Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Latest Episodes:

EP61. The Age of Skinimalism Mar 30, 2021

Show notes

Did you know that the age of minimalist skincare had dawned in the beauty market? But is our desire to do more for our skin with less really filtering down to our habits as beauty consumers? Can we resist the allure of new products with their promises and claims?

Just ask yourself how many beauty products are on your bathroom shelves? If you've 16 and counting then you are in good company as that is the average number of beauty products women use daily. A glance at the social media 'shelfies' shows just how much we are in love with having a range of cosmetics. But, there are two sides to the story of how we consume beauty products.

The beauty industry is one of the world's most unsustainable as its business model is driven by its need to constantly bring new products to market. As beauty consumers we therefore need to take a long hard look at whether we need a latest, new, improved or wonder product. Perhaps one product can multitask and save us the need for more. And we need to ask if the products we use are truly essential for our skin health and our well being?

In this episode, host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a passionate advocate of less is more and a biologist and chartered environmentalist, discusses with colleague Ana Green how both the beauty industry and beauty consumers must share responsibility for making the industry more sustainable.

From our purchasing habits and our hoarding of products to how the industry is geared for profit, this Green Beauty Conversation explores the meaning of 'essential' in beauty consumerism today.

In this episode on minimalist skincare, you will hear:

About the difference between essential, functional, pleasurable and minimalist skincare;
How essential means different things to different people and that one person's 'essential' may be irrelevant to another beauty consumer so there can be no standard defining essential;
How consumers have difficulty navigating the swathes of new beauty products with their new ingredients and efficacy claims;
That while the beauty industry is looking at packaging and recycling in its quest to be more sustainable, it has largely refused to address its age-old business model which requires it to make more and encourage consumers to buy more, thereby depleting world resources; and how
Big beauty brands should be encouraged to share their findings in areas such as sustainable packaging with smaller brands and indie beauty so the gains made for the environment are multiplied.

Key take-outs include:

Don't be led into thinking that affordably priced, single ingredient skincare is necessarily the ideal. You may end up buying more low-priced, single focus products.
The layering of multiple, single focus skincare products, especially those not designed to work together, can have a detrimental effect on the skin, impairing its natural barrier. Over exfoliation and damage from over use of Retinol are two examples often cited on social media these days.
Beauty consumers should aim to reduce consumption by buying fewer, longer-lasting products and choosing multipurpose products with fewer (essential) ingredients and by ensuring they finish a product before buying more. Hoarding shelfies of product should not be an option.
Minimalist skincare habits start at home. Consumers need to think mindfully about what they really need and change their cosmetic usage and pare back their needs well before they get to the point of purchase (when shiny new products are there to tempt them!).

Further Reading

In the podcast, Loraine mentioned two industry report that make interesting further reading on the beauty industry, its business model and sustainability: The Ecodesign Research by L'Oréal and the British Beauty Council, Courage to Change report

EP60. Behind the Scenes at Formula Botanica Feb 23, 2021

Show notes

This is a very special episode of our podcast as it marks three years since we launched Green Beauty Conversations. To celebrate our anniversary, we go behind the scenes at Formula Botanica.

School CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier invited some of our now 40-strong team to chat about their roles and to share their insights and stories - both the fun and the mishap moments - in day-to-day life at Formula Botanica. We're a truly multinational team dedicated to serving a global student body of 12K students and growing. We celebrate also the very people who make our work possible; our students and graduates who show us each day the limitless possibilities the green beauty space can open up.

Green Beauty Conversations: 3 years in brief

Over the past three years, Green Beauty Conversations has clocked up 60 episodes, almost 300,000 downloads and interviewed some 60 guests. We've hit the number one spot in iTunes for beauty and had deep dive conversations into both trending and controversial topics in the green beauty industry.

