Today, more than 500 families from the Quechua-Shuar, Achuar, and neighbouring tribes work with Fabian and Anna to cultivate the rainforest grown ingredients used in the Rahua hair care and body care collections in self-sustained forests.
Symbiotic® is Rahua’s signature standard. “Symbiotic ingredients are grown in pristine forest and made from pure plants,” explains Anna. “Symbiotic ingredients are handmade with ancestral methods and ancient wisdom. We use Rahua oil, Sacha Inchi, Morete oil, Guayusa.”
In order for an ingredient to be classified as Symbiotic®, it must be rainforest grown (wild) in undisturbed virgin forest, harvested and prepared using indigenous knowledge by people indigenous to the virgin forest environment, and it must be purchased at a price that helps to grow and sustain these traditions, build economies, and empower the indigenous people.
Incredibly, through the purchase of one bottle of Rahua, one acre of rainforest is preserved per year. To date, 37,500 hectares of pristine and biodiverse tribal lands deep in the Amazon Rainforest has been preserved for perpetuity.
“We focus on high quality, concentrated, beautiful products that deliver,” Anna shares. “This year we have introduced refills, reducing packaging by 90% and are encouraging everyone to hold on to their bottle. We choose materials that can be recycled globally, and have added more minimalistic glass packaging that can be repurposed. We prioritise preserving Rainforest trees to balance the footprint of our company and our clients and retailers. Additionally we are planting trees throughout the areas that we work.”
“It’s been a very grassroots process, but it’s just helping something that exists already revive and flourish. There’s no middle people involved in our process. Fabian has been building relationships with the indigenous leaders, the presidents and the vice presidents of these communities since the ‘90s. We pay above fair trade price, because this needs to not only pay for the ingredient, but also support and create an economy that didn’t exist before. The Indigenous tribes have this amazing wisdom and knowledge and our main goal is to ensure that this exists for the future. We have so much to learn from them.”