EP105. Are tropical ingredients sustainable?

If there's one thing we're good at in green beauty, it's incorporating plants into our formulations. So it should come as no surprise that the beauty industry is constantly searching for the next exotic extract, the next plant based powerhouse, the next antioxidant rich botanical ingredient. Our trade shows are filled with new promising plants to infuse into our skincare and hair care and erase the sands of time. And the logical place to search for many of these botanicals is, of course, the rainforest. Which makes sense when you consider that more than two thirds of all known plant species are found in the tropical rainforest regions. For that reason, here at Formula Botanica, it would be almost impossible to teach our online formulation courses without at some point touching on ingredients that have been grown in tropical areas. But in doing so, we found that the discussion around growing and harvesting rainforest plants evokes a powerful emotional response in some people because they feel that it is inherently wrong to use these ingredients and that their use will lead to further ecological destruction as well as negatively impacting the people who are indigenous to these regions of the world. Are they right? Should we ditch all rainforest ingredients and start to grow our botanicals on brownfield sites in less biodiverse regions? For instance, join us for a discussion today in which we explore whether tropical ingredients can ever be sustainable. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. 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 thousands and thousands of students in over 180 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. So in today's episode, I'm joined again by Anna Green, Education Manager at Formula Botanica. Anna has worked in green Beauty for over a decade and I greatly respect and benefit from her input and her opinions. Which is why I always love welcoming Anna back onto the Green Beauty Conversations podcast. Hi Anna. Welcome back to the podcast. It's lovely to have you here again.

Hello Lorraine. I'm excited to speak to you today.

And I know this is a topic that you feel very passionate about, which is why I'm so pleased that you're here to talk about this incredibly important topic about weather. Rainforest ingredients can be sustainable. So before we get into the nitty gritty of it all, can you give us some examples of rainforest ingredients used in cosmetics so we can build up a bit of a picture?

Yes, of course. So many of the common cosmetic ingredients used actually come from areas of rainforests, and you have rainforests on all continents except Antarctica. However, the rainforest that we're thinking about are tropical rainforests, mainly that are in the global South. They're very dense with flora and fauna. And this is because the climate produces such ideal growing conditions for things like cosmetic ingredients. So cocoa is a classic rainforest ingredient which has many uses in both food and cosmetics in beauty products. Cocoa butter is a firm favorite ingredient that many natural brands use in their formulations. We've got things like Kupuasu, which is another butter that can be used as an emollient for skin and hair. Illipe butter, which is derived from the illipe nuts, and these fall to the ground and the nuts can then be harvested and it produces a nice waxy butter. Palm oil is a very well known rainforest ingredient which is grown in different regions around the world, including Indonesia. And palm oil is present in many different functional cosmetic ingredients available to natural formulators, such as emulsifiers. Rubber is a very interesting example because although it's not an ingredient used in cosmetics, natural rubber is an essential resource for producing personal protective equipment, such as rubber gloves, which are essential for us as formulators for following good manufacturing practice. So even though you wouldn't automatically sort of think that rubber is going to be something that is going to be essential to the cosmetics industry, actually there is a link there between rainforests and your personal protective equipment, which is quite fascinating. And some of these ingredients are used in more than one industry. And in fact, quantities used for cosmetics will be generally a lot smaller than other things like the food industry, for example, but there is some crossover there in many of these ingredients.

Yeah, it's fascinating really, when, I mean, you're already scratching the surface there, of course, because, I mean, rainforests are incredible biodiversity hotspots and they must yield thousands and thousands of different ingredients. And I know you've covered a certain number of them there, but I'm sure that our listeners, if they delved further into some of the ingredients that they love and use, that they might find that those also originate from the rainforest. So it is quite incredible to think of just how many ingredients have come out of there. Also, of course, we view the rainforest very much. It's almost like a symbol of something that we have to protect, which I think is why People often get quite upset about the idea of, of harvesting ingredients from the rainforest because, well, we're going to delve into this now. I guess the question I have for you is what sort of criticism do you see levied against rainforest ingredients? And do you think this criticism is fair?