We have redefined what natural and clean beauty are, examined so-called blue beauty and raw beauty, and challenged the mainstream personal care industry to look behind short-term gains and discussed its sustainability credentials. We have shown that you don't need to be a cosmetic chemist to be a competent skincare or haircare formulator.

Along the way, we have pushed our guests on their topics and learnt from their expertise. We've been amazed by the innovation and tenacity of many of the green beauty business founders we've interviewed and never cease to be surprised by the sheer range of indie beauty niches they represent.

Our Team Behind the Scenes

If you have come across Formula Botanica from our podcast only, you may not know that we are a large, ever-growing team of dedicated professionals behind the scenes.

It takes around 40 of us to run Formula Botanica which now has over 12,500 students in over 175 countries. We received thousands of emails, chats, messages and comments on all our platforms from our school helpdesk to our many social media channels.

To celebrate the three-year mark of our youngest media outlet - this podcast - we chat in this milestone episode to members of our Education, Student Experience and Marketing & Tech teams. We will let their voices take you behind the scenes on what has been an incredible roller coaster journey from a small-scale student body following a single course delivered by email to the world's largest online education platform for natural organic formulators and indie beauty entrepreneurs.

EP59. How Upcycled Waste built a Global Beauty Brand Jan 19, 2021

Show notes

Think of upcycled beauty and you probably think of DIY home formulators mixing up a body scrub or face mask from kitchen store cupboard ingredients. You may have even tried using left-over coffee grounds as scrub particles. But it takes brave, inspired and curious minds coupled with phenomenal drive and business sense to turn waste coffee grounds into a global and sustainable beauty business in just four years.

Our guest in this episode did just that, and more, by upcycling organic waste and redundant byproducts from food and drinks' industries into star ingredients in a line of natural, sustainable cosmetics. In this podcast, we hear from Anna Brightman, co-founder along with her brother Will, of Upcircle Beauty which launched in 2016 with the vision of "..leaving the world better than they found it" by finding useful, profitable purposes for others' waste. There's treasure in waste and Upcircle Beauty is proof that this old saying rings true.

The sibling pair discovered that more than 500,000 tonnes of coffee grounds that are consumed each year in the UK alone are sent to landfill. They decided to start collecting coffee from cafes across London and transforming them into their sustainable skincare range. Since their launch four years ago, the brand has saved over 275 tonnes of coffee.

By the time we interviewed Anna, Upcircle were upcycling 10-plus food and other botanical byproducts and were set to launch a further three products to add their impressive range of over 40 variations of exfoliants, moisturisers, serums and masks.

At first, investors and others in the beauty industry were sceptical and doubted that an industry as fickle as beauty would grasp the concept of upcycled ingredients let alone embrace it. But Anna, Will and their growing staff along with a dedicated network of upcycling partners in the food and drink sector have successfully upscaled to sustain a British-based operation selling beauty products into 800 retailers in the US alone.

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier, a Chartered Environmentalist who has a passion for delving into sustainability, spoke to Anna Brightman about the challenges of building a business that relies on difficult, often messy waste byproducts and where Upcycle find inspiration for new products from new sources of waste.

Whether a beauty consumer or natural formulator, you'll find this an inspirational listen about a company truly pioneering circular and byproduct beauty.

In this episode on upcycled beauty, you will:

Learn the two definitions of an upcycled ingredient.
Discover that upcycled waste and byproducts, despite first impressions, can provide the beauty industry with innovative, reliable and sustainable ingredients.
Find out that the most important attributes beautypreneurs need in looking for innovative waste byproducts to upcycle are imagination, curiosity and determination to research and pioneer their viability.
Learn that using upcycled ingredients is a huge step for a business wanting to grow along sustainable principles, but that business owners needs to take a rain check also on how sustainability is factored into other aspects of their operations.

