‘When you have children, you suddenly feel more responsible’: Wellness curator Peigín Crowley on joining Ireland’s green team

Homegrown 

Operating in Cork, Peigín works as a wellness curator. With over 20 years experience in the spa industry, she was at the forefront of the wellness evolution in Ireland for the majority of her career.

But her true goal, she says, was making wellness and self care accessible to all. So when the pandemic struck and she was faced with sudden adversity, she decided it was finally time to develop an accessible, eco-friendly brand Ground Wellbeing.

Projects she was working on at the time were suddenly halted and she was faced with a choice: pause or pivot.

“My work is quite private and when I do projects for other people I don’t shout about it,” says Peigín, who has developed spa experiences for Mount Juliet Estate and Adare Manor, as well as private label brands for the likes of Mink Hand and Foot Spa.

“But I knew I needed to protect myself for the future so I got brave and came out from behind the curtain.”

Simplicity

The concept for Ground Wellbeing came at a time when the world was pairing back on ‘unnecessary’ things and opting for a simpler life – one that could be sustained and shared with others.

So, when Peigín sat down to develop the concept for Ground Wellbeing, she felt it was time to incorporate her background in aromatherapy (a simple and natural line of skincare products).

“Essential oils are the most beautiful plant messages and they speak to our biology,” she says. “These oils, when they live beside your bed, become your toothbrush-and-toothpaste moment when you think, ‘I just need to breathe for a minute’.”

She also knew she wanted to create a range that was clean and sustainable. “Everything from our glass jars to our branding is locally sourced and fully traceable,” she explains.

“We’ve got a refill initiative with our spa partners and our customers will soon be able to bring back their empty containers in order for them to be recycled.

“My awareness of sustainability has really come into focus in recent years,” adds the mother-of-two. “When you have children, you really become aware that you are passing on the planet to the next generation and you suddenly feel more responsible than you possibly did before.”

Sustainability

At the forefront of Ground Wellbeing, Peigín prioritises people, taking a personal approach to each customer relationship. She runs online self-care workshops for her customers on the last Sunday of each month and hand-delivers product orders to clients such as Brown Thomas.

“Not every company has the owner going out and delivering the products but I just felt, in the early stages, how lovely it would be to meet my clients and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint,” she says.

This commitment to sustainability isn’t just unique to Peigín’s business, but a practice she applies to all facets of her life. As a friend of BMW, she drives a 330e plug-in hybrid to help reduce Co2 emissions and reaffirm her commitment to a fully sustainable product lifecycle.

The pioneering car brand recycles and reuses 99 per cent of the waste they generate from their global internal production each year, and supplies their sites worldwide exclusively with electricity from renewable energy sources. It’s a far-reaching sustainability strategy, says Peigín, and it inspired her to reconsider her own one.

Environmentally-driven

“There’s a lot of greenwashing going on in some companies but when I did my due diligence on BMW, I was blown away,” she said. “They’re doing it from the inside out. It made me look to my own suppliers and mail them questions, and I was so glad to discover that my supply chain was standing up.”

“BMW is now showing me how you can use reduced materials in production and how you can document the lifecycle of a product throughout your whole supply chain,” she explains.

BMW has a commitment to offer 25 electrified vehicles by 2023. At least 13 of the new models will be fully electric, including the upcoming BMW iX3, BMW iX and BMW i4, due later this year.

Peigín drives a BMW 330e plug-in hybrid but in time she’d like to move to a fully electric vehicle. “You can feel it and hear it when you’re in electric mode and then, when you rev up, you move into petrol,” she explains. “I know I’m helping the environment when I’m driving that little bit slower, and that brings about a consciousness that I can be accountable and responsible.

“It’s a really good feeling to be on the green team on the road,” she adds. “Plus, there’s a huge pride in meeting my clients and delivering my products in a more sustainable way.”