The most remarkable beauty ingredients don’t necessarily come from the parts of plants you’d expect. While many brands focus on familiar fruit pulps or essential oils, From This Island has made it part of our mission to seek out underutilised botanicals and overlooked plant materials, where possible, celebrating their natural benefits while finding ways to honour every part of nature.
It’s this ethos of thoughtful, unconventional use which shapes not just our skincare formulations but also the packaging that holds them. Every ingredient, every material, and every plant has a story worth telling — whether it becomes a hero active, a carefully considered packaging choice, or a thoughtfully upcycled extract.
Mangosteen Peel Extract: Beyond the Fruit
In much of the beauty world, the luscious mangosteen fruit is prized for its sweet, antioxidant-rich flesh. But at From This Island, we saw an untapped potential in a part of the fruit most overlooked: its vibrant purple peel.
Packed with powerful xanthones — natural antioxidants known for their anti-inflammatory and skin-protective properties — the peel holds remarkable skincare benefits. Through thoughtful extraction, we’ve transformed what’s often discarded into a valuable active ingredient featured in our Mangosteen Brightening Serum. It’s a reminder that beauty doesn’t always come from the most obvious places, and that nature still has so much more to offer when you pause to look a little closer.
Sugarcane: From Active Ingredient to Eco-Friendly Packaging
Wait — the same plant that sweetens our syrups can smooth our skin?
We’re fascinated by how a single plant can serve multiple, meaningful roles across our product lineup and sugarcane is a perfect example of this. In our Sugarcane AHA Exfoliating Solution, sugarcane-derived glycolic acid acts as a naturally sourced exfoliant, gently helping to resurface and brighten skin. This formula pairs a potent blend of AHAs with moisture-locking sugarcane extract, three types of hyaluronic acid, and calming aloe vera to leave skin smoother, fresher, and more hydrated.
But sugarcane’s story doesn’t stop there. It also shows up in our packaging. You’ll find our Java Black Tea Soothing Gel Cleanser, Illipe Plumping Lip Butter, and Bali Green Coffee Espresso Eye Cream housed in tubes made from bio-based sugarcane, a renewable material with a lower carbon footprint that’s fully recyclable. It’s a small but thoughtful detail that reflects the same care for nature in our packaging as in our products.
This versatility is a simple, meaningful reflection of our commitment to use natural resources more consciously — reducing waste where we can, and making every part of nature count, whether it’s nourishing your skin or protecting the environment around us.
Reframing What ‘Natural Ingredients’ Can Be
To encapsulate, sustainability for From This Island isn’t just about using natural ingredients. It’s about rethinking how we use them, where they come from, and how they might be repurposed, shared, or given new life in unexpected ways within our product ecosystem.
Whether it’s finding purpose for sugarcane in our packaging or unlocking the overlooked benefits of mangosteen peel, we’re committed to creating skincare that cares for both the people and the planet. And as we continue to uncover more of Indonesia’s rich, untapped botanical treasures, this is a philosophy we’re proud to carry forward.
Because sometimes, the most powerful actives and thoughtful solutions aren’t the ones everyone’s chasing — they’re the ones waiting quietly in the leaves, the peels, and the roots of our beautiful Indonesian archipelago.