Key take-outs include:

If you are green beauty entrepreneur, look around you actively for inspiration for upcycled waste. For example, Anna Brightman is now working on how to upcycle flowers and plants into cosmetic ingredients after she noticed local florists discarding them.
Think laterally about how to work not just with the end waste, but also with local farmers and other businesses to provide a win-win for both of you. For instance, Upcycle has helped other industries profit by working with them and training their staff on how to process their waste or byproducts for cosmetic ingredients.
If you want to scale your business and need to rely on sources of upcycled ingredients, think about which industries or venues are already producing that waste product in volume. For instance, hotel chains might be throwing away in bulk a particular waste product you have your eye on.
Be prepared to do a lot of research and experimentation when using upcycled ingredients you source. Not all will work. Anna mentions that only certain type of coffee grounds suit their products. It takes perseverance and you need to build good relations with your source industries.

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations Jan 06, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations.

Our host Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of online organic cosmetic science school Formula Botanica, tackles topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers.

The global green beauty community looks to Formula Botanica for guidance on major events in the industry, such as new ingredient releases, innovative formulation techniques and indie business guidance. Formula Botanica is at the forefront of the global green beauty industry and is committed to bringing you the best and most up-to-date information from the green beauty world.

Listen to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and become part of the global green beauty movement.

EP58. Raw Beauty Revealed Dec 22, 2020

Show notes

Google raw beauty for a definition and you'll find it described as "stark and powerfully impressive" and the possessing qualities that fire up the senses. This is about raw beauty describing physical appearance. Raw beauty is also used to talk about outer radiance derived from inner wellness and often linked to a wholesome diet rich in raw, natural foods. So where does raw beauty skincare fit in?

Raw beauty skincare can be bundled up with on-trend beauty descriptors such as clean beauty, green beauty and even blue beauty. It is a subset of these natural beauty categories but takes a unique approach to formulation which starts at the beginning of a product's lifecycle with the sourcing of ingredients.

Our podcast guest in this episode. Nadine Artemis, founder of Living Libations, has spent the past 25 years making raw beauty her life's mission. To Nadine, raw beauty is more than about the practicalities of handling natural ingredients and issues such as their temperature or the manufacturing processes involved. Those are just the first, but far from only aspects she considers when sourcing natural skincare ingredients.

For Nadine and Living Libations, raw beauty harks back to the ancients' understanding of the life essences of plants. Living Libation's philosophy is about using raw natural ingredients in synergy with our body by drawing on the innate power of natural carrier oils and essential oils. Nadine calls her line 'pure renegade'; two decades ago when Nadine pioneered the idea of minimally-processed ingredients in skincare as a way to boost our natural radiance, her ideas bucked the trend - and still do in a world now abuzz with talk of pure, natural and organic beauty.

In this podcast interview with Nadine, Formula Botanica CEO and host Lorraine Dallmeier drills into the nuances of raw beauty and its role in a cosmetics industry driven by expectations of high-performance skincare. This episode certainly dispels the myths about raw beauty cosmetics as DIY skincare. Raw beauty is an exciting, complex journey into the benefits of botanicals and perhaps also a philosophy for natural skincare.

In this episode on raw beauty, you will:

Find out the differences between raw beauty and natural, pure, clean and green beauty.
Discover why raw beauty is as much a philosophy of how we interact with the natural world as a beauty niche.
Learn that using raw beauty is about creating a symbiotic relation between what goes on the skin and what is going on in the skin; in the skin biome, for example.
Hear how the potency of plants was known to the ancients and that current-day raw beauty philosophy harks back to the theories of Essentialism and Vitalism which proposed that botanical, organic matter has unique, innate, vibrant qualities.
Learn why raw beauty is far more than simply about the temperature, handling, processing and manufacture of natural ingredients.

