Rooted in Nature: A Message from Carrie on Our Path Forward

Hi! I’m Carrie, the owner and founder of Nurture Handmade. We started back in 2012 as a simple soap company born out of my own frustration; I couldn't find the quality products I wanted on the market, so I spent months sourcing them myself. We began with just five colors and a single 2.5 lb soap mold - a mold we still proudly offer today. It is truly incredible to see how much we have grown.

I’ve grown personally, too. As I turn 50 this year, I find myself in a period of introspection, weighing what matters most and the legacy I want to leave behind. With age has come a deeper sensitivity toward our impact on the earth, its animals, and humanity.

Lessons from the Forest

I am a dedicated forager, specifically for mushrooms. Every spring, I take a month to travel solo across five or six states to hunt for morels. This ritual grounds me after a long winter; it’s just me, the trees, and the earth.

I have just returned from my 2026 hunt, which took me through national forests and wildlife lands. While the journey was stunning, two things stood out to me in a heartbreaking way:

• Deforestation: I witnessed so many wooded areas being cleared for high-density housing and commercial food production. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a quiet place to simply forage or "hug a tree."
• Pollution: There was trash everywhere - beer cans and plastic bottles that make you question the state of humanity. I try to pack out as much as I can, but some of these sacred places need a thousand-person crew to truly heal.

These experiences had a profound impact on me. I realized that the biggest positive change I could make for the planet was through Nurture Handmade.

What This Means for Nurture Handmade

Fragrance and The PureScent Initiative

We are hard at work on our PureScent initiative, developing fragrance oils for soap and candles that are Prop 65 compliant and, most importantly, safe for marine life. Because we are removing components to ensure our scents are non-mutagenic and non-carcinogenic, some reformulations may smell slightly different than the originals. However, we are rigorously testing every version for performance, scent accuracy, and value. Over time, the majority of our catalog will meet these new, higher standards.

Ethical Colors

While we develop many colors in-house, we are tightening our guidelines for outside manufacturers. We are moving toward partners who adhere to strict ethical mining and environmental safety standards. You will see us replacing certain colors over time to ensure they align with our humanitarian philosophy.

Environmental Partnerships

We’ve partnered with GoodAPI to launch a new initiative: For every $20 spent, we will plant one tree and remove five plastic bottles from our oceans. Being good stewards of the earth is the very least we can do. Our Environmental Contributions.

Radical Transparency

As we launch new products, we are striving for total transparency. We will be updating our fragrance information to include batch testing results, easy-to-read IFRA data, Prop 65 compliance, and detailed use notes.

Your Concerns Matter

We know you depend on our products to run your businesses, and we know that change can be a bit scary! Our goal is to keep reformulations as close to the originals as possible. If we cannot achieve a high-quality match with the new safety standards, we will keep the original formula available rather than offer a subpar replacement.

We want to hear from you. We rely on your feedback to know what’s working and what isn’t. Whether you love the changes, hate them, or are "seething with hatred" (just kidding... mostly!), please tell us! You can reach out via our Facebook group, reviews, or direct contact.

We are in this together. We want to protect our planet while ensuring your business thrives.

In Conclusion

We hope you’re as excited about these earth-friendly initiatives as we are. We want to go beyond just providing beautiful smells and colors; we want to offer products you can feel truly good about using.

Please leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts. Here’s to creating a better planet together!

Update, October 2026: A quick but important update from me! Since writing this letter, I’ve done a lot more digging, and I learned that US and global standards for hazard labeling vary widely. US safety data sheets (OSHA) don’t assess environmental hazards at all, while the global GHS system does, so the very same oil can look marine-safe on one sheet and not on another. I didn’t want to claim something that could be perceived as untrue or inaccurate, so marine-life safety is no longer part of the PureScent standard.

Here’s what PureScent stands for now: it follows the leading clean-fragrance standard in our industry, and in a few places goes even further. Every PureScent oil is made without phthalates, known carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins, or added Prop 65 ingredients, and PureScent+ leaves out the suspected ones too. You can see every detail on our PureScent vs PureScent+ page.

And no, I haven’t stopped caring about our oceans! Our GoodAPI partnership is still going strong: for every $20 spent, we plant a tree and remove five plastic bottles from the ocean.