Badger is family-owned company in New Hampshire that produces self-care products that focus on health throughout the supply chain, benefiting soil and ingredient sources, the customer, and everything and everyone in between. 

The company’s origin story starts in 1994, when Bill Whyte created a balm made from organic beeswax and olive oil to soothe his rough carpenter hands. Bill had owned a small contracting business that built non-toxic houses. Like many other carpenters, the harsh winters were tough on his hands, and the average healing products were not strong enough to repair his damaged hands. This balm became the first Badger product.

“Since the beginning, Badger has been devoted to and built around the principles of kindness, compassion, and environmental stewardship. We have always been a mission-driven business that seeks to make healing products through a healthy business model in order to make a difference in the world” says Jess Baum, Badger’s sustainability manager.

Baum also mentions that “Badger became a B Corporation in 2011 to codify, increase, and verify the company’s social and environmental impact. In 2015, we wrote our mission into the DNA of our company by becoming a New Hampshire Benefit Corporation, which is a legal corporate status that shifts our purpose to include public benefit for people and planet.” 

In addition to their impressive certifications, Badger has been recognized as ‘Best For The World’ and ‘Best For The Environment’ by B Corporation several years in a row, an honor bestowed to only the top ten percent of companies that are significantly beneficial for the consumers and environment. Badger’s products are all certified gluten free and cruelty free, with many organic, fair trade, biodynamic, wild crafted, and ecologically harvested ingredients. 

Badger products are all about healing, both for their customers and the soils that produce their ingredients. And, they don’t see these as different goals. 

“Soil is inextricably linked to human and ecological health” says Baum. Badger gathers their healthy organic ingredients from farms all over the world. Two popular ingredients used are: 

• Olive oil: Grown in Andalusia, Spain on the Soler Romero orchard, where they use cover cropping, conservation tillage, compost, and intercropping to regenerate soil health and resilience.
• Sunflower oil: Made with organic and Demeter-certified biodynamic sunflower oil on farms that manage for soil fertility and treat farms as living organisms, with practices like crop rotation and cover cropping to increase carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and overall soil health.

Badger recently began a project to regenerate and draw down carbon at their own headquarters. Here, Badger employees gain first-hand regenerative agriculture experience. The company hopes to restore healthier soils through cover cropping and composting with their new on-site Climate Victory Garden and Johnson-Su composting bioreactor.

Baum states that “While there is no ‘silver bullet’ for swiftly resolving the global catastrophes we find ourselves in, we believe in the power of soil management to reverse some of the most pressing threats to humanity. We believe it is essential to broaden the climate crisis conversation far beyond mitigating harm and reducing negative impacts to look to a holistic, broad-reaching solution that actively heals harms done.”