Key take-aways include:

How raw beauty goes to another level in using pure ingredients. For instance, raw beauty formulations will include botanical oils that are not only cold-pressed and sustainably sourced, but also not rendered 'joyless' through processes such as bleaching, winterising (a form of refining) and de-odourising.
How raw beauty is formulated to work with what the mainstream cosmetic industry might see as limitations - such as the shorter shelf life of its products. It sees the benefit in ingredients that are fresher and more nutritious for the skin and rejects those that are processed and refined to artificially extend their shelf life or iron out variations in their scent, feel and properties.
Understanding that raw beauty as a business relies on the formulator-founder developing a sixth sense for ingredients like essential oil and carrier oils. They also need to build strong, long-lasting relations with ethical supplies of quality ingredients to ensure they can source the ingredients at their most pristine.

EP57. Do Natural Deodorants Work? Nov 17, 2020

Show notes

Do natural deodorants work? If you have tried natural deodorants and been disappointed by their performance in combating sweat and body odor, then this episode of Green Beauty Conversations will be a real learning curve and eye opener.

The first question to tackle though is what is sweat?

Body sweat has a primordial purpose even if today's taboos and societal conditioning have put paid to us broaching the subject of sweat in a reasoned way. Sweating has a core function in cooling our bodies when we're hot or under stress. Its other role of signaling 'fight or flight' hints at how homo sapiens functioned millennia ago.

Once we understand the role of sweat, we can choose the right natural deodorants to work in tune with our own particular needs. If you buy regular, mainstream antiperspirants or deodorants, you may choose them for their scent and strength. Yet, using the same one-size-fits-all, drug store deodorant or antiperspirant year in year out is not necessarily the best nor healthiest approach to masking body odor nor to our overall well-being.

To unpack the discourse on sweat, shame and body image, we speak to Ada Juristovski, Co-founder and CMO of Nala Care, a natural, personalised deodorant brand based in Vancouver, Canada.

Ada gives us an in-depth, enlightening insight into physiological and psychological aspects of sweat and, in the process, helps us understand sweat better so we can choose healthier deodorant options for our daily personal care routines.

Research has shown that we each have differing armpit microbiomes, which is an aspect of our skin that Nala takes into account in formulating its natural deodorants.

Listen in as Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier digs the dirt on the types of sweat, how we deal with body image and underarm cleanliness, and the pros and cons of natural deodorants, including their reliance on baking soda and activated charcoal. We think you'll come away realising it pays to understand more about sweat, and to get hot under the collar about ideal body images.

In this episode, you will:

Learn about the different types of sweat and its function in keeping our bodies in a state of healthy equilibrium.
Hear about how societal conditioning has influenced notions of the female body image and fostered the pursuit of beauty over health and well being.
Discover that sweat is now beginning to be talked about more positively as it is associated also with exercise, sex, empowerment and strength.
Find out about how natural deodorants work in tune with our bodies by letting us sweat again rather than by clogging sweat glands.

Key take-aways include:

We all sweat to different extents and in different situations, so we should think of mixing up our deodorant product choices to suit varying needs. Our lifestyles, our water consumption, whether we are on medication and so on can affect our levels of sweat and on a daily basis.
Natural deodorant formulas usually include and rely on the odor-neutralising ingredient baking soda which is highly alkaline and therefore not in line with the skin's pH. So look out for brands which offer different formulation strengths, including a baking soda-free option.
Other ingredients play a huge role in natural deodorants' efficacy too. Copaiba oil, for example, has stress-reducing properties so by inference has the potential also to reduce sweat production when we face stressful situations.
Be more mindful of what causes you to sweat; and be mindful too of the products you use to mask body odour. Using a deodorant isn't just a routine, two-second affair each day.

EP56. Are indie beauty brands falling behind on sustainability? Oct 28, 2020

Show notes

We've all heard of sustainability. After all, barely a week goes by without news of activist movements' agendas, political and corporate pledges and celebrity campaigns on sustainability issues.

Yet, do we really stop to ask ourselves how we as individuals can live more sustainably? For a start, do we know what sustainability is?

