Broadway-based Little Soap Company has been honoured with a Queen's Award for Enterprise for its excellence in innovation for its Eco Warrior brand.

Announced on the Queen's 96th birthday today (April 21), Little Soap Company joins 51 other UK businesses and organisations who have been recognised for their contribution to innovation this year.

The sustainable BCorp, Little Soap Company, was founded by Emma Heathcote-James in 2008, with the mission to make pure, natural, sustainable soap, accessible to all at an affordable price.

Starting on the kitchen table, Little Soap Company brought the first organic bar soap to supermarket shelves, with Emma's handmade bars being trialled in eight Waitrose stores in 2010. When it proved a success, she upscaled production, and a year later, launched in Waitrose nationally. This was followed by all the other main retailers and the business hasn't stopped since.

The Eco Warrior brand launched in 2019. These functional bars are specially formulated shampoo, shaving foam, facial wash, shower gel or body scrub - each replacing an unnecessary bottle, tub, pot or tube. Eco Warrior has launched sensitive, men's and shampoo ranges, with the aim to be better than their traditional liquid counterparts.

The Eco Warrior brand has already won many industry awards, including Natural Health, Beauty Shortlist, Green Parent and Pure Beauty Awards. Starting life as a Future Brand with Sainsbury's, it is now listed in seven major retailers, including Waitrose, Boots, Superdrug and Lloyds Pharmacy, with plans for more rollouts this year.

Emma Heathcote-James, founder, said: "It's wonderful for the team to be acknowledged in this way, with such a prestigious and highly respected national business award.

"We have always been mindful of our social and environmental impact as a business. This achievement has made all the hard work worth it and is a constant mission for the team to better ourselves year on year. To be acknowledged by the Queen's Awards for Enterprise takes our environmental efforts, story and brand to the next level.

"As a business, I believe we have a responsibility to constantly do better and to help improve the world and we will continue to educate about the importance of challenger brands, the Better Business Act, of being a BCorp, the critical need for UK manufacturing, the need for businesses to genuinely balance people, profit and planet at the heart all they do and, most of all, the importance of kindness."

The Queen's Awards for Enterprise were first established in 1965. Winning businesses are able to use the esteemed Queen's Award emblem for five years.