Yeah, there are, there are a lot. This is, I think this is something that really produces an emotional response in people and I think it's really good that people have strong opinions because it opens up constructive conversations, hopefully, and awareness. One of the main criticisms that people have around using ingredients from rainforests is the carbon footprint of tropical ingredients. And that's obviously a criticism that people in Europe or North America might have. You know, it's, it's not something that applies to everybody equally around the world. So we at Formula Botanica speak to a global audience. We have students in, you know, 176 plus countries around the world. So our carbon footprint is, you know, for us, carbon footprint footprint is something that's going to be drastically different depending on where somebody is based. You know, we're speaking to people in all areas of the world. So beauty miles is definitely a really important issue and it's something that we've spoken about before on this podcast. However, transportation of ingredients is only one part of the equation when it comes to the overall carbon footprint of an ingredient or a product. How that ingredient is grown is also fundamental to how much carbon is produced. And you can have a situation where an ingredient is produced locally to you if you live in a temperate climate, for example, but with the use of heated greenhouses, and then that ingredient can end up with a much higher carbon footprint than one that is grown in a warmer climate. If the ingredient is transported via sea rather than air, that also cuts its carbon footprint. So as much as it's a very appealing idea to cut carbon footprint by shopping local, it doesn't always automatically follow that that will be the case. I think people find that a very unsatisfying answer sometimes because they want you to say yes. If you just shop local, that will cut the carbon footprint, but doesn't necessarily follow. Another criticism around rainforest ingredients is that rainforests are being exploited for political and economic gain. And I think this is a very valid criticism. We know this is the case with natural resources around the world, both historically, but also exploitation of these delicate ecosystems and the people within them is still happening today and it makes headlines every single week. So one of the problems with the current economic systems is that they often encourage short term gain over long term investment. And Long term investment is needed to switch to more sustainable systems. So when we think about the Amazon rainforest, which makes headlines pretty much every single week at the moment, deforestation is at an all time high in the area because of the political and economic situation in Brazil. So when you look at some of the industries responsible for this deforestation, such as logging, mining and agriculture, many people within this system find themselves making difficult decisions because of their own precarious economic situation. It's very hard to think about the future when you're struggling to feed your family today. So whilst the situation is almost certainly driven by corporations and governments, there are many, many ordinary people who find themselves trapped within this system that encourages the erosion of environmental protections at a large scale. Which is incredibly sad, but I think that's just the reality of where we are at the moment. People also tend to focus on specific ingredients that are causing deforestation or other environmental concerns. However, it is the underlying economic issues that are driving these trends. So we know that certain ingredients and products will be more or less popular. Demand is not always constant. However, when something is in high demand, it is often the case that we associate that ingredient with the problem. However, without fixing the underlying issues around it, another ingredient will be put in its place. And so we're in this cycle of exploitation that is constant.

Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating topic and obviously the way you've put it forward there, you can see how incredibly big it is. And I know we've covered some of these topics before on the podcast. We did about circular beauty, for instance, where we also talked about this short term economic gain, expecting infinite economic growth with finite natural resources, and that just can't move forward. But you're right, if you're going to say we shouldn't be sourcing ingredients from the rainforest, then there should be other habitats that we shouldn't be sourcing ingredients from as well. That discussion hasn't progressed far enough. I don't think it's evolved because people tend to make the whole topic of sustainability quite simplistic. And I think it's worth pointing out that the reason we're recording this podcast is because in our membership site, the Lab at Formula Botanica, you obviously run our membership site, Anna, and in January you did a whole month around rainforest ingredients. And whilst the far majority of everyone in our community thought that was amazing, quite, quite a few people stepped up and said, I'm not happy with this and this is why. So that's part of the reason that we're actually exploring this topic today on the podcast. So, I guess moving on from the criticisms that are levied against rainforest ingredients, the next question that is probably on everyone's lips is, can rainforest ingredients be sustainably sourced then?