Sustainability is made up of three pillars: economy, society, and the environment, which are informally and more memorably labeled: profit; people; and planet. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals comprise 17 areas in which sustainability must be a paramount consideration. These include not only the obvious ones such as climate action and sustainable and renewable energy, but also zero hunger and zero poverty and a right to quality education.

As you can see, the three pillars were identified as they need to co-exist in equilibrium for the planet to be on a truly sustainable trajectory.

These are huge questions that you may feel beyond the capabilities of indie beauty brands to address as they go about starting up and growing their businesses.

The larger companies may have the cash to splash on reports and in publicising their sustainability credentials, which may not be all they seem either, but there are plenty of opportunities for indie beauty brands to make a difference. Even the small steps indie brands make can help their customers understand how individual actions deplete or sustain the world's finite natural resources.

Listen to our CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a chartered environmentalist, and our Membership Coordinator Ana Green who is also a long-time green beauty blogger, discuss why the beauty industry is perhaps tackling sustainability from the wrong perspective and where indie beauty brands can have an edge in playing their part.

In this podcast, you will hear:

Why the size and scale of a beauty business should not be a deciding factor when it comes to embedding sustainability into a business.
Why sustainable practices are far more than about the manufacturing or use of resources.
That on a positive note, the five, big-brand beauty companies we researched all had sustainability commitments and policies well publicised and easy to find on their websites.
However, that some of these big beauty brands pledged themselves to long-term goals that had vague benchmarks against which to measure the success of their actions.
About our survey of indie beauty brands in our community which showed their huge desire to operate sustainably, but that they faced overwhelm at how to go about that and stay profitable.

Key take-aways on indie beauty brands and sustainability include:

Examples of three indie beauty brands that have made significant progress in operating sustainably in three different areas of their business: refilling; upcycling; and circular beauty.
How indie beauty brands can start their sustainability journey more easily by focusing on a single area of their business, such as plastic waste reduction, or sourcing ingredients from suppliers who support Fair Trade.
Why indie brands have an enormous opportunity and edge over big beauty businesses by shifting the conversation to talk about slowing down our relentless consumption of beauty products.
How indie beauty can educate its customers about the need to consume less in the first place by buying for example more multi-functional and longer-lasting products.

EP55. Can Green Makeup Go Mainstream? A Panel Discussion Oct 08, 2020

Show notes

It's a first for this podcast to talk about green makeup, but rest assured we've been thinking about it for a long time. Behind the scenes at Formula Botanica, our R&D team is working on an organic makeup formulation course. A question we asked ourselves at the start was whether green makeup could take on mainstream colour cosmetics as a viable alternative?

The natural beauty industry has been dominated by skincare. The global colour cosmetics market size though is expected to reach $9.9 billion by 2024 - rising at a market growth of 7.6% (CAGR) between 2018-2024. No doubt, the green colour cosmetics' segment will rise on this tide too. Key growth in the colour cosmetics market is forecast to come from Asia-Pacific and Latin America, which is interesting given our podcast discussion covers also green makeup's role in inclusivity.

As we learned in conversation with our podcast panelists, consumers are demanding greater transparency on the ingredients in colour cosmetics and not just those in their skincare products.

You may have come across the much-quoted factoid that women eat about 3kg (around 7lbs) of lipstick in a lifetime. Whether fact or myth, figures like this went viral and startled beauty consumers into taking a closer look at exactly which ingredients go into their colour cosmetic products.

Meet Our Green Makeup Discussion Panel

Today, the naturals' sector is occupied with more reality checks; this time on the efficacy of green makeup. Can natural colour cosmetics offer the same palette, applications, textures and performance of mainstream makeup?

The answers to these questions lie not just in how green makeup is formulated in the lab, but also in our perceptions and expectations as consumers.

Our two expert panelists in this episode - one a green makeup entrepreneur and brand owner; the other an accomplished makeup artist and blogger - respond to the criticisms leveled at green colour cosmetics. Their own paths and stories are encouraging as they show us just how far green makeup has come in a few years. Listen in to hear also how they feel green makeup can be a force too for inclusivity in the cosmetics' industry.

