Cha Ling is a luxurious skincare brand holding environmental awareness at heart. Its name “Cha Ling”/ L’esprit Du Thé means “the spirit of tea”. The skincare line infuses top-quality Pu’er tea in its products.
Founded by Guerlain’s CEO Laurent Boillot, the line has over 40 kinds of anti-ageing and antioxidant products spanning across toiletries, skincare and fragrance. To reduce plastic waste created from disposable cosmetic packaging, Cha Ling’s two best-selling face creams come in simplistic, beautifully-crafted refillable porcelain pots. The ivory-white tubs are hand-painted with the Chinese characters of “Cha Ling” in a style inspired by Chinese calligraphy. They are so well-crafted and durable that no one would want to throw them away.
Porcelain jars can currently be bought separately at HK$540 each and the refills cost 30% less than their conventionally packaged formats.
Cha Ling’s work goes beyond reducing ecological footprint. The spirit of sustainable development runs deep in its harvests of Pu’er tea leaves from the Xishuangbanna area in Yunnan, China. While Yunnan is often associated with lush green forests, deforestation is a dire problem as the local rubber plantation industry gnaws into its natural forests. By 2003, Yunnan’s forest cover was cut by half.
Cha Ling: fresh Pu’er tea leaves
Seven years ago, Boillot’s encounter with German biologist and conservationist Josef Margraf in Yunnan paved the way to the birth of Cha Ling. After Margraf’s passing, Boillot continued to work with his wife Li-Margraf on securing partnership with Bulang farmers to get Pu’er tea leaves from the Camellia sinensis trees. Bulang farmers grow, harvest and ferment the tea leaves without damaging the trees. What’s agreed upon the 10-year contract is that pesticides cannot be used in the maintenance of the tea trees. Apart from that, to combat deforestation in the “Kingdom of Plants”, the company is replanting 20 hectares of tea trees in its Tea Garden Project. According to the CEO, the ultimate goal is to “copy the original ecosystem, which has now been devastated” and achieve “carbon neutral” in its production and transportation processes.
“The path of the renaissance of Pu’er tea lies through restoring biological diversity in tea plantations, from the smallest to the largest living organisms.”- Li-Margraf
Cha Ling: Bulang farmers collecting Pu’er tea leaves from its tea tree farm in Yunnan
The sustainable beauty brand takes from and give back to mother nature. As users of Cha Ling’s products feel Pu’er’s refreshing and detoxifying effects, they may also ponder how they can give back.
One way is by supporting their Tea Garden Project, another is by reusing their beautiful porcelain pots and other recyclable products.
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Written by: Angela Ng