Are You One Of The Few Vegans Doing This As The Year Comes To An End?

It’s that time of the year!

The time when most of our focus goes towards cookies, cakes, pies, warm stews, hearty entrees, and most of all – how to veganize them! Then come the gifts, and family reunions, and choosing that ultimate crowd pleaser (meal) for all of your non-vegan kin.

Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful, heartwarming, and soul-pleasing to get engaged in all of these, so if you’re not in the mood yet – here’s a friendly invite to get into it!

However, that’s not all! Or at least, it shouldn’t be…

An year’s end is the time when we make a retrospection of what we have accomplished over the last 12 months. What inspired us, what we are most proud of, and most of all – what we gave back to the world!

Being vegan is a mission in itself, and I believe looking back at the past year as to how well we are accomplishing it makes a lot of sense!

Are you one of the few vegans doing this?

I know someone, who is. Jaymie Friesen, CEO and co-founder of Natural Vegan!

I was so excited when Jaymie reached out, introducing me to his team and company. To me, Jaymie is the absolute embodiment of the term ‘vegan’ – genuine, kind, compassionate, sincere, and giving. Someone, who cares about animals as well as fellow humans – someone, who, most of all, aims to support and give back to this planet and his community.

Jaymie is just 22 years old, and he’s started about 5 businesses since the age of 13.

When he was about 19, he got a job managing a large software company, where, in his three year term, helped scale it from 3 million per year to just over 9. Yet, something didn’t feel right!

After all he has been through, he promised himself he would never do business for money again!

So, he quit his job, sold his companies or shut them down, and sought out the most impactful market he could get into. So what he was passionate about landed him where he is now!

Jaymie started a business together with his partner Hannah that is the greenest health and wellness company in the world.

Hannah was making natural products on her own when Jaymie and her met, he tried them, and they went from there! Hannah has been vegan for 4 years, she is super passionate about animal welfare, and is leading the rescue initiatives. She’s the one that is creating the products and that hand makes them for everyone.

 

“We have purchased 160 acres in the Okanagan of BC, Canada, and turned it into a permaculture farm where we grow the majority of our own ingredients in a fully sustainable fashion. We are completely off-grid powered by solar and wind, we are the largest sustainability land zone in North America, and we’re building the largest animal sanctuary in Canada. And those are just out side projects.”

Jaymie explains.

“We noticed a massive gap in the market for all natural bath and body products as most of them are poisoning us and the environment, so we’ve developed a line of products that are 100% natural, entirely chemical free (we often eat them to demonstrate), and vegan (obviously!). We wanted to go beyond that and set the standards for individuals and businesses on true sustainable practices. We’ve developed packaging that is 100% biodegradable and can fit more into less space in order to achieve a 40% reduction in our shipping related ecological impact.”

Their goal is to bring their resources, knowledge and hard work to the average consumer at an affordable price, that won’t harm the environment, or your wallet; and better yet, have a positive ecological impact and they’ve gone to the extremes to do so.

This happens to be the largest privately owned comprehensive land zone in North America. What this allows the team at Natural Vegan to do is build and experiment with a high number of ecologically sustainable dwellings, even community centres and spas, and most importantly offer educational programs. The goal is to house 30 permanent residents and set up at least 25 guest houses all living off grid with their power from solar panels and wind turbines. Guest homes will consist of earthship style homes (like a hobbit house), tiny homes, A-frame houses, and even treehouses.

Practicing good farming, and living methods is a great start to reducing carbon footprint, but Natural Vegan is giving back by educating the community for future generations, by holding in-house (aka on-farm) educational programs.

This will provide the public with information they need to live sustainably, in order to expand this movement, and pass it on to future generations. Give a person eco-friendly products, and they will live sustainably for a lifetime.

Teach them the methods and they will pass it on for generations.

With such a large plot of land, the team isn’t stopping there. They are currently building up to be the largest privately owned animal sanctuary in Canada and perform rehabilitation efforts such as building a wheelchair for their friend Crowley the pig.  But these are just side projects for them. The real business is in the mission.

This company’s mission is to make living naturally, environmentally friendly, and free of animal products extraordinarily easy.

They offer a monthly subscription box of beauty products and basic hygiene needs delivered straight to your door which makes it possible to be chemical free and contain no preservatives – creating a truly fresh healthy product. They’re products currently consist of shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, moisturizer, lip balm, body wash, deep conditioning treatments, toothpaste, and bamboo toothbrushes. They’ve let us in on some of their future products and they’ve got lots in the work! The best part is, all of their products are 100% biodegradable, nature friendly and vegan.

Through over a year of product innovation and testing they have designed the entire business and all products from the ground up to achieve a 95% less plastics initiative. During which, they stumbled onto a way to reduce their carbon shipping footprint by as much as 40%.

All of this to achieve their mission and to be a role model for businesses and individuals alike.

Indeed, they are a model of giving and living up to their ideals!

Wondering how you can be, too? Not all of us have the circumstances to accomplish what they have, but one thing we can ALL surely accomplish is to give back by supporting such businesses and individuals through our purchasing decisions and Social media actions!

So, how did you give back in 2017?

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