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The escalating climate crisis is shifting many people’s purchasing patterns and this extends to the $500 billion dollar global beauty industry which is grappling with a range of sustainability challenges across product manufacturing, packaging, and disposal.
Strategy and consulting firm Simon Kucher’s Global Sustainability Study 2021 found 60% of consumers around the world rated sustainability as an important purchase criterion, and 35% were willing to pay more for sustainable products or services.
This shift in consumer preferences has propelled many beauty brands to set environmental goals: to move away from single-use and virgin plastics, provide recyclable, reusable, and refillable packaging, and offer more transparency around products’ ingredients so customers can ascertain how “green” their purchase is.
However, consumers still struggle to understand the sustainability credentials of many products, according to the British Beauty Council. This is because the industry’s clean-up efforts have been inconsistent, and fall short of making a recognizable impact in the absence of collective goal-setting, global strategy, and standardized regulations.
There is no international standard for the beauty industry on how much product ingredient information to share with customers — or how to do so. Brands can set their own rules and goals, giving rise to confusion and “greenwashing,” where sustainability claims are often touted but not substantiated.
Companies often use marketing language like “clean beauty” to make it seem like their products are natural when they may not actually be organic, sustainable, or ethically made.
“The term ‘clean beauty’ has become quite dangerous. It’s used to sell more products,” according to British Beauty Council CEO Millie Kendall, who added that such buzzwords are losing traction in the UK as British customers wise up to their shortcomings. “Customers need better marketing information and certification information.”
In a 2021 report calling on the industry to have “the courage to change” their business practices, the British Beauty Council wrote that all too often, even natural ingredients involved in manufacturing products give way to “over-consumption, non-regenerative farming practices, pollution, waste, and neglect.”
“The only way out of this is transparency,” Kendall told CNN.
Jen Lee, chief impact officer at US-based brand Beautycounter, said she continues to see confusion over ingredients among consumers. (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.)
“Natural vs. synthetic ingredients has been a conversation. People think natural is safer, but it’s not always the case,” Lee explained. “Natural ingredients formulated in the industry can have toxic load. Heavy metals can occur in natural components of the earth.”
“We used to be more natural and organic,” added Sasha Plavsic, founder of makeup brand ILIA Beauty. “What was challenging is (that) raw materials were difficult to source or would come in inconsistently or products wouldn’t perform.”
Most makeup is created and molded at high temperatures, Plavsic explained. Purely organic materials often fall apart in this heat, leading to inconsistent results and subpar product performance. “Not every synthetic is bad,” Plavsic said. “Sometimes, it helps create the best in class formula.”
The industry’s plastic packaging is a particular sustainability challenge — 95% is thrown away and the vast majority is not recycled, according to the British Beauty Council.
The cosmetics business is the fourth biggest plastic packaging user globally — after food and beverage, industrial packaging, and pharmaceuticals — and plastic is about 67% of the industry’s packaging volume, according to Vantage Market Research. Beauty giant L’Oreal used 144,430 metric tons of plastic in its packaging material in 2021, for example, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation (EMF). Estee Lauder Companies reported its brands produced 71,600 metric tons of plastic in product packaging that same year.
And only 9% of the global plastic waste is recycled, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The United States only recycles 4% of its plastic waste.
Many brands are trying to phase out harmful plastics from their operations and adopt post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic. (L’Oreal has set a target of 50% PCR plastic usage by 2025, while Estee Lauder is targeting 25% “or more” PCR plastic — but both are far from achieving their targets.)
“Between 60-70 major global brands have made unprecedented progress” in PCR plastic usage across industries, EMF’s Plastic Initiative Lead Sander DeFruyt told CNN. But DeFruyt stressed that PCR plastic must be adopted in conjunction with brands removing single and virgin plastics from their usage cycles to truly make a difference.
However, PCR plastic is not easy to find — low recycling rates around the world mean there is limited supply. Meanwhile, demand for it is growing demand across industries, DeFruyt said. This competition hikes up its price, which is already higher than virgin plastic.
Hair care brand FEKKAI claims it used up to 95% PCR content in its packaging, but pricing and supply issues posed a challenge, forcing it to currently aim for containers and packaging that feature at least 50% PCR in its packaging.
“PCR plastic is more expensive than stock plastic. The cost is hard, and then sourcing it is too,” founder Frédéric Fekkai told CNN. “PCR is close to our heart, but there is a massive demand, so finding recycled plastic is difficult.”
Beauty retailers play a pivotal — and under-utilized — role, with control over stocking decisions and supply chains. But many vary when it comes to the standards they set for brands they sell.
“Smaller businesses do more, full stop,” said Jessi Baker, founder of the technology platform Provenance, which helps brands display their sustainability credentials for customers. “They move more nimbly. Some of them are born-good brands — climate friendliness was part of their setup. They don’t need to restructure their entire supply chain. Their culture already has it compared to the larger brands who need to work hard to change.”
Sephora launched its “Clean + Planet Positive” initiative in 2021, which labeled 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 carries a significant percentage of products understood by customers to be harmful.) Target launched a similar program in 2022, featuring a “Target Zero” icon for both online and in-store offerings that either have reusable, recyclable, compostable, or reduced plastic packaging, or feature waterless or concentrated products.
Still, many steps taken by brands and retailers do not even touch on the waste and pollution generated throughout supply chains, manufacturing, and shipping, all huge problems for the industry to grapple with.
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