EP 219. Why beauty brands are getting sued for sustainability claims

One of the first ever episodes we recorded for the Green Beauty Conversations podcast all the way back in 2018 was titled why 100% natural claims could get you into trouble. That was episode eight, if you fancy scrolling all the way back in time. And that episode was all about the way that natural claims made by beauty brands at the time were starting to lead to lawsuits emerge, particularly in the US as these lawsuits went after beauty brands who could have holes poked in their clean and natural marketing claims. So it probably won't surprise you to learn that this hasn't gone away. And you know what, if anything, it's got worse. And we're now also starting to see an emergence of class action lawsuits that go after beauty brands making sustainability claims that aren't fully substantiated. Now an example might be a brand claiming that their packaging is recyclable when the infrastructure to recycle it simply isn't robust enough or isn't there at all perhaps. So this is a fascinating development because it basically means that in a void of regulatory guidance around sustainability, consumers and opportunistic law firms are holding beauty brands to account themselves. Now whether their motives are always entirely sustainability driven is of course up for debate, but if the outcome is that the beauty industry becomes more sustainable, then this might not be a bad thing. But of course, if you own a beauty brand, then I can imagine that the very idea of making an eco friendly claim and then being dragged into a class action lawsuit as a result must feel utterly terrifying. So what's actually happening? What are the risks and what should the beauty industry be doing? Settle in for a fascinating interview with Maggie Spicer of Source Beauty esg, where we'll be finding out how the beauty industry should view its sustainability claims from a legal perspective. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations in which I challenge the beauty industry to become more sustainable, champion, independent and green beauty, and encourage you to join me in changing the beauty industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeyer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have tens of thousands of students in over 190 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. If you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode I'm joined by Maggie Spicer Attorney and the founder of Source Beauty ESG, a Washington D.C. based advisory firm focusing on sustainability and social impact in beauty and personal care. Maggie works with global brands and retailers on sustainability issues related to product design, marketing compliance and corporate strategy. She was previously an associate at a global law firm where she specialized in trade compliance and business and human rights before moving in house to Amazon to serve as supply chain Regulatory council. So Source Beauty esg, Maggie's company is an innovative firm providing legal and strategic guidance to some of the world's most innovative beauty brands and solutions providers. Combining comprehensive legal expertise with on the ground industry experience, Source Beauty is a key partner for companies aiming to supercharge their growth by embedding sustainability and social impact throughout their operations. So as you can tell, Maggie has a wealth of knowledge to share about beauty, sustainability and the law, which is a fascinating combination that I look forward to delving into today. Hi Maggie, how are you doing today?

Hi Lorraine, I'm doing great. How are you?

I am good and I'm really interested by what we're going to talk about because I love geeking out and things like that. So for our listeners, can you please tell us what you do? Yes.

So I am a lawyer and a sustainability advisor. I run a firm here in Washington D.C. called Source Beauty and it really pulls so much of what is critical and important in this industry all together in one place. So it is helping brands and founders understand sustainability regulations. It's understanding the rules around making environmental claims. We do strategy work where we actually build essentially the architecture of the brand and help them build up sustainability initiatives all the way from product design to certifications to marketing, everything in between. So such a fun place to live and I think having a background being a supply chain attorney, which I know we'll get into, really helps give me an understanding of how you build better beauty and how you as a brand and as a founder can really express this myriad of amazing ways to engage in sustainability and social impact through your brand. It's been a really interesting business to be running.

I can imagine it has. And it's very niche and that's what I love because there must be very few people who do what you do, which obviously makes you such a star in this particular niche. So tell me what got you into this field?