Yeah, Well, I think we've already seen that sustainability is an incredibly complex topic. So I would say that we should consider all the different aspects of sustainability when purchasing any ingredient, no matter where it comes from. Some areas of rainforest are at higher risk of deforestation than others, so local and regional variations are an important consideration. We recently, as you were talking about our membership site, we recently ran a webinar exclusively for our members around this topic of ingredients. You know, understanding where your ingredients are coming from and rainforest ingredients. And how many people wanted to know more about sustainability in general, and 100% of people on the webinar wanted to know more about sustainability. And I think this is really encouraging because it shows that people are looking to make good choices. I think that gives me lots of hope for the future, lots of hope for the future of this industry in particular. And as an organic cosmetic formulation school, we will continue to talk about the topic of sustainability sustainability and have these sometimes difficult conversations because our role is an education role. We want to talk to people about the complexity of the industry. There's so many different questions that you need to ask yourself when you work with an ingredient for the first time. Where has this ingredient come from? How is this ingredient grown and how is it harvested? Because those two things aren't always the same and risks can come to the ingredient, you know, in the growing process. They can come in the harvesting process, for example, how are the people involved in the supply chain treated and are they paid fairly for their labor? You know, that's a very important question. And I think sometimes the environmental questions get sort of more publicity than the social questions. But I think, you know, there is a whole group of people behind our ingredients and we need to understand what their life is like. I don't personally subscribe to the idea that ingredients from the rainforest are automatically unsustainable, although I have seen other people make this argument. I think we need to stop thinking in binary terms when it comes to sustainability and engage more in the nuances of the topic and to continuously think about how we can make the industry as a whole more sustainable. So maybe a better question is how can we invest in and protect these areas for the future, whilst also taking care of the people within the current system? So much of our current food and resource production comes from these areas of the world. So it is really going to Take a concerted effort from many different industries and governments to make changes happen.

It's such a fascinating topic, you know, and obviously I've recently had conversations with the Fair Wild foundation with Responsible Mica Initiative. And what's interesting is both those organizations who work, you know, across the world, they work with, you know, hundreds of different organizations to bring them together, they said exactly the same thing, which is that you can't just boycott an ingredient because you don't like the sound of it, because when you do that, you have a fundamental impact on someone's livelihood. And Olivier, who I interviewed on the Responsible Mica podcast that came out a couple of months ago, he said exactly the same thing. You know, if you say, this is not sustainable, therefore I shall stop buying it, you actually have a larger impact as a result on the people who rely entirely on the income from that product or from that particular ingredient. And this is why the topic is so incredibly powerful, but also emotive, because, as you say, people do tend to view sustainability in binary terms. It's either good or it's bad. And there is no such thing, really, when it comes to sustainability, which is why it's such a complex topic and why no one has really obviously cracked it and why you have to look on it on a case by case basis. So, delving a bit further into something you said earlier when you talked about Beauty Miles, which is obviously a podcast that we recorded, I think, back in 2020, if we're going to take on board the criticism that we shouldn't buy ingredients from biodiversity hotspots such as the rainforest or places where indigenous people may be affected, for instance, should we therefore be focusing more on those ingredients that are grown closer to home? Is that better for us? Is that better for the environment? I mean, I know we've covered a little bit of this already, but let's unpick it again, because I think people do still very much say from far away is bad, local is good, and it can be. What do you think, Anna?

Yeah, I think there are many reasons to think about local ingredients, products, or services. I mean, a plus point for formulators will be that using local ingredients means that they can see where and how these ingredients are grown much more easily and connect with the people that are growing the ingredients in a way that is much harder to do if you are using ingredients from farther away. Another plus point of using local ingredients is that you can infuse your local heritage and your story into your brand, not only through the ingredients, but also through the brand story. And messaging. There are many wonderful ingredients that people have simply never heard of, but that have amazing properties for skin and hair. However, this is the. But here, local ingredients or locally produced ingredients can still have all sorts of environmental issues attached to them. They can still be involved in polluting the environment. They could still be harvested far too often, leaving the plants or the trees at risk. Local production in of itself is not a safeguard against environmental issues. However, environmental protections do vary around the world. So the higher the protections in place, the easier it is potentially to source sustainably. What is available locally to people will depend heavily on the climate and the quantities which people need to source. I suppose it's going to be easier to source locally if you are a smaller brand than if you are a larger brand. But you need to sort of be aware of. Local resources are, you know, a great thing to. To look at and to explore as a formulator. Just the checks and balances still need to be in place. You still need to do your investigations. You still need to understand how the production process happens. And you still need to ask questions. It's not sort of an immediate safeguard when it comes to indigenous people from around the world and how they may be affected either environmentally or socially. I think it's really important to listen to what indigenous people have to say on these topics. I'm not going to speak for those people. I think they are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. So they are taking incredible risks advocating for themselves. But also these amazing areas of land. Top Brazilian indigenous leaders are actually taking legal action against the government. So they are at the forefront of the fight back against environmental erosions. So Sirui, who is the chief of the PETA Surui tribe, has been quoted in the press as saying it's possible to produce responsibly. We don't need to deforest another inch of the Amazon. And I thought that was a really powerful statement. Because they obviously see a way forward here that, you know, hopefully governments and industry will listen to. Because they know that area of the world better than anybody else. They understand those ingredients, they understand the land. So they are the people who need to be driving this forward. So I do hope that governments and industry listen to them.

