The dirty face of beauty

Lorraine Dallmeier unmasks the environmental impact of the cosmetics industry

In the drive to make consumer products more sustainable, arguably nosector has been more overlooked or misunderstood than that of cosmetics. Thisoversight may result from the beauty industry being viewed as frivolous, butthe reality is that the $500bn+ (£393bn) sector is one of the world’s mostunsustainable industries.

Personal care uses vast amounts of agricultural,chemical and packaging resources to produce billions of products that may bedesigned to go on our bodies, but inevitably end up in waterways and landfills.Most of them have been created using the industry’s traditional ‘take, make,dispose’ model, meaning that our personal care habits pollute ecosystems withtheir non-biodegradable formulations and packaging.

Every single plastic lotionbottle you’ve ever owned is most likely still somewhere on our planet.

Beauty’stoxic tactics

Greenwashing dominates the narrative in cosmetics. The industry refusesto acknowledge what sits at the heart of its issues – that beauty’s veryexistence hinges on telling people they’re inadequate as human beings, which,in turn, drives mass consumption. The messaging is visible for all to see.We’re told that we’re not young enough, not smooth enough, not straight-hairedenough, not fragrant enough, not attractive enough, not white enough.Inadvertently, all of us have internalised this messaging. The average womannow keeps around 40 makeup products on her bathroom shelf.

To make matters worse, the beauty industry has atendency to invent issues to drive product sales. Cellulite is not anabnormality or disease but was instead framed by the cosmetics sector as anunsightly feminine condition that needs to be treated, despite a 2015evidence-based review concluding that cellulite products do not work.Similarly, the shampoo sector told us we should be washing our hair every day.As recently as the 1950s, most people washed their hair once a week, despitemodern liquid shampoos being invented decades before.

Most telling of all, Eugène Schueller, the founderof L’Oréal – the largest cosmetics company in the world – when asked about hismarketing strategy in the 1930s is alleged to have said “tell people they’redisgusting, they don’t smell good and they’re not attractive”. These wordsstill live on today in virtually every advertising campaign we see. If beautyis genuinely serious about becoming more sustainable, it needs to dramaticallychange its narrative. It also needs to embrace circularity.

Unpackingcosmetic waste

The personal care marketis deliberately opaque when it comes to reporting its consumer waste streamsbut is said to create 120 billion units of plastic packaging per year. Verylittle of this is reused or recycled. Furthermore, some of the personal carepackaging we’ve been using for years isn’t recyclable. Several cosmeticpackaging suppliers are now undertaking research and development to catch upwith sustainability demands but, even then, are confusing recyclability withcircularity.

In response, a few pioneering entrepreneurs arerolling out return-and-refill schemes, which allow shoppers to drop off or postback their empties. Anecdotal evidence suggests that initial trials have been asuccess, although the first participants of such schemes will beself-selecting. It won’t be easy to change mass consumer habits around beautywaste, but regardless of how long it takes to change behaviour, the future normwill eventually need to be to return and refill.

Solidchoices

Shoppers can go one step further by choosing personal care formulationsthat are designed with sustainability in mind. Many of the smaller, independentplayers (the so-called ‘indie’ beauty brands) are actively championing solidformulations, such as shampoo bars and lotion bars. As a result, the big players are starting to catch up and are now introducingthese types of products to mainstream retail.

Solid formulations are longer lasting and can bemultifunctional. The beauty sector heralds them as ‘waterless’ and claims thatthey are the solution to the industry’s sustainability problems. Most cosmeticformulations contain over 70% water, while solid alternatives do not. Whetherthey actually save a significant amount of water is debatable, given that theycontain high percentages of butters, oils and surfactants, which are either labsynthesised or obtained from agriculture. Being ‘waterless’ inside thepackaging doesn’t negate a product’s water footprint. Nonetheless, they couldallow us to drastically reduce the number of products on our bathroom shelvesand the impact of shipping high-water-content products.

Eco-designin cosmetics

Biotechnology is alsogaining ground
in cosmetics, with certain chemical compounds being lab grown using yeastcultures. This technique shows great promise but currently focuses on activeingredients that are added in tiny quantities to formulations, although it mayhelp prevent the overharvesting of certain cosmetic crops. Consider that ittakes at least 3,000kg of rose blossoms to produce 1kg of rose oil (that’s 1.5million petals), while the global rose-oil sector is forecast to grow by 6.8%year on year as a result of consumer demand.

Butdon’t expect biotech to generate all our cosmetic ingredients. The bulk of mostmainstream cosmetics still consists of water and palm-oil-derived andfossil-fuel-derived ingredients, which all bring additional environmentalchallenges. According to the Plastic Soup Foundation NGO, the products we puton our skin and hair use more than 500 different microplastics, includingliquid plastics.

Conversationsaround eco-design are growing though, with scientists increasingly talkingabout green chemistry, using upcycled ingredients from agro-waste, calculatingthe grey-water footprint of formulations and determining the levels ofecotoxicity caused by dispersing rinse-off products into waterways.Unfortunately, this burgeoning interest in eco-design doesn’t appear to extendto operational sustainability commitments. According to a recent report by theCarbon Trust, none of the world’s 10 largest cosmetics companies have set anindependently validated net-zero target, while three of these companies havefailed to commit publicly to a net-zero target at all.

Asbeauty consumers, the challenge we have is determining what constitutesgreenwashing, which isn’t helped by the way the cosmetics industry enjoysblinding us with science at every turn. Through 120 years of successfulmarketing campaigns, the industry has led us to believe that only chemists canmake skincare products. Their language and behaviour reflects this myth. Watchfor the white lab coats next time you go to the beauty area of a departmentstore or see a TV advertisement for a new high-performance serum that willmagically erase our wrinkles. The ‘science-washing’ is ubiquitous and, togetherwith insecurity-driven messaging, forms the basis for today’s cosmeticmarketing campaigns.

TheDIY beauty revolution

The good news is that we have at our fingertips the ability to step awayfrom the madness of beauty. Humans have formulated their own cosmetics formillennia, with the oldest known skincare formulation found on a 5,000-year-oldEgyptian scroll, titled ‘How to transform an old man into a youth’. Thefundamental principles of cosmetic formulation haven’t changed dramatically inthat time either – emulsification, gelling, warm blending, distillation,enfleurage and preservation are all techniques still used today by ingredientmanufacturers and chemists making our cosmetics.

Picture households blending up a family-sizedbatch of lotion, pressing their own shampoo bars or whipping up a hand balm.Sound far-fetched? Home formulation has taken hold globally, as thousands ofpeople now formulate their own skincare and haircare products. Google ‘DIYbeauty’ to see how much this movement has grown. Arguably, the democratisationof formulation would allow consumers to take control of their personal careneeds – or buy from local indie brands that reject the harmful beauty marketingnarrative.

We need a better solution to continuing withbusiness as usual. When we strip away the talk of recyclability and greenproduction techniques, beauty’s sustainability initiatives often end at thefactory gates or never materialise at all.

Last year, when asked how Unileverwould achieve net zero from carbon emissions generated by consumers using itsproducts, its CEO very honestly – and terrifyingly – answered: “I have noidea.” As environmental professionals, we should do moreto scrutinise this sector and hold it to account, as well as change our ownhabits as consumers. The era for allowing beauty to be in the eye of thecorporate beholder has passed.

Lorraine Dallmeier, MIEMA, CEnv, is the CEO of global formulation school Formula Botanica and the host of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast

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