I have always had a real love of beauty. When I was a cor. So I worked at a very large law firm for a long time and when I was a corporate lawyer, beauty was my happy place. It was my creative outlet where I could just kind of exist in a really creative space and be inspired by others. So I had a colleague who, I think she was just sick of hearing me talk about beauty all the time. Was like, you need to start a blog. So she, I think she actually set up my Instagram account, Green Beauty Guide, literally a decade ago. It's like, here, go, go talk to those people. So I just started writing about what I was interested in, which, which was, you know, sustainability, social impact, a lot of small indie beauty brands who I was just really inspired by. And that is actually how I discovered Formula Botanica. And when I was on my maternity leave. So at this point, I was, you know, later in my legal career, I was still really excited by beauty. I did a Formula Botanica certificate and I finished it during my maternity leave because I was home. It was during COVID I had. I had nothing to do. And so it gave me a couple months to really dig deep into what I was interested in. Not just beauty generally, but, like, what was my perspective on beauty and how could I actually make products. So I spent months actually building up my own supply chain for my materials. And I was finding all these small farmers in the US And I found this amazing guy, Freddy, out of Arizona. He runs a company called Jalisco Jojoba. So I was getting, you know, a gallon of jojoba oil in the mail from Arizona. And it was just this incredible expression of everything I had spent my legal career understanding. Supply chain sustainability, really the behind the scenes pieces of what we see as consumers. But then I now had a language to express that in product. And once I did that, it was kind of a turning point for me. Probably was like, wow, this actually there is a space for this. And I don't see other people speaking about it or working with other brands to do it. And so I spent a few more years working in the traditional legal space. So I went in house at Amazon and was a supply chain regulatory counsel for Amazon. And when I decided to leave, I just realized, like, there is this real white space in our industry for someone that could speak all those languages at the same time. And so I just decided to give it a go. That's how we got to where we are now. But I do give credit to Formula Botanica because not only did it give me the outlet, but it also kind of pushed me to get out of my comfort zone a little. I got very helpful feedback back on my final project. I will admit. I made a very simple face cream and my evaluator actually said, like, push yourself a little Bit more like she looked at the formula and I remember her saying, like, I think you can try a little bit harder to make something that's different, like give yourself more creative license to experiment. And so I did and I kind of went back to the drawing board and ended up being a really fun exercise to do that. So kudos to whoever my evaluator was because that was, you know, it was good feedback.

I love that. And I love that you are now in this, in very specific. Well, like you said, you speak all these different languages and you're bringing them together. So let's speak a few of these languages at the same time. Tell me what's happening in the beauty industry in terms of sustainability claims lawsuits. What's happening?

The same thing is happening in sustainability that I think was happening for clean Beauty about 10 years ago. We were kind of as consumers in the Wild West. There weren't a lot of regulations. Everybody was kind of doing whatever they wanted, setting their own standards, getting a little loosey goosey, which is not a technical legal term. But we're on what they were saying and what they were using. And because there were no strict guidelines, consumers were demanding something that the market was giving them. But it was also causing a lot of confusion and that ended up causing a lot of consumer mistrust. And I think we're still kind of digging ourselves out of that hole. So now fast forward to today. Consumers are very invested in sustainability and we all express it differently. Some consumers really want to low waste packaging. Some consumers are willing to spend a lot more for a luxury sustainable product. We see this real trend that is expressing in totally different ways. But the shift has definitely been towards more sustainable, more socially aware products. What that also means is that the Wild west is becoming a little bit more regulated and we're seeing this globally. So the United States, we have standards around how you can make environmental marketing claims. They're called the Green Guides. They are updated every 10 years and the last time was in 2012. So now the FTC is updating them again. Fingers crossed they'll be paying attention to the comments that beauty companies put in. I worked with a few different beauty brands to actually write in comments to say, hey, you need to be thinking about these particular issues that beauty has when you write these new guidelines. But we also see states like California, of course, getting in on the game and doing it slightly differently. So hop across the ocean. The eu, the uk, they're all regulating environmental claims slightly differently. But what this gives us is an emerging framework for how Brands can talk about their sustainability performance, their packaging, their ingredients. Sustainability fits across every piece of brands. So it's not just about, did you use cardboard or PCR in your packaging. There is so much that brands can, so much value that brands can capture when we talk about sustainability. And now that we have a bit more of a solid ground around how to say those types of claims, in some ways it's actually much better for brands. I know brands are saying like, oh, my God, there's so many rules. That's a good thing. Because what we see is in the absence of rules, consumer class actions fill the gap because consumers feel misled. And that's the last thing we want as an industry to be selling something that is, in fact, undermining the trust that we have with consumers. Because at the end of the day, we want them to believe what we're saying, but we also want to substantiate what we're saying. Ideally, we need to be able to back it up.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that was going to be my question. You know what, what is actually starting to happen in terms of class action lawsuits? Are we seeing more of them come forth in response to some of these sustainability claims?

