Sustainability

Healthy people begin with a healthy planet.

View our 2023 ESG Annual Report

Optimizing the health of individuals means prioritizing the health of our planet.

Thorne has built its approach to personalized wellness on scientific solutions. Likewise, we built our approach to the environment on improving the sustainability of our operations – from the supply chain to the consumer – bring clean formulas with pure ingredients responsibly to the market.

1 – Responsible Operations

Reducing unnecessary consumption and excess waste in day-to-day operations

As our sustainability roadmap evolved, we redefine long-term solutions for reducing waste. From our revolutionary dissolvable disc supplements that use plastic-free compostable packaging, to our shipping supplies made from recycled materials, we scaled our effort to lower environmental resource use and waste.

Rethinking shipping to conserve paper

From our shipping boxes to the padding material inside them, nearly all of our shipping supplies are made from recycled materials or are themselves recyclable. In 2022, we switched from plastic mailers to kraft recycled and compostable paper mailers – removing more than 300,000 single-use plastic mailers from the supply chain each year. The corrugated boxes we use are made from 100-percent renewable sources. We also have implemented an innovative paperless “pick, pack, and ship” system that reduces paper waste on the road to delivering wellness solutions direct to consumers. Additional projects are currently underway to continue to reduce single-use plastic and eliminate even more shipping waste.

Increase Energy and Resource Efficiency

Throughout our office building we utilize recycling bins for aluminum, plastic, and paper, in addition to recycling toner cartridges and electronic equipment. We continuously implement ways to boost efficiency, such as utilizing high-efficiency electrical equipment like LED and motion-detection lighting, renewable energy sources, and high-efficiency HVAC units. The bottles we use to package our capsules and powders are PBDE-free – further improving our environmental footprint – and we actively seek out plastic alternatives for our packaging solutions. We are exploring ways to replace our oversized plastic jars with flexible, space-reducing gusset bags. By eliminating headspace – the empty air that occurs after powdered product settles inside a rigid container – we can transport more product on fewer trucks, removing vehicles from the roads and cutting emissions.

2 – Sustainably Sourced

We take pride in being a steward of the ingredients we use in our products.

We source ingredients in a responsible way that is protective of the environment and safeguards botanical resources. We scrutinize the farming and manufacturing methods of our raw materials not only to safeguard quality and purity but to support sustainable harvests.

Kelp - a sustainable superfood

Nutrient-dense kelp is a seaweed vital to ocean health. Much of the kelp in the market today comes from unregulated waters in southeast Asia. To remove the mystery from where and how the kelp we source is harvested, we connected with Atlantic Sea Farms, an aquaculture network of farmers and fishers that operate off the coast of Maine to grow and harvest native species of kelp in specially designed line farms. By fostering a balanced marine habitat, this model places a priority on farmers, community, and the earth to achieve a whole new way of producing food. We are proud to use Atlantic Sea Farms’ kelp in Thorne’s Daily Greens Plus.

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3 – Education & Engagement

To create ecological and cultural responsibility, Thorne fosters a corporate culture that advocates and promotes eco-friendly measures for our employees, suppliers, and end users.

We believe the environment should never be compromised for the sake of business gain. Doing our part to protect the environment and its resources goes hand-in-hand with supporting measures that educate consumers and suppliers, while engaging employees to solicit their collaboration in our sustainability efforts.

Employee Engagement

Greener begins at home. To nurture a culture of greener and cleaner, we provide resources to our employees on measures they can implement at home and in the office to reduce waste, invest in sustainable practices, and support local biodiversity. Our employees engaged in a “Help the Pollinators” campaign that provided team members with free flowering seeds and compostable starter pots to plant at home, along with tips on how to turn their at-home green spaces into bee- and butterfly-friendly sanctuaries. We introduced a design competition for a meditation garden to beautify our campus in South Carolina with native plants and natural materials. To further support our employees during times of economic difficulty, we provide resources for ride share services and carpooling networks to diminish the impact at the gas pump and reduce emissions from daily commutes.

Consumer Conscience

To ensure our campaign for a cleaner and greener world rings loud, we actively seek ways to certify our products as eco-friendly. When a product is endorsed as manufactured or packaged using environmentally friendly practices, we label it as such to encourage consumers to engage in eco-friendly post-use practices. Consumers can look for green certifications, such as Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly, when shopping on third-party vendors. Recently, we have shaken up the enhanced beverage industry with dissolvable disc supplements. The packaging for our revolutionary discs – plastic-free, compostable, and made from recycled materials – has been certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. What’s more, we removed the water from the enhanced water equation, eliminating more than 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions per 8-ounce serving compared to the industry standard of shipping water-bloated single-use bottles.   
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