Sustainability: the word is so frequently trotted out by brands, ambassadors, campaigns and countless initiatives that we start zoning out whenever someone attempts to preach on the subject. Instead of talking the talk, Olivia Cotes-James is here to make a difference with her brand LUÜNA.
A leading menstrual-equity educator, Olivia Cotes-James started the award-winning natural period and symptom care brand LUÜNA to redefine the understanding and support for hormone health, from menstruation to menopause. The brand offers Earth-friendly solutions to replace traditional one-use period and health products. Collaborating with global and local organisations, LUÜNA has offered more than 300 hours of menstrual education in schools and workplaces and saved over one million disposable period products from landfills and oceans.
How do you ensure your brand runs sustainably?
Our Menstrual Care range includes organic cotton products that are plastic-free and degrade within six months, as well as reusable options for those who are ready to make the switch. When it comes to our newly launched Cycle Wellness line, we use nature-driven ingredients like flaxseed, and herbs used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, to create sustainable symptom-alleviating alternatives.
Are there any difficulties with sustainable practices that are unique to Hong Kong?
One of things that’s quite unique to what we do is overcoming the already difficult and often costly task of educating consumers about sustainability, combined with the fact our area of work – menstrual and hormone health – is still incredibly stigmatised. We’ve experienced situations where media have refused to write about us and brands we partnered with requested the removal of keywords like “periods” from marketing materials; social-media platforms have also rejected any ads with words like “vagina” or “menstruation”. But since our launch in 2019, I’m happy to report things are changing. We’re now featured in mainstream media and are able to deliver our workshops to hundreds of organisations without having to mute our marketing messaging. Meta has also changed its ad policy to ensure topics like menstruation are no longer censored.
Are there any areas of improvement that could make your brand more sustainable?
A few of our products can’t be fully degradable without impacting performance, but we’ve made significant progress in developing sustainable upgrades. I also want to improve storytelling. One of our goals for 2023 is doing better at creating beautiful and engaging content that talks about this work. This will deepen our connection with community members and inspire more to use our products. The content will also help consumers to make informed purchase decisions, denounce greenwashing and put more pressure on entire industries to, simply put, do better.
Natasha Li
When she's not running around town hunting down the best happy hour deals, you can find Nat roasting at the beach blasting '90s R&B or in a catatonic state on her couch watching Seinfeld reruns. Often described as a house cat in human form, Nat is (relatively) lovely when well fed and well rested; avoid her at all cost on Monday mornings.