Yes, and varying degrees of success, probably varying levels of validity as well.

Yeah.

But states like California, which have very active what's called plaintiff bars, they will frequently have consumer class action litigations. And a lot of them are based on a consumer or a group of consumers feeling misled by maybe deceptive or misleading advertising claims. So there was one recently against Sephora around their Clean at Sephora program. This was a consumer who said, oh, well, I thought the Clean at Sephora label meant no synthetics. Went over a few things, but that was one of the big ones, no synthetics. And Sephora never said clean meant no synthetics. There's this real kind of push and pull between Sephora actually being quite transparent around the classes of ingredients that they were restricting as their clean standard and what this woman, Lindsey Finster, was saying. Well, the dictionary definition of clean means all natural, which means no synthetic. And the judge actually ended up throwing it out, which I think was the right choice, because at the end of the day, consumers can understand claims a lot of different ways. I mean, the dictionary definition is kind of a benchmark way to think about it. But it did put a lot of retailers, especially on notice that, like, no matter how transparent you are, it's really helpful to also understand how is a consumer going to understand it? Because if you put A to Z on a piece of paper, But a consumer is going to say, actually I thought it meant this totally different thing. That's a big problem for you. I mean, so for us, still had to deal with a lawsuit even though it got thrown out. And that's a huge waste of resources. So where we're seeing class action lawsuits is really around consumer perception. And that's where brands need to, need to be very strategic about making those claims. And it can't just be. And I've heard this more times than I could count. Well, I went to Ulta or I went to Sephora and I looked at what everybody else said, I said the same thing and they weren't getting in trouble. So I thought I wasn't going to get in trouble. And as a lawyer, that kills me because that doesn't mean anything. That just means they made their own decision and maybe they did the same. They just looked at somebody else. And that is not a defense. If you get in trouble, if a consumer comes after you, if a retailer pushes back, I mean, there's so many ways that could end up blowing up in your face that these class actions are really teaching us the importance of engaging with your consumers, making sure you understand how they perceive what you're saying. It's not enough for you to make the perfect claim. It's really a two way dialogue and you need to be listening as well as communicating.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, for everyone who can't see the visuals because obviously this is an audio podcast. I just had my head in my hands as you were describing a story of brands going to Ulta and being like, well, they made the claim, so I can too. That's not how that works, obviously. Give me a rundown of the different types of claims that you're starting to see get some brands into trouble because this sounds fascinating.