Yes. Gosh, that's powerful, isn't it? It's amazing to hear what's going on, because I think it's very easy for us to think this is an area that's far away from us. It's an exotic ingredient, therefore it's bad inherently. But what's interesting, of course, is at formula Botanica. We have staff all over the world and we employ various people in Brazil as well. So they look at us and think, hang on a minute, this is in my back garden. I view it completely differently and I think just a message for everyone who does take this conversation around exotic ingredients being sustainable or unsustainable. I think we do have to look for the nuances, exactly as you said earlier. And this is something that we come back to time and time again in all of these podcast episodes. I seem to be repeating myself a lot about nuances at the moment. So you touched on in your introduction, you touched on a very emotive ingredient, which is palm oil. And I think we need to talk about palm oil because of course you said palm oil grows in the rainforest, which it does, but as we know, a lot of ecological damage, habitat destruction has happened as a result of palm oil growth. So because this is one of the most emotionally charged topics in the beauty world, I guess the question I have for you is, do you think we can avoid it?

Yeah, it's a very interesting question. As you said, it is incredibly emotive and it's a really complex issue as well. Palm oil use is widespread in the food industry, but it is also a very important ingredient in the cosmetics industry as well. The reason for that is that palm oil has very particular properties that make it ideal for use in functional cosmetics, such as emulsifiers. Your emulsifiers bring your oil and your water together to create a cream or a lotion. They are a key staple for formulators. It's also a very high yield crop. So whilst palm oil is most certainly a contributor to deforestation, and that's why it's so controversial, there is also an argument put forth that if we simply substitute palm oil for another vegetable oil in either food or cosmetics, that we may end up in a worse situation than we have at the moment. Greenpeace actually produced a short animation film called Rang Tang, outlining the plight of the orangutans. It's very, very well done. It's an animation, it's voiced over by Emma Thompson and it really sort of is very emotional and it highlights that orangutans are in fact dying due to habitat loss and deforestation and, you know, the horror that can happen in these industries. And the film was actually sort of banned from being shown on UK television. There was a UK supermarket who picked it up and wanted to use it as their Christmas advert. And it was actually taken off. You can see online, it's. It's still available it's very powerful. I suggest people, people Google it and have a look at it because it's, it's very interesting and it really sort of highlights how emotive the issue is when it comes to palm oil. I think the industry is investing in palm oil free alternatives for cosmetic ingredients and it is possible to launch a completely palm oil free brand. We have people in the Formula Botanica community who feel passionately about this topic and who have decided that this is going to be part of their usp. However, the scale of palm oil use in other industries, such as the food industry, make it really, really difficult to avoid completely in your everyday life. So I think consumers who want to completely boycott palm oil would struggle on a daily basis because it's just hidden in so many different places that you wouldn't think it would be.

Absolutely. And I mean, it is a fascinating ingredient in itself because it is so incredibly efficient. I mean, as you said, it doesn't use much water, it doesn't take up much land in comparison to the amount of land take that you would need, for instance, for sunflower oil or rapeseed oil. However, obviously it is a biodiversity hotspot and we use insane amounts of it in cosmetics and food and fuel. But what's interesting is of course you have the, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, the rspo, and they're doing their best to work with plantations that grow palm oil, particularly in Indonesia. But what they found is that there just isn't really the demand for sustainable palm oil because of course, most of it is used in food and fuel rather than cosmetics. Cosmetics only makes up a fraction of global palm oil use, and that is incredibly disappointing because here we are talking about sustainability. And I know the people listening to the podcast today will be thinking about sustainability, but not everyone is there yet. And that's also an incredibly complex topic because we can't necessarily enforce our views on sustainability on the entire world. We have to make sure that we do the right thing in terms of environmental protection, conservation, et cetera. But it's very easy to talk down to countries and say, you're not doing this right. And that just isn't the right approach either. So ultimately, it boils down yet again to the fact that we just consume too much stuff. Not just cosmetics, but too much food, too much fuel. And all of that has to come down if we want to tackle the issues around palm oil. Because palm oil itself is not the villain, it's our consumption of it that is driving all of these environmental issues. And the other Thing I think is worth mentioning is palm oil is also an incredibly important cultural ingredient. And when I was talking to some of our students in Nigeria, instance, they were saying, you