It’s Saturday, the weather is good, and the long-awaited day outside has finally arrived. The beach bag is almost ready. A towel is rolled into the bottom, sunglasses are tucked into a side pocket, and there is a bottle of water that will probably be empty by lunchtime. The swimsuit went on before breakfast. Someone has checked the weather twice.
Just before everyone heads out, there is the sunscreen. It has been sitting in the bathroom all morning. A few generous squeezes go onto the palm, followed by the familiar business of rubbing it over the face, ears, neck and shoulders. Then come the places that are easy to miss: the tops of the feet when sandals are being worn, the narrow strip along the hairline, the back of the neck.
Some sunscreens disappear into the skin. Others leave a white film that becomes especially obvious once the sunglasses go on. Some leave the face feeling oily before the day has properly started.
The bottle gets thrown into the beach bag.
A day outside can mean hours in the water, walking along the beach, sitting with a book, watching children run in and out of the ocean or staying longer than planned because nobody is quite ready to go home. Sun protection has to fit into all of that.
When the Label Became the Problem
Jon and Gabrielle moved to the North Shore of Oahu in early 2024 because they loved surfing and wanted a life that kept them close to the ocean.
Most mornings begin in the water. Weekends can mean several hours at the beach, often around the middle of the day. Moving somewhere beautiful was never going to mean spending less time outside. Both had family experience with skin cancer scares, so sun protection was not something they were willing to treat casually. They had also developed the habit of looking at what went into the products they used every day.
Food started it. Then came shampoo, toothpaste and all the other things that tend to accumulate around a household. Sunscreen was harder to shrug off once the ingredients started getting noticed.
Hawaii had restricted oxybenzone and octinoxate because of concerns about their impact on coral reefs. For Jon and Gabrielle, that added another question to an already complicated category. If certain ingredients had become a subject of environmental concern, did they want to be using them on their own skin every morning?
They spent a lot of time in the sun. They needed sunscreen, but they also wanted to know what was in it.
The Search for a Sunscreen That Didn’t Feel Like a Compromise
Mineral sunscreen seemed like the obvious direction, but zinc oxide comes with a reputation of its own.
Anyone who has tried to spread zinc oxide across the face knows what can happen. The formula may make sense, but the mirror can tell a different story. Too much zinc and suddenly there is a pale forehead staring back.
Gabrielle’s first homemade batches did exactly that. She started with coconut oil and zinc oxide. The coverage was there, but the face was noticeably white. Cacao powder was added to give the mixture some color and disguise the cast. It worked, technically. It also created the possibility of looking as though a very strange tan had happened overnight.
There was more experimenting after that. Beeswax was tested to improve water resistance. It helped with that problem but made the balm heavier. That might be fine for something being applied before a long session in the ocean, but it wasn’t appealing for everyday use.
For about six months, the kitchen became a testing ground. Batches were made, worn, adjusted and abandoned. Jon became the unofficial tester, trying the different versions and reporting back on the texture and how they felt during the day.
Eventually, two changes moved the formula in the right direction. One was what the founders describe as clear zinc, which meant the cacao powder was no longer needed to disguise the white cast. The other was tallow.
Why Tallow Changed the Texture
Tallow solved a practical problem. The balm needed to feel comfortable enough for everyday use. There was little point in developing a sunscreen that looked good on paper if applying it every morning became a chore people quietly started avoiding.
The finished Whipped Tallow Sun Balm combines grass-fed tallow with non-nano zinc and organic oils. It is a mineral sunscreen, but it is also intended to sit comfortably within an ordinary skincare routine.
A beach sunscreen gets pulled from a bag when the sun is high. It gets rubbed onto shoulders, arms and whatever skin has been left exposed. Later, it ends up beside a towel or under a pair of sunglasses.
A daily face-and-neck product has to survive the rushed mornings, the wet hair, the half-finished cup of coffee and the moment when someone suddenly realizes the car keys are nowhere to be found.
A small amount of the whipped formula can be warmed between the fingers before being worked into the skin. The zinc is designed to blend in, so the balm is intended to feel less like another layer added to the morning and more like something that belongs there.
The Ocean Is Part of the Decision Too
Ritual Organics describes the Whipped Tallow Sun Balm as a daily face-and-neck product rather than something reserved for beach days. The formula contains six ingredients: grass-fed tallow, organic jojoba oil, non-nano zinc oxide, organic vitamin E, organic rosehip oil and organic lavender oil.
It would be easy to tell the Ritual Organics story as a story about tallow and leave it there, but the ocean is sitting underneath the whole thing.
Jon and Gabrielle moved to Oahu because they wanted to surf and spend more time outside. Water is part of the morning. The beach is part of the weekend. A sunscreen used in that kind of life naturally raises questions about what goes onto the skin before someone gets into the water.
The Whipped Tallow Sun Balm uses non-nano zinc rather than chemical UV filters such as oxybenzone and octinoxate. That reflects the founders’ preference for mineral sun protection and their concerns about what gets carried into the water.
For them, the formula had to make sense for the skin without feeling disconnected from the outdoor life that made sunscreen necessary in the first place.
Those six months in the kitchen were about more than finding a workable recipe. The goal was not simply to make another sunscreen. It was to make one they would actually want to put on.
Sun Protection Should Not Require Hiding from the Sun
The things that make a day outside enjoyable are also the reason protection matters. The surfer still wants to surf. Families still head to the beach on Saturdays. Children still run around outside until someone eventually calls them in. A sunscreen has to fit around that reality.
That was the problem Gabrielle was trying to solve when she started making batches in the kitchen.
The finished Whipped Tallow Sun Balm is a daily mineral sun balm made with grass-fed tallow, non-nano zinc and a short list of organic oils and supporting ingredients. Six months of recipes, adjustments and failed attempts eventually produced something much simpler than the process behind it.
Next Saturday, the towel will go into the bottom of the beach bag, the sunglasses will find their usual pocket, the water bottle will be filled, and the sunscreen will come along too.