Yes. So of course we have clean, non toxic, that entire bucket of claims, which we'll put that aside because that I feel like has been thoroughly litigated. Hopefully we're kind of coming to a better place in the industry around how we talk about the safety and toxicity of the ingredients we choose to use or not use. What I really spend a lot of time on is what's called green claims. And these are claims around the environmental attributes of a product of a service or a package. So this could be, if we're going to talk about like the most broad, eco friendly. Don't say eco friendly. It means nothing. It means absolutely nothing. And a lot of these new regulatory standards are saying as much. That is an incredibly broad claim. And what they, what some of these standards are saying is, so what you've communicated is just stellar environmental performance across every single metric because you didn't qualify it. You just said eco friendly. The bar to substantiate that is so high we don't think you can do it. So just don't say it. We also see visual imagery through graphics. So a green leaf, a leaping bunny. Some of these graphics are actual intellectual property that a brand can license because it's a certification body. You've met a certain standard, you pay a company for the use of that intellectual property to put it on your package on your website. Some brands try to get cute. Maybe they want a little bunny. It looks like it's leaping, but it's not the leaping bunny certification. What you've now done is you've not only attempted to infringe on somebody's intellectual property, but you're misleading a consumer because they're going to think this is vegan or cruelty free or leaping bunny certified because you made it look like the thing we know. And it's not a consumer's job to be an expert in every single claim and graphic. Don't put that onus on the consumer. They're making split second decisions. What am I communicating in two to three seconds with a visual inspection of my package or product? That's pretty much the bar for consumer perception. So if a consumer is looking at an image and you've gotten a little cute and you've tried to make a claim that maybe through an image or through some wording implied something that isn't true about environmental performance, it's a no go, just don't do it. We then have very specific claims, so we're going all the way on the other side of this paradigm. And things like recycled input or 40% PCR or recyclability on the front end. So recycled inputs and then on the back end recyclable, I would say this is 90% of where brands are getting in trouble. I think the other 10% are like the weirdly specific ones. Like brands really, really for some reason want to say compostable and biodegrad. That is very difficult to substantiate. And in the US the green guides say if you're going to say it's compostable, it needs to break down in a year in the waste stream that it is likely going to be put into. So a lot of brands that I've worked with that try to make that claim will say, oh well, we did a test and it can break down in 12 months in an industrial facility. Like unless you've told the consumer that on their package, they're going to chuck it in, I mean, potentially in their own compost bin. If they compost, they might put it in the trash thinking, oh well, it'll break down in 12 months, it's fine, it's not going to work. So those areas are really where understanding consumer perception, consumer behavior, knowing how you're substantiating your claims, that's really in this, in this big spectrum of environmental marketing claims. That's really where brands are starting to kind of tackle. How do we go about doing that in a responsible and low lift way? Because there are actually very doable ways of building these types of claims.

Oh, well, we'll come on to that in a minute. I find this utterly fascinating though, because I mean, we once did a podcast on biodegradability and you're right, I mean, even plastic is biodegradable. It's just going to take. So, yeah, so the cynic in me needs to ask this question. So would you say that some of these class action lawsuits that you're seeing are done more by opportunistic consumers and perhaps opportunistic law firms, or do you believe there's like a genuine drive to hold brands to account on their sustainability claims?

It's a great question. So of course you're going to see, I mean, there are a handful of law firms that file the majority of these claims in the US but at the same time, it's because they have a solid basis to bring the claims. Usually, I mean, sometimes they're just nuisance suits and they get thrown out pretty fast. But typically what we see is there is a cause of action. So there is actually an issue where consumers are feeling misled and a law firm is going to capture that they will find a consumer or a consumer group and they will essentially engineer a lawsuit. I don't think the plaintiff in the Sephora lawsuit, Lindsey Finster, I don't think she was walking around trying to find a lawyer because she felt deceived by the same mascara in Sephora. So the way that those lawsuits typically come about is maybe a little less palatable than we would love to think about as consumers. However, I do think we've kind of created these gaps that allow that type of behavior to happen because when industry self regulates, it kind of allows it again, that wild west there was for a long time very little incentive to substantiate green claims because consumers weren't sophisticated enough to really understand what they should be asking. And again, that's not on the consumer. We all have jobs, we all have lives. We're trying to make better decisions. And so where this shift has now come, I mean, a lot of it has started in Europe because to them, to these, the regulatory systems in Europe, this is part of the EU Green deal. This is how we fight climate change, is empowering consumers to make more sustainable purchasing decisions. And when you think about it from that paradigm, all of a sudden it becomes there's an imperative to facilitate these purchases through data, through accurate claims, through getting the right products on the market. And it becomes this incredible ecosystem to exist in. Because now I'm not just doing something because it feels good. I'm fighting climate change. I am, in fact, contributing to a clean economy by purchasing more sustainable products. Now, where that breaks out is, what is a more sustainable product? How do we compare apples to oranges for one brand's cleanser versus another? There is no right answer. There is a whole toolkit of sustainability tools and initiatives and design choices that brands can engage in. And that's really where I love to exist. Because the flip side of the legal work that I do is the strategy work. And it's setting up a North Star with brands to say, okay, look, I know we could talk about sustainable packaging, but have you thought about shipping and logistics? Have you thought about sourcing materials that have less impact on the planet? Have we thought about what it looks like to actually send the products? There's so much out there that brands can do, and there are all these new avenues by which they can communicate that to consumers and build trust and loyalty and facilitate not just the first purchase, but the second and the third and that repeat purchase behavior. So to me, it's this shift of, well, it used to be that we felt guilty about creating waste, and nobody wants to buy something because they feel guilty. They want to buy something because they feel good about it and they feel inspired. And because we're now facilitating an environment and a marketplace of sustainable products, consumers will have more opportunity to feel that positive association with purchasing and with using product, which I think is a huge opportunity for brands.

