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The growing climate crisis is changing many people’s shopping patterns and extends to the $500 billion global beauty industry that grapples with a range of sustainability challenges across product manufacturing, packaging and disposal.
Strategy and consulting firm Simon Kutcher’s Global Sustainability Study 2021 found that 60% of consumers worldwide rated sustainability as an important purchasing criterion, and 35% were willing to pay more for sustainable products or services.
This shift in consumer preferences has led many beauty brands to set environmental goals: moving away from single-use and virgin plastics, providing reusable, recyclable and refillable packaging and providing greater transparency about the ingredients of products so customers can gauge how “green” their purchases are.
However, according to the British Beauty Council, consumers still struggle to understand the sustainability of many products. This is because the industry’s cleanup efforts have been inconsistent, and failing to make a recognizable impact in the absence of collective goal-setting, global strategy, and standardized regulations.
Ingredient and Branding Transparency
There is no international standard for the beauty industry regarding how much product ingredient information should be shared with customers – or how to do so. Brands may set their own rules and targets, leading to confusion and “greenwashing”, where sustainability claims are often publicized but not certified.
Companies often use marketing language such as “clean beauty” to make it appear that their products are natural, for example, when they may not actually be organic, sustainable, or ethically produced.
According to Millie Kendall, CEO of the British Beauty Council, “The term ‘clean beauty’ has become quite dangerous. It is used to sell more products.” “Customers need better marketing information and certification information.”
In a 2021 report calling on the industry to have the “courage to change” its business practices, the British Beauty Council wrote that, too often, the natural ingredients involved in the creation of products lead to “over-consumption, non-regenerative farming practices, pollution, waste and neglect”.
“The only way out of this is transparency,” Kendall told CNN.
Jane Lee, chief influence officer of US-based brand Beautycounter, said she continues to see confusion among consumers about ingredients. (In 2013, the company launched and published “The Never List,” which currently cites more than 2,800 chemicals — including heavy metals, parabens, and formaldehyde — it claims to never use in its products.)
“There’s been a conversation around natural versus synthetic ingredients. People think natural is safer, but that’s not always the case,” Lee said. “Natural ingredients produced in industry may contain toxic loads. Heavy metals may be in the earth’s natural ingredients.”
“We used to be more natural and organic,” said Sasha Plavsik, founder of makeup brand ILIA Beauty. “The challenging thing was that the raw materials were difficult to obtain or would come inconsistently or the products would not perform.”
Plavsik explained that most makeup is created and molded at high temperatures. Purely organic ingredients often disintegrate in this heat, leading to inconsistent results and poor product performance. “Not every synthetic is bad,” Plavsik said. “Sometimes, it helps to create a best-in-class formula.”
According to the British Beauty Council, the industry’s plastic packaging is a particular sustainability challenge – 95% is thrown away and the vast majority is not recycled.
According to Vantage Market Research, the cosmetics business is the fourth largest plastic packaging user globally – behind food and beverages, industrial packaging and pharmaceuticals – and accounts for approximately 67% of the plastics industry’s packaging volume. For example, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation (EMF), beauty giant L’Oréal used 144,430 metric tons of plastic in its packaging materials in 2021. Estée Lauder Companies reported that its brands produced 71,600 metric tons of plastic in product packaging that same year.
According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, only 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. The United States recycles only 4% of its plastic waste.
Many brands are trying to phase out harmful plastics from their operations and adopt post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics. (L’Oréal is aiming for 50% PCR plastic use by 2025, while Estée Lauder is aiming for 25% “or more” PCR plastic – but both are far from achieving their goals.)
“60-70 major global brands have made unprecedented progress in the use of PCR plastics across industries,” Sander DeFruit, EMF’s Plastics Initiative Lead, told CNN. But DeFruyt stressed that to really make a difference, PCR plastics must be adopted in conjunction with brands removing single and virgin plastics from their use cycles.
However, PCR plastic is not easy to find – low recycling rates worldwide mean its supply is limited. Meanwhile, demand is increasing across various industries, DeFruyt said. This competition increases its price, which is already higher than virgin plastic.
Hair care brand FEKKAI claims to use 95% PCR content in its packaging, but pricing and supply issues have posed a challenge, leading it to currently aim for containers and packaging that contain at least 50% PCR in its packaging.
“PCR plastic is more expensive than stock plastic. The cost is harder and then it’s also harder to source,” founder Frédéric Fecai told CNN. “PCR is close to our hearts, but it is in high demand, so recycled plastic is difficult to find.”
Beauty retailers play an important – and underutilized – role with control over stocking decisions and supply chains. But many people differ when it comes to the standards they set for the brands they sell.
“Small businesses do more, full stop,” said Jesse Baker, founder of Provenance, a technology platform that helps brands showcase their sustainability credentials to customers. “They move more smartly. Some of them are innately good brands – climate friendliness was part of their setup. They don’t need to restructure their entire supply chain. It’s already in their culture compared to bigger brands that need to work harder to change.”
Sephora launched its “Clean + Planet Positive” initiative in 2021, labeling products that met its set criteria. (This is separate from the French retailer’s “Clean at Sephora” program, which is currently facing a consumer lawsuit alleging it contains a significant percentage of products deemed harmful by customers.) Target launched a similar program in 2022, featuring a “Target Zero” icon for both online and in-store offerings that contain products that are either reusable, recyclable, compostable or low Have plastic packaging, or feature waterless or concentrated products.
Yet, many of the steps taken by brands and retailers have little to no impact on the waste and pollution generated from supply chains, manufacturing and shipping, all major problems for the industry.
The gaps in standardization in the beauty ecosystem can, to some extent, be filled by certifications like the US-born B Corporation, or B Corp. This accreditation, one of the most famous in the beauty sector, is issued by the non-profit B Lab, which scores a company on various criteria around ethics and sustainability. No matter how beneficial this may be among environmentally conscious consumers, however, it is currently entirely voluntary for brands to apply.
Many experts and business leaders believe that governments and multinationals implementing regulations and setting baselines for brands’ conduct while making sustainability claims will go a long way in bringing about change.
Suzanne Kaufmann, founder of her eponymous beauty brand, says her efforts in Austria would yield better results if more countries around the world had stricter, more uniform waste disposal laws.
“I package my product in recyclable materials,” Kaufman said. (The packaging of their products, which is refillable and reusable, is made of 75% recycled plastic – and is 100% recyclable.) If I send it to the US, the trash doesn’t get separated… and it’s not recyclable,” she explained, referring to inconsistencies in recycling laws across the United States.
And when it comes to ingredients, the European Chemicals Agency has listed 2,495 substances banned from use in cosmetic products marketed for sale or use in the bloc. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has listed only 11, making it more challenging for American consumers to find safe, green alternatives. The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog, studied laboratory tests of 51 sunscreen products in 2021 and found that only 35% of products met the EU standard, while 94% of products passed the US standard.
However, while the government may set minimum requirements, Mia Davis, vice president of sustainability and impact at beauty retailer Credo Beauty, says the private sector will move the needle.
“Regulation might raise the floor a little bit. A person who doesn’t know about any (sustainability issues) should still be able to go to a bodega and get a clean product… but the market may never do that,” he said. “Market leadership is important.”
In the absence of bold regulations or global standards on sustainability practices, this “leadership” – undertaken by both brands and customers in the beauty market – is likely to be the most immediately influential vector for addressing the industry’s climate shortcomings. Seeing meaningful climate-conscious change will require sustained collective advocacy and initiatives.