Meet R+B, Malaysia's First Circular Beauty Brand

Our current consumer culture does not practise this model for the most part as raw materials are grown, mined, or harvested, and its waste is not recyclable.

So when we heard that Malaysia was pioneering a beauty product that claimed to be a "Circular Beauty Brand" our ears perked up. And after speaking with their founders, we found much to applaud in their efforts of sustainability.

SEO nightmare name aside, R+B or Repurpose plus Beauty is a homegrown beauty brand that adopts a circular model to its products with the use of non-virgin ingredients and reusable containers.

Their co-founders, Irene Lim, Siew Kheng, and Adrian Peh started the business with their own investment in 2021 and soft launched the product in December 2022. The trio are veterans in the communications landscape and gave up their full time jobs to pursue this beauty brand.

They currently have 5 products, three face care products: face gel, face scrub, and face moisturiser, and 2 body care products: body scrub and body cream. The key ingredient in all of them are repurposed coffee grounds.

For the most part, yes. The packaging and the bottles are recyclable and if you return the empty jars via their website, you'll get RM20 credited to your registered account. Currently, you need to download and fill in a form and ship the bottles to their HQ to get the credit.

The jury is out on whether or not people will actual go to that trouble to send it back, but if you're all in on zero waste, you might appreciate the option.

We also asked where they sourced their coffee grounds and they mentioned that an international coffee chain in Malaysia is participating in the repurposing of the coffee grounds so its nice to know that not all of our coffee grounds are ending up in landfills.

They mentioned that their products are 100% Malaysian-made with ingredients sourced locally and even the extraction of ingredients from these repurposed materials are done right here in Malacca by an expert with 14 years experience.

That said, there are still some gaps in their circular model, for example the resurrection plant used in their face moisturiser is not repurposed. The plant is grown in South Africa and extraction of its ingredients are done in Switzerland.

Then there's also the preservatives needed for the beauty products, but they told us that for preservatives there are no synthetic chemicals used.

Time will tell if this trend picks up in Malaysia as, to our knowledge, there aren't any brands that heavily market themselves as circular products. If you're into their mission, you can head to rnbgbeauty.com to make your purchase.