Definitely. And we are going to come on to that in a minute. I have one. I have a couple of other questions. First of all, you mentioned California. What's going on in California?

Oh, California. They are both inspiring and the bane of my existence. And I. I frequently have to explain the federal system to companies that I work with in Europe because they'll say, okay, we looked at the Green Guides, we're good. Like we've, we looked at the federal system like, right. Have we thought about California though? Because the federal system does allow states to do their own thing. Unless there's something called preemption where the federal government says, no, no, we, we only get one of these and it's ours. So right now what California is doing is really focusing on things like truth and labeling. So they have a law, SB343, called the truth and labeling law. And they're really trying to crack down on when you can say something is recyclable. And this gets to this again, a shift towards what we had been experiencing for however many decades, which was if a product was made of a material that could be, emphasis on the word, could be recycled, it was labeled as recyclable. Or a packaging producer, for example, plastics producer, would put a resin code on the bottom of a piece of packaging and it would have the resin identification number, which means it's plastic type number one or two or seven, it would be in a triangle and people would see that and go, ah, it's recyclable. That is not what that was designed for. It was not meant to be a consumer facing communication tool. It was just supposed to identify what the resin was made out of. So what California is trying to say is, look, we cannot create a sustainable, focused economy if we can't get rid of the plastic and the packaging that we've got in the state. So the way that we do that is limit who can actually say something's recyclable. It has to be made of a recyclable material, of course, and you need access by the substantial majority of communities. But then we actually now go further and California says, does the facility or the series of facilities in California, can they actually recycle that in practice? Not in theory, not just in a vacuum, but can the majority of the facilities actually process that for recycling? And for the most part we're seeing a real difference because it means not only do you go beyond theoretical recyclability, but what can actually be recycled. It's not one to one, it's in fact a small percentage. So you know, people get very frustrated by that. They're like, well, great, I can't recycle anything, I feel terrible. But in fact, it's making us more aware of how much of what we use goes into the waste stream. Now it's just visible, it was already happening. But it makes this shift towards designing for recyclability so much more important. Because now consumers are seeing it and they're not happy about it. They're not very unhappy that their stuff is not recyclable.

I think that's a really good thing. I mean, this concept of theoretical versus actual recyclability, it's something that we should all be talking about. You're quite right. Have you seen any examples of class action lawsuits around that particular topic?

