🌍 Powering Up🔋
A work, money, energy special as we power productively into the summer. Together!
Welcome to BRiMM, the collective, journal and planet-positive shop here to help you live a lower-impact life, without life feeling less
Brimm News Desk
This week we launched our new Kitchen Cleaning Reset Box, another big step to detox and decarbonise your home (deets below).
Now booking: our first film screening. Remember the Woody Harrelson-narrated documentary, Kiss the Ground? Woody and the film makers are back - and this time they’re going to Congress. Common Ground is their excellent follow up, and Brimm are screening it at a very plush central London location. All members invited! Sign up for invites.
Brimm Journal
The next essay to land in our flourishing Journal is courtesy of climate justice activist, author and BRiMM founder member, Joycelyn Longdon. Combining a PhD in AI and ecology with her work in post colonial rainforests inspired one of BRiMM’s books of the year, Natural Connection. Now on a sell out tour of the UK, Joycelyn found time to sit down and explain her premise: that the relegation of Nature by modern life may have triggered environmental and societal collapse, but you can still find joy and wisdom if we know where to look for it. “We talk about artificial intelligence, we talk about human intelligence, but plant intelligence is mind-blowing. That is nature's technology,” she says. We strongly recommend you make a cup of tea and dive right in.
This week’s theme is…
Powering up: Investment, Energy and Connection
We loved meeting you all at last week’s Future Fabrics Expo 2025 and Blue Earth Forum - if you’re new to this letter after coming across us, then WELCOME. What both events showed us is that new structures are rising. Different systems, common purpose and radical visions are growing like new green shoots amongst the crumbling edifices of late stage capitalism, corporate greed and climate injustice, and we felt right at home. Doing things differently means changing structures and systems, and both events were packed with businesses, brands, founders, activists and visionaries who are beginning, literally, to change the world.
We believe business can be a force for good - in fact has a moral duty to be good - and that means giving back more than it takes. So how are we doing it?
Establishing vetting criteria and an editorial focus that help you lower your impact
Channelling 10% of all our revenue into a Planet Fund that helps our partner brands lower their footprint faster
Making Mother Nature a shareholder and director of our business, legally granting her a vote in all our company decisions
We believe business has a crucial role to play in helping us face the world’s urgent environmental challenges. By giving Nature a formal voice in our governance, we’re making a structural commitment to put the planet alongside profit. We’re not the first to do it: Riversimple, House of Hackney and Faith in Nature all have Nature on their boards, Patagonia have made Earth their sole shareholder. We deeply respect these models, and that’s why we’re following.
But we’re also going further. We’re investing 10% of all of our revenue into a Planet Fund, which in turn is investing in initiatives that will lower the impact of our partner brands. Those initiatives might be in packaging, supply chain, repair or something more sector specific, but before we launch we’re kicking off the fund with a £250k investment. Our first initiative will be solar energy. Why? Because every business, no matter what they make or sell, needs energy.
How are we doing it? With two fantastic new green shoot businesses: Urban Chain and OneZero Energy. Together we will bring our brands more renewable energy for less than they pay now. OneZero Energy are “a team of energy experts and digital nerds”, and they are supplying and installing the hardware on a factory site we have located in Northamptonshire. Urban Chain is a peer to peer energy exchange founded by maths whizz Somayeh Taheri, an Iranian immigrant who found an education, a husband and a new life in Britain, and her company is supplying the tech and the network. Urban Chain is now one of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies (top 10 actually!!!, Ed), according to the Sunday Times.
Both are brilliant examples of this new, regenerative, climate-just economy, but Taheri is one of only a very few climate tech female founders. Last year solo female founders in climate tech secured only 5.28% of deals and an even smaller 1.14% of funding. That’s why community amongst investors, business and customers is so important. Of the beauty brands on Brimm, 70% are female founded, and amongst our kitchen and cleaning brands, over 50% are. Together we will rise!
Our hope is that this first solar project can kick-off a flywheel. Any profit made from the project will be invested in more solar panels. The more our community grows, the more solar we can install. The more solar we install, the more brands we can help lower their impact. It’s a flywheel, powered by real action from you, our members.
If you run a business and want to cut energy bills and emissions, get in touch. We’re not limiting our project to the brands we stock. Likewise, if you have a roof that could host solar panels, let us know. The more spaces we can use, the more brands we can help.
We believe in mitigating impact, not offsetting it. We’re not promising the world. But we are promising to act, to measure, and to share how we get on.
Team up, tune in and let’s turn the tide,
BRiMM x
P.s. If you haven’t joined yet, in our pre launch phase we are offering a lifetime membership fee of £200, rather than £180 per year, for all the same benefits – this is closing any moment now, so join the waitlist while you can. Refer a friend, and if they sign up we’ll invest a further £200 into the solar project.