Kim Roxie is the Founder & CEO of LAMIK Beauty, a clean beauty brand that caters to multicultural women. After opening her own bricks-and-mortar makeup shop at age 21, in Houston, Texas, on a $500 investment, Kim ran the store for 14 years. She was also the youngest African-American woman to have her products carried in a major department store. In 2019, Roxie pivoted her business and launched LAMIK as an e-commerce beauty company. Roxie was featured in CEW, CNBC, and MarthaStewart.com for her rapid growth since the launch of LAMIK 2.0 in March 2020.

Canadian-born Samantha Kolk, aka 'hullosam', has been a content creator in the green beauty space for over five years and has a background in makeup artistry. Her goal is to make her clients feel as beautiful on the outside as they are on the inside. Sammie has hosted makeup masterclasses and other fun beauty events where she educates on the brands and ingredients being used, as well as giving makeup 101 tips. She spent most of her life with sensitivities and intolerances. Her passion for all things 'green' arose when she realised that she not only wanted to put healthy, pure and safe things in her body – but also on her body. Sammie believes that if the health of our skin is nurtured, it will help promote full health to the body and mind.

In this Podcast on Green Makeup, you will:

Hear why our panelists believe that by swapping to green makeup, you needn't compromise on applications, colour ranges, textures and performance.
Learn that formulating green makeup is liberating once you shift mindset and explore the exciting green, all-natural ingredients on offer.
Discover how indie cosmetics' brands can be quicker and nimbler in responding to consumers' desire for natural, colour cosmetics as they are generally founder-led and more in touch with their customers.
Hear how green makeup brands can lead by example and be a clear voice for inclusivity in the beauty industry.
Hear some insightful predictions on where green makeup is going next.

Key take-aways include:

Our panelists point out that green makeup should not be another elite segment of beauty by excluding consumers on the basis of price, culture or choice. It would be a hypocrisy to have green colour cosmetics create more exclusivity.
Green makeup actually looks to mainstream cosmetics to push itself to innovate as it aims to create products consumers desire but to formulate them as truly high-performing green alternatives.
Women of colour spend up to 80% more on makeup than other beauty consumer segments so it is high time that cosmetics' brands see them as regular customers, not a segment, and formulate comprehensive colour palettes.
Consumers these days are savvy researchers and are an indie, green beauty brand's best resource.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don't forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

EP54. What is Blue Beauty? Aug 25, 2020

Show notes

You've heard of green beauty, you've heard of clean beauty, but have you ever heard of blue beauty? In the last 12 months, the beauty industry has started to talk more about environmental sustainability and one of the new terms that has emerged during this period is blue beauty.

Formula Botanica aims to bring you the latest topics and conversations in the beauty industry, so our Green Beauty Conversations podcast (or should we say 'blue' beauty conversations?) today brings you the low-down on blue beauty, how it differs to green beauty and why beauty brands should be thinking about their environmental footprint and giving back to the environment.

In this latest podcast episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier interviews Jeannie Jarnot, who is on a mission to deliver beauty you can trust, one Hero product at a time and wants to make clean beauty the rule rather than the exception.

The complexity of navigating cosmetic ingredients only fueled her passion to make it simple to discover safe, effective and luxurious skincare. Today, as the founder of Beauty Heroes, Jeannie brings a lifetime of beauty, wellness and ritual to her company and her customers, delivering healthy beauty through the thrill of discovery.

What is Blue Beauty?

As you'll learn in this podcast episode, Jeannie has defined blue beauty as "green beauty with benefits". Blue beauty brands are those who aim to have an environmental benefit - not simply offsetting their impacts, or donating to charities that align with their ethos, but actually doing the hard work and looking at how they themselves can put back resources into the environment.

