Words by Cyrus Sutton

I started making my own sunblock after skin cancer nearly took my dad's life in 2008. It spurred me to look at solutions to protecting my skin and whilst doing so I learned that the chemicals in sunblocks were linked to negative health effects in humans and coral reefs. Corals are incredibly sensitive to chemicals suffering abnormal bleaching from sunblock that's at a dilution of just 10 micrometers. That's one millionth of a litre.

He'd found an ingredient named Thanaka in Myanmar. It’s been used by the Burmese people for thousands of years to protect their skin from the sun.

My search for healthy sunblocks took me to a couple natural alternatives but they're expensive so I found some tutorials on making sunblock from scratch. They worked pretty well and soon I was making my own block for pennies on the dollar compared to off the shelf products.

Even so, I never thought I'd enter into the sun care market myself until Reis Paluso - my co-founder in Korduroy and Manda - found an ingredient named Thanaka in Myanmar.

It’s been used by the Burmese people for thousands of years to protect their skin from the sun and comes from the bark and wood of a local tree. The prospect of incorporating it as an active ingredient in a sunblock to offset Zinc Oxide got me excited. Zinc is an effective and safe ingredient (when not used in nano particulate form) that most organic sunblocks are using these days but it's really hard on the environment to mine and refine.

This isn't a fashion sunscreen, this is war paint for surfers, mountaineers, athletes and beach bums. After testing various combinations of Thanaka and zinc we settled on a formula that uses 20 percent zinc and 10 percent Thanaka and Manda Organic Sun Paste was born. The quantity of zinc alone qualifies us for what the FDA considers a 30 SPF or greater sunblock. We feel that by adding Thanaka and our other natural ingredients this number is significantly higher.

As well as high SPF we tried to add longevity to our sun block. There's been many times when I've put on 50 SPF only to have it wash off hours later. Manda is a thick coat that lasts all day and generally needs to be wiped off instead of needing to be reapplied.

The last factor to consider was price. I wanted to make sure the product was a better deal per ounce than the vast majority of high performance facial sunblocks and we've achieved that. I'm pumped to join this new non-toxic revolution in sun care and push the conversation forward about ways to minimize our impacts while protecting our bodies and our planet.

Manda can be pre-ordered via Cyrus' Kickstarter campaign