📢 CLEAN UP YOUR KITCHEN 📢
It’s here! Your kitchen cleaning collection that helps detox your home and the planet. If you’re still using Fairy and those plastic J cloths, you are missing out on a whole new wave of top notch kitchen schizzle. Non toxic, plant powered and brilliant at getting the job done, our product whizz Christabel has been trying and testing for months. Read more about the box and how she picked her recommendations here. From surface spray to dishwasher tabs, you'll never look back.
The BRiMM Life Questionnaire
This week it’s the turn of Chris Money, who co-founded Kit & Kin with Spice Girl Emma Bunton (pictured above). They came up with the brand together when they struggled to find products which were both kind to the planet and didn’t irritate their children’s skin. Kit & Kin offers natural, gentle and sustainable alternatives, from eco nappies to the powerful plant-based cleaning range we are offering in our reset box.
Favourite walking route?
Along the river near where I live. I’m often out walking while on the phone, or just thinking through the day ahead. It’s my way of easing into things, and a great start to most mornings.
Most joyful weekend moment?
Spending time with my three boys. Weekends are usually full-on with sports and clubs but it’s those quiet moments in between that get me. Just being together.
Second-hand spot worth a mooch?
The old cinema in Chiswick is great for upcycled furniture, Sunbury Antiques Market is a favourite too. I’m always on the lookout for things with character and history.
Causes you give to every month?
Our partnership with the World Land Trust means every product we sell helps protect rainforest through their network of local NGOs. Every Kit & Kin purchase also helps fund vital medicines for remote communities and educational scholarships for kids.
Which issue do you care most about changing?
The idea that businesses should exist purely for profit. Business can and should be a force for good. Purpose and profit can co-exist and if more brands embraced that we’d all benefit. As consumers we have power: we get to support the change makers.
Quote to live by
"Be yourself; everybody else is already taken." Oscar Wilde.
Fancy doing our BRiMM Life Questionnaire yourself? Get in touch
FROM THE COLLECTIVE
Tiff says follow The Nat: a new platform accelerating action for Nature from Stella McCartney, Harrison Ford, Sabrina Elba and Laura Dern. Watch out for The Nat Gala coming to New York in September
Sam is heading to Our Story at the Natural History Museum, the new 360 immersive experience from Sir David Attenborough: “an epic tale of people and planet”
Matt’s loving Perfect Days – the 2023 film from Wim Wenders “about how fulfilment arises through mindful routines, ordinary moments and human connection”
We love to hear what our collective is finding. Share your links with Becky.
THE 3/3/3 METHOD
Long for an organised work life? Attention economy getting the better of you? Feeling distracted and unproductive? We’ve got you. Or rather Oliver Burkeman has. The author of Time Management for Mortals has come up with this method and it’s got the Brimm team hooked. Spend three hours a day on your most important current project, with a defined goal for daily progress. Then complete three shorter tasks, that take just a few minutes each (calls and meetings count). Then attend to three 'maintenance activities' that need daily attention to keep running smoothly. "The man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly," wrote Adam Smith, "not only preserves his health the longest, but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work." Doing less as a way to get more done? We’re in.
MORAL AMBITION
If you are hungry for change but stifled by your work place, then here’s a way out. Author and philosopher Rutger Bregman, (Utopia for Realists) runs The School for Moral Ambition, a foundation that awards scholarships to help you explore a different path, one where your career and the precious time you invest in it can shape a better world. Currently focusing on food transition and a tobacco free future, this well funded American venture is now recruiting in Europe. “We believe small groups of dedicated individuals can change the world. We fund ambitious idealists to leave behind empty careers and build lives of real impact.” Get in.
→ BROWSE MORE
LEND WITH CARE
Blue Earth might have been teeming with new biz and hungry investors, but if you want to start somewhere, this individual micro financing site is everything. For as little as 15 quid you can fund Arnold in the Philippines to buy feed for his fattening head of pigs. Or Chung in Vietnam to buy microbial fertiliser to expand her Green Agriculture-certified plantation. Or Uwimana in Rwanda to hire 10 temporary workers to boost his crop yield. Best thing about it? They grow, you get your money back and then you can go again.
→ SHOW MORE
POLL
REFRESH HERE
Watermelon, feta and mint is a summer classic, but have you ever tried barbecuing the melon? Those clever folk at Riverford insist it just adds to the taste. Just add sumac and cumin.
THE MUSIC OF QUIET REVOLUTION
Ahmet went on a sonic journey this week, where 2000s electronic, dream pop and trip-hop flirt with global rhythms and oriental undertones. Tracks to remind that the sounds of today are often born from yesterday’s quiet revolutions.
The carbon footprint of an email depends what device you use to open it, but sending you this one used about 3.5g of carbon.
If you liked the above, do please kindly leave a
It will help circulate it more widely. Thank you!