Of course achieving that lofty goal will be challenging for any beauty brand, because it will involve looking very closely at a brand's ingredient sourcing strategy, packaging choices, manufacturing processes and the rest of their supply chain. The only way to have a positive environmental impact is either through putting back into the environment, perhaps by sequestering carbon through the ingredients farmed for your formulations, or through offsetting, which as we discussed in our recent podcast on whether beauty brands can ever be carbon neutral, is not a panacea as it is simply a component of your overall environmental strategy and it ultimately isn't the answer.

Nonetheless, regardless of whether we call it blue beauty, green beauty, teal beauty, or verdant beauty, we hope you'll agree that it's refreshing to hear tales of beauty brands around the world who aim to have an environmental benefit.

Listen to Lorraine and Jeannie as they discuss the topic of blue beauty.

In this podcast, you will:

Find out how Beauty Heroes and Jeannie Jarnot define blue beauty as part of their Project Blue Beauty
Learn how the concept of blue beauty goes beyond brands who aim to make sustainable formulations that don't impact our oceans and waterways
Hear examples of indie beauty brands around the world undertaking environmental initiatives
Learn how indie beauty brands should incorporate sustainability reporting into their communications strategy

Key takeaways include:

Consumers are setting the bar higher now and expect beauty brands to embrace environmental sustainability.
Being an environmentally sustainable indie beauty brand is challenging, as it involves small brands telling their story and delving deep into who they are and how they operate.
Reporting on your sustainability initiatives involves having a two-way conversation and trying to change your customers' hearts and minds.
Simply paying to offset your environmental impacts is not enough. Beauty brands need to go much deeper.

EP53. Why Safe Beauty is the Latest Industry Buzzword You Should Ignore Jul 30, 2020

Show notes

The latest industry buzzword to emerge as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is safe beauty. The thinking behind the term 'safe beauty' is that consumers are now more willing to accept preservatives and synthetic ingredients to ensure they don't experience product contamination and expiration. In fact, some industry players are now claiming that the arrival of COVID-19 will further push the notion that natural isn't always better, especially when it comes to ingredient safety and shelf life.

It's safe to say that the Formula Botanica team was fairly horrified to discover the emergence of the term safe beauty. After all, shouldn't all beauty be inherently safe to use? Why should a pandemic suddenly encourage the beauty industry to look for a new marketing term, when Good Manufacturing Practice should ensure that the billions of beauty products manufactured globally?

Do you think that safe beauty is a credible term or are some industry players simply trying to play on people's fears? Would you buy a formulation labelled as 'safe' or do we as consumers simply expect all beauty products to be safe? And do you agree with us that safe beauty is the latest industry buzzword we should all resolutely ignore and move on from?

In this podcast, you will:

Hear the Formula Botanica team discuss how the term safe beauty has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learn why all cosmetics should be inherently safe for use and why this latest buzzword is trying to play on people's fears, when fear-based marketing has already created so many subsets of the beauty sector.
Listen to Lorraine and Ana discuss why we should all ignore the term safe beauty in the latest marketing hype to come from several mainstream industry players and resolutely move on.

Key takeaways include:

The beauty industry does not need any further buzzwords to cause confusion amongst consumers and polarisation amongst brands.

Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) exists to ensure that all cosmetics are manufactured to industry safety standards. As long as GMP is met and formulations are adequately tested, all cosmetics should be safe for sale.
The terms clean beauty, natural beauty and safe beauty are not mutually exclusive. In fact, Formula Botanica redefined the term 'clean beauty' in a recent podcast to include formulations that are safely and hygienically made. The very meaning of the word 'clean' is hygienic, after all.
Consumer opinions are not shifting towards enhanced safety in personal care formulations. If anything, consumer opinions are shifting towards enhanced sustainability of beauty products, as people emerge from lockdown aiming for a modified, greener society where beauty brands work as activists for change.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected