he makes a post on Instagram, it also produces the same CO2 as a town of
1.2 million people using 24 hours. When I started looking into this subject because
it was part of a work project we're working on, I was just astounded. I wasn't aware of
it. So then I just looked into everything and emails and emails aren't so bad but the
cloud storage and the way people just chuck stuff on the cloud and just don't even realize
it is quite astounding. Because another one we found out and interesting statistic is
the new cloud facility in Ireland from Amazon is going to use more electricity than the
city of Dublin. So there's huge amounts of CO2 produced by our digital footprints in
the world. So we also try and calculate that as best as possible and how we calculate it
and everything changes all the time as we can get better data and better accuracy to
it but I'm aware of these things and again we double what we calculate and then we plant
mangrove trees in Kenya because that's where I grew up and I know that people run in the
project down there and again it has multi-benefits because mangrove trees absorb much more than
tropical trees. The roots work to protect the small baby fish against their natural predators.
These particular fish are very important for the ecosystem on the reef later on in life.
By controlling the cutting of the mangroves as well, the fishing village which runs the
project, it's made now the fishing sustainable which it wasn't before and then also with
the other companies involved in it, it's also now paid for a new school and fresh water
and two people full-time employed. So there's social benefits, there's biodiversity, everything
the whole lot because biodiversity that's another subject which is completely underrated
at the moment. I agree. I think there's a lot being a truly modern business living in
the both societal and complex ecosystem of today's modern world and building for the
future. You mentioned biodiversity but I think it's one incredibly important element whereby
companies of today and obviously tomorrow can be adapting to take the wider ecosystem
environment way more in mind. I appreciate there's a lot of schemes and systems set up
like B Corp and otherwise that are trying to drive for these environmental goods but
I think it's now more pronounced than ever that we have to be doing something very differently
and thinking a lot more broadly about how we produce and sell, repurpose, remarket and
also the end of life bits and pieces left over from my products. Just back to Himea
Stewart, why is it so useful for sports people and sailors in particular?
Basically, on the sports side, I've done sports all my life and been teaching windsurfing,
everything how to windsurf school when I was younger and I hated the fact that sort of
back in the old days there was only sort of an SPF 10 was the maximum probably when I
was young and doing these things. You kept on having to reapply all the time and it was
annoying and you were oily and stuff like this. The point is, as I said to people, putting
on sunscreen is like painting a bright orange-worn white. So you won't paint it with one thick
coat, you'll paint it probably with two maybe even three thin coats so you get equal distribution.
So what I said Himea, if you want to apply it properly, get up in the morning, you know
you're doing sport, put the sunscreen on straight away, have some breakfast and do it again.
Do a nice little second thin load and as long as you don't rub the skin or embrace the skin
with clothing or wiping your forehead too often and so you'll be pretty much good for the
whole day. It will stay there on your skin. The only problem is with physical blockers
like Zinx is when you wipe your skin, you can wipe it physically off. So that is the
downside. The advantage of a chemical one is it will stay in the skin because you can't
rub it off but it's actually absorbing the sun rays inside your skin and a physical
one sits on top of the skin and creates a shadow. So therefore you have to be wary of
that with physical sunscreens and natural products because that is the downside of it.
There's always pros and cons. And I guess obviously for sailors in particular, we've
had a long relationship with Himea by virtue of our Clean Sailors Youth Rating Team as
well who obviously hopefully don't get dunks too often when they're out sailing but being
in that water environment obviously it is a waterproof sunscreen rather than a water
resistant one so it does stay on your skin.
Just on the topic of ocean health and Stuart, what's your advice or ask of sailors or the
industry to support the future health of our waters?
If everybody's just a bit more aware of what's going on, I mean it's so great to try and convert
one person to be the most eco-friendly person in the world but again I don't think that's
really the way to go. It's much easier to have 100 people change their habits by telling
them 10% and just be a bit wary about rubbish when you're in the marina and if you see something
like just pick it up, throw it away. And then also all the other aspects of what you throw
into the ocean when you're doing longer periods crossing the ocean, just be aware of what's
actually going to happen and you might think to yourself, it's just me, no it doesn't matter,
it's only a little amount. Yeah but when 10,000 sailors take the same attitude, it's
not just you, it's 10,000 times the amount. So if everybody just did a little bit and
the industry as well, it would be great. I mean basically I love it if any industry,
any brands in the world would start to take the attitude of what I'm trying to do and
just have no impact on the environment or society as a brand. Yes, it will cost you
a bit of money but the world would be a better place if every company did that and some companies
can definitely afford it. I think you're right. Also having the hundreds of thousands of
sailors that we have and the millions and millions of sort of registered and unregistered boats
on our planet, if we did all things differently, a small part differently, then obviously it
has quite a compound impact. And I think most importantly is it's not necessarily stop doing
what we're doing but to consider doing it slightly with different products. It's not
to say don't use sunscreen because it's polluting our waters but it's find a sunscreen that
pollutes less or doesn't pollute. So I think it's more mindful about the products that
we're using and we're living in an exceptional time and there's so many creators and innovators
such as yourself who are producing products geared with the very sort of design specification
of having as little environmental impact as possible. So it's very exciting that we have
got more choice now to look at these products differently than we ever have done.
A long time ago now, I mean I say a long time ago because it was 20 years ago when I started,
we couldn't make these products as good as the traditional versions and it was a bit
of a compromise to use them. But nowadays, I mean I can say my sunscreen applies just
as easily as any other sunscreen. It rubs in, it doesn't leave you white so there's
no hardly any cosmetical difference at all. And it protects you better than the regular
sunscreen because it hasn't got those nasty filters which can also have effect on people's
skin and your rashes and stuff like this. And this is probably the same in a lot of other
areas you know like washing fluids and whatever. If you look for the right products, you're
making no compromise in the performance. And yeah, 20 years ago you did but nowadays probably
in most areas you'll find an actual alternative which is as good as or maybe even better than
what's available in the chemical version. And Stuart, where can we buy Himea? At Himea.com.
Nice and easy. Stuart, it's been an absolute pleasure. Founder of Himea, the sunscreen,
leaving the ocean as we found it. Thank you so much for your time to date and for joining
me on our Clean Sailors podcast. Thank you very much for all the work you're doing and
helping to keep the oceans clean as well.
In the meantime, thank you for listening and see you for the next episode.