Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Latest Episodes:

EP152. Lifting the barriers to sustainable beauty Mar 16, 2023

Show notes

From interviewing numerous founders for this podcast, we know that starting an indie beauty brand based on sustainability principles can be more expensive as well as limit your choices of packaging, ingredients, suppliers, partners and more.

However, if you are a beauty brand founder of colour or from a minority, then both anecdotal and statistical evidence shows that you will face almost insurmountable barriers to entry just starting any beauty brand, let alone one founded on sustainability principles.

In our last episode on the history of slavery in soapmaking, we heard indie beauty founder and minority community activist Dr Candace Parrish explain that embracing sustainability is expensive and that these extra costs limit entrepreneurs of colour from getting into this industry in the first place.

In this green beauty opinion, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier explores the points Candace raises to take a look at the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs of colour and from minorities, especially when it comes to sustainable beauty.

EP151. The history of slavery in soapmaking Mar 09, 2023

Show notes

Soap has been the mainstay of personal care for millennia, but in recent years, it has gone from household commodity to luxury cosmetic in homes and hotels.

Soapmaking is thriving too as an artisan hobby and has launched many entrepreneurial beauty businesses. Formula Botanica graduate Sandra Velasquez started her successful Latinx heritage bath and body brand Nopalera in 2020, helping elevate soap to new heights.

But, let's just stop for a moment. Do we ever ask ourselves about the history of soap? It is worth doing so as there is a whole era of soapmaking that has been almost erased from the records of social history.

In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier discovers the murky past of soapmaking with guest Dr Candace Parrish, whose studies in public relations, health communication, and visual communication led her to unearth a shameful period of American history and its enslaved soapmakers.

Candace went on to create her soap and candle brand Odelia, Marie & Patrice to honour the legacy of African-American soapmakers, and as a platform to support activism for Black and people of colour in America today.

EP150. Can new beauty brands be more sustainable? Mar 02, 2023

Show notes

When you start a beauty brand, every aspect of it from your own unique formulations to your packaging and branding are up for grabs. Every detail is in your hands and even if outsourcing tasks, you, as the founder, have control.

If you embrace sustainability in your brand mission at the outset, it will drive every detail and decision. How much easier this is than struggling to audit a beauty business later on against sustainability principles and finding it falling short.

In this Green Beauty Opinion, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier discusses the advantages nimble, newcomer indie beauty brands have over the "oil tanker" giant firms of personal care.

It will still take indie brands boundless energy, resources and resolve to be true to any founding mission to act on sustainability not just talk about it. However, the advantages and the market is theirs if they prepare ahead rather than retro fit sustainability as most personal care conglomerates must do.

EP149. SBTRCT, brand innovator in solid skincare Feb 23, 2023

Show notes

Solid cosmetics are growing in popularity in line with our desire for less-is-more skincare and to do right by the planet. They can be multiuse, potentially use less water in their manufacture, strip out water as a "filler" in their formulation, and may not need preservatives. As they are waterless, they can be less weighty to ship thanks to their minimal packaging.

For all their virtues however, solid formulations are often seen as fun, cheap and disposable and not attractive enough to deliver high-performance skincare. We may think of them as glorified bars of soap.

However, there are innovative, forward-thinking cosmetics brands that are daring to reframe solid formulations to appeal to a more luxury beauty market.

When we heard of the brand SBTRCT, we knew we had to find out their secret of making solid beauty not just the norm, but the luxury norm too.

In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to SBTRCT founder Ben Grace about his mission to disrupt the beauty industry and show us that anything is possible; even a facial serum bar perhaps.

EP148. Will shoppers start to reject mainstream haircare? Feb 16, 2023

Show notes

Natural, indie, clean, green, organic skincare is now commonplace on store shelves and is talked about wherever you are online. This podcast is all about it, but if you've listened recently to Green Beauty Conversations, you will have noticed we've been focusing more on the topic of natural, sustainable haircare and attitudes to hair. But talk aside, are consumers actively looking to buy natural, more sustainable haircare products?

Big, household-name international brands have generally had a comfortable monopoly on our haircare buying habits for decades. But recently, we have seen some high-profile brands having to do product recalls amidst safety concerns.

Perhaps this will see shoppers start to question mainstream haircare ingredients. If so, we may have the same situation we did in the early 2010s when a fear of parabens kickstarted the indie beauty movement.

In this green beauty opinion episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier asks what it will take for consumers to move away from the mainstream brands and what role indie brands will play in the future of haircare.

EP147. Talking sustainable haircare with Captain Blankenship Feb 09, 2023

Show notes

Indie beauty and the organic and natural cosmetics sector have typically focused more on skincare than haircare. This is to be expected; people can be reluctant to change their haircare routines and products once they have found brands that work for them.

There are other reasons too for natural haircare lingering behind, such as the perceived higher cost of using natural shampoos and conditioners whose precious ingredients are immediately washed off.

However, we are witnessing an exciting rise in the number of natural haircare brands, and also in consumer awareness of the need to seek out more sustainable haircare products too. The tide is turning for the dominance of mainstream haircare, not least on account of some recent high-profile product recalls in the sector.

To discuss the kind of changes we need to make the haircare sector more sustainable and, as brand founders, see natural, indie haircare leading the way, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Jana Blankenship. The founder, CEO and lead formulator of green beauty haircare and B Corp company Captain Blankenship, Jana made a conscious decision a couple of years ago to pivot her business to focus solely on haircare and embed sustainability into its operations.

EP146. Imagine the beauty industry in 2100 Feb 02, 2023

Show notes

Visualising through storytelling is a good way to set our sights on what is desireable and possible, and then make the imagined become reality. Beauty brands have long used storytelling to create an appealing narrative about their products. It is in this context that Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier dares to air a new format in this green beauty opinion episode – a short story of life in the beauty industry in 2100.

Lorraine helps us imagine what may seem impossible today; a truly sustainable beauty industry – one not driven by ever-more consumerism, but founded on sound sustainability principles.

Inspired by her guest on the previous episode, sustainability leader, activist, and artist Khandiz Joni, Lorraine asks us to listen to her hopes for a future beauty industry that has avoided breaching the 9 planetary boundaries – or tipping points of sustainability – Joni outlined.

EP145. Nine boundaries of planetary care Jan 26, 2023

Show notes

Would you like to hear a single, simple definition of sustainability that you can apply to your daily life in the beauty industry, whether as an indie business founder or consumer? The beauty industry media is clamouring to provide one, and at Formula Botanica, we've had journalists approach us for short sound-bites on what sustainable beauty means.

Unfortunately, things aren't so simple. In reducing talk of sustainability to the level of discussing this or that bottle for our beauty products or whether plant A is a more sustainable an option in our formulations than plant B, we are all guilty of missing the big picture.

Of course, starting small and taking steps like changing packaging, seeking out refillables and formulating solid beauty products do make a difference. But, we also need to think big if we are to see a more sustainable beauty sector.

Our guest in this episode Khandiz Joni, Chartered Environmentalist, independent sustainability consultant and, as she describes herself, a "sustainable-ist", returns to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast.

Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier invites Khandiz to discuss the big conversations the beauty industry, both small and large scale, needs to have about issues fundamental to sustainabilty, such as its use of land and water and role in agriculture and in how it contributes to biodiversity loss.

EP144. Celebrating eco-beauty pioneers Jan 19, 2023

Show notes

Whenever podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier has tackled the issue of sustainability in the beauty industry, she has heard time and time again the refrain that various pioneering approaches can't be done or done safely, are too expensive or demand too much from beauty consumers to put into action.

In this Green Beauty Opinion Lorraine shines the spotlight on some of the beauty industry's true pioneers to make the point that the "eco-beauty entrepreneurs" of today will be those who eclipse their peers in the future. These are personalities changing the beauty industry for the better as they run successful beauty companies.

The future will thank these entrepreneurs of today who are daring to defy the norms and through sheer doggedness and innovation are finding viable, profitable, practical ways to bring beauty products to market with minimal impact on the planet. Who dares wins, perhaps?

EP143. The brand creating mascara tubes to last 2,500 years Jan 12, 2023

Show notes

As indie beauty consumers, formulators and brand founders, we want to act responsibly when it comes to making, packaging, buying and disposing of our beauty products. Yet, for all our goodwill, it is incredibly difficult to know if the measures we are taking to reduce, reuse and recycle, plastic containers in particular, are making a difference.

We've talked to pioneering indie beauty brands running some exceptional return and refill schemes, but our guest in this episode has flipped the idea to create refillable packaging designed to last - not just one or two refills nor a few years, but in theory up to 2,500 years.

Instead of worrying about the time it takes a plastic container to biodegrade (which can be up to 400 years), Izzy Zero Waste is an indie beauty company designing permanence into its packaging.

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Shannon Goldberg, co-founder and Chief Zero Waste Officer at Izzy Zero Waste Beauty to ask if the brand has created the ultimate solution to sustainable beauty packaging.

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