Yes. So there was a recent lawsuit against Colgate, which is a very large consumer company, and they had an issue with toothpaste, Toms of Maine and Colgate brand toothpaste that they were producing. They had done the sustainability initiative. They had developed this novel tube made out of HDPE number two, which is the material you use for milk jugs. It's the most widely recycled stream in the us the capacity is there for that, that recycling stream. And they developed a tube out of it that we can put our toothpaste in. So they were selling it and they were saying, this is a recyclable tube. And so consumers filed a lawsuit because they said, sure, it is made of a recyclable material. Everybody knows HDPE number two, very recyclable in the U.S. however, most of the MRFs, the Material Recovery facilities, do not recycle tubes. They don't want tubes. They have told us they don't want tubes because the format is very difficult to capture. They're typically made of layered material. So even though this tube wasn't, most of them are, which they can't recycle. And even if they had been able to capture it, nobody gets every ounce of product out of a tube. So what you risk happening is a tube gets brought into the waste stream, contaminates all the other materials in that mrf, and now you've actually decreased the value of the recyclable materials that could have been sold on and reprocessed. And the consumer said, you knew about this because you acknowledge domestic infrastructure is not where it needs to be to process tubes. So you put a product on the market that was theoretically recyclable but not actually recyclable. They felt deceived by that. And so that that class action lawsuit's going on. But it just goes to show you, when you've launched an initiative or a claim or any other kind of consumer facing action into the market, brands really need to be thinking about, well, how is this going to be perceived? What is the action a consumer is going to take and what is the direct and indirect result of that? Because if I'm telling them to recycle something. They recycle it and then they find out, oh, my local facility hates this because now they've just junked up the system with toothpaste tubes that can't be cleaned out. You feel like as a consumer you not only feel deceived, but you feel like, well, I just wasted a ton of time and now I really don't want to buy from this brand anymore. It's a lose lose if you don't take all those factors into consideration.

Yeah, absolutely. My goodness, what a minefield. But so good to see that we're making some real progress on this. So you obviously work with clients. Do you work with big brands, little brands? How does it work?

Yes, everybody in between. So I do, I do brand facing work. I do work all across the supply chain. So I have some clients that are raw material suppliers, some that are technology companies. So these platforms that are facilitating sustainable materials or supply chain traceability. And then I work with some retailers actually helping them to integrate these new regulatory standards into their assessment of brand sustainability or even rolling up to their clean standards. Where I do a lot of work with brands is typically where they have been in operation. They've kind of tried to get their feet moving on sustainability and maybe they want to get a retail certification or maybe they want to just build a comprehensive strategy for sustainability. They're like, well, I did packaging, but it doesn't really sit right with the rest of the brand because we had no sustainability Persona that carried over. So where I sit is at the top level. And I work with a lot of brand founders. I mean, some of these brands are in the 20 to $50 million range. Some of them are very early stage. But what they all have in common is a real desire to do right by their brand and by their consumers. And so for some that means starting a really big comprehensive program. It's going to capture all these different pieces of their operations. I'll train their marketing team, we'll kind of work with their product development team to see the materials they're sourcing. For some brands, you know, it's two founders and they're, and they're producing it themselves and they're bootstrapping for them. It's okay. You have a lot of noise around sustainability. Let's clear the noise, figure out your brand personality and then find those key areas where you can actually start to really move the needle. I feel like one of the biggest problems brand founders face when they first start on this process is they look to big, big, big brands. They Say, well they're doing everything, we need to be doing everything. Like they're doing everything because they have 30 people doing it and they're not doing it great either. You know, they, they have their own set of struggles. So every brand has a unique set of data points, be it size, target market. I mean maybe you're appealing to Gen Z, then you should be using as a communication channel technology, you should be doing QR codes, you should be having messaging on TikTok. Then there are brand founders that I work with who are doing luxury positioning for 50 year old women. Those women are typically not on TikTok. Some of them are and I give them a lot of credit. But I definitely advise brands to say do the digging first, like figure out who you are, what your positioning is, what your core message should be and then how do we layer sustainability within that? Because those consumers respond to sustainability differently, they seek it out differently. And the 50 year old female consumer is like the dream because they are sophisticated, they're looking for performance and efficacy, they are much more discerning about what they're going to be using and they have brand loyalty like you wouldn't believe. They find something they like, they are sticking around versus a younger consumer is going to be maybe digging in more on sustainability, but they're going to also be really compelled by like very snappy graphics. They're going to receive information through different channels. So there are all these really interesting data points you kind of weave together and then you build the sustainability journey from there as opposed to saying like everyone's doing this so I have to do it too. I'm like, it might, it might not make sense for you and it's going to be a waste of time and money. So build it in a way that is authentic to you and your brand. And that I feel like 10 out of 10 is the right approach. It's just, it speaks to the brand founders and it gives them a voice to then speak to what they feel like they should be doing.

Absolutely love that. I think that's so incredibly powerful. I can imagine though that you have a lot of brands coming to you who are quite fearful about sustainability claims and fearful about what could happen if they get wrong. How do you work in those situations?

That is really where the lawyer hat goes on. Which is, which is nice because I feel like having, you know, those two sides, it's very left brain, right brain, I will typically go in. And these tend to be bigger brands who maybe have either a portfolio or they have a large number of SKUs and they're making claims across a number of different platforms. So they've got an email newsletter, they have web copy, they have Instagram, they've got marketing teams doing all of them separately. A lot of times we really just say like, okay, we're going to start today, we're going to do an audit all of the claims that you're making. So what I'll do is I'll actually have the marketing teams help and pull all of that data together. You know, where, where does it live? On what platform? Are you talking about the product? Are you talking about the company? Are you talking about your packaging? You know, we categorize them and then we say, what are the claims that you're making? And so we start by just doing that assessment. We build out that framework and then we align it to what market are you selling into? Are you trying to expand into the EU with the same set of claims? I do a risk profile. So I'll say kind of red light, green light, yellow light. Most claims are yellow light. And this is, I know one of the reasons why people hate lawyers is because we can't give a straight answer. But sometimes it's helpful to say, listen, eight out of the ten claims you're making, there's no clear guidance, but it's a risk based decision. If you want to still make these claims, here's what we can do. We substantiate it. We communicate that substantiation to the consumer. We make sure we've validated the evidence that we have used for the basis of that claim. You build up an architecture for the claims and then typically at the end of that process, I will go in and train the marketing teams and say, look, here's our one pager for how we're making these claims. And we do that with that brand's voice. So it's not just a here's how you make the claim. I mean, you could Google that and you'd find some questionable results, but you'd probably get it right, you know, eventually. Yep. But what we really try to do is tailor that so that the marketers and the brand developers are like, oh, I got it. Like, I know how we speak this, as opposed to just like, I guess we know how to say it's recyclable now. Like it doesn't, you know, we give the brand the toolkit. And to them, I think it takes them from that fear stage to an empowered stage because then you send them on. It's like, you know, sending your kids off to Kindergarten. You're like, okay, I've done everything I can. And frequently those brands will reach back out every couple months and say, like, hey, we actually want to make a new claim. Can we add it to the document? Or what do you think about this? Or we want to start sourcing these materials. How should we think about it? Or there's a new regulation. What should we do? But typically, once you've built that framework, the brand takes it and they. They operate it. So it's a great way to make brands feel that ownership, as opposed to, oh, God, every time I need to make a green claim, I got to redo this process. That's why I say it's doable. It's. It's not rocket science. It just requires a system to be put in place that speaks to your brand and speaks to the markets and the regulatory systems you're selling into. And then you've got the house to live in. You just add new furniture every now and then.

Absolutely. And there must be so many opportunities as well for brands if they really throw themselves into this.

Oh, absolutely. And I think that's where brands, once they get past that fear stage, which is funny, I never really describe it as that, but that's. That's kind of what it is for some brand founders, especially ones that are a growth stage, so they're maybe seeking investment. They're about to get onto the shelves of a big retailer. They're doing a rebrand. They're like, ooh, I'm at this point of a really big. I like, you know, the rocket ship's about to take off. I feel like I probably need to get this right now, because the last thing I want is all of a sudden I've got an angel investor and they're asking questions about the validation for my claims. It's so easy to get that right earlier than later. Once we get past that stage and the brands feel empowered and they feel okay, I have a good understanding of how this works. That's when the wheels start turning, because that's when we go from the legal piece back to the strategy piece. And to me, it's all about innovation. How do you, as a brand, take this toolkit that we've now built and seek out innovation? And that doesn't mean we're using biotechnology. I think some brands think innovation means crazy tech. Sometimes it's okay. What is going to set us apart from our competitors in the particular market space that we're in? We're not going to reinvent the wheel, but we're going to tell the story differently because now we're confident in how we've engaged in sustainability. We've actually thought about it differently. We've built an authentic approach and that is going to set us apart from our competitors. You can do that at any market position in this industry. You could be going into cvs, you could be going into a little niche retailer, you could be small, large, young, old consumer. Any stage of that journey that you're at is the right stage to be using that innovation framework and that toolkit. And I think it's really just getting brands to feel confident in how they do that. Some brands maybe feel a little too confident and that's where sometimes I need to bring them back because they'll say, oh, no, no, no. We got this because we went to Ulta and we saw what everybody else said. That's where you bring them back. And we need to ground in the regulatory systems, the retail standards. You know, let's get a baseline going and then we build up from there.

Amazing. Maggie, this has been absolutely fascinating. You are a powerhouse and so interesting to listen to. I could have kept going for another hour, I think. But if people want to learn more about you and find out more about your business and how you could potentially even help them, where can they do so?

So I exist on a few different platforms, so I still have Green Beauty Guide on Instagram. I don't think I'll ever get rid of it because it was, you know, the birthplace of this business. I do a lot of thought leadership on LinkedIn. So just under my name, under Margaret Spicer, and then I have a website, SourceBeauty co. And on that website I now have a one pager that I actually have started sending to brands. So I have been doing a bootcamp with brand founders. A lot of times when they're in that early stage, like, I just need somebody to come in and like, give me the. Give me the three month program. Like, I don't have a year, I don't have the resources at the time, but I know I need to, like, get in the right direction. So I have built this bootcamp that is a three month program and I just love it because it gives brands the opportunity to talk about who they are as a company, their packaging and their product. And those three pillars cover 99% of the questions I was getting before. So I have a one pager on my website that I give to brands that are interested and it's essentially like, what are the 10 questions you should ask when you're starting a sustainability journey that could be from square one. That could be. We've been doing all this stuff but we never really thought about it comprehensively. And then from there we just start working together and it's a really exciting space to be in because I think brands see the potential and they see the value that they can be bringing and all the different ways that they can do it. So to me, it's just a joy to be in a place where I can bring that decade of legal experience and a Formula Botanica certificate, bring them together and help brands feel empowered to engage in sustainability in a really positive way.

Yeah. Well, it's been an absolute joy listening to you today, so thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. We will include the links to all of those, like the one page of the bootcamp. Everything you mentioned. It will go into the show notes, so go and check out Source Beauty esg. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you Lorraine.

Take care. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. How do you feel about more lawsuits being undertaken against brands making sustainability claims? Is this a good development or will it help the industry become more sustainable? Leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. And if you want to hear more about some of the topics we covered, please do delve back into the podcast archives. Some great examples include episode eight in which we asked the question, can you get into legal trouble by making 100% natural claims? You're going to have to scroll back away to find that one, or simply type it in the search box on our website@formulabotanica.com or episode 82, in which I interviewed Jessie Baker of Provenance on the beauty industry's transparency problem and how her company Providence, has created a transparent system called Proof Points to provide evidence for claims. Or episode 69, in which Anna Green and I looked at what biodegradability actually means in beauty and how this definition is open to abuse. We talked about this in today's episode. There's a wealth of information in our old episodes and I do encourage you to go back and listen to them. So thank you for joining Maggie and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, whatever your favorite podcast app is and Stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanicaormula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn and come and give me a follow at Lorraine D' Almeyer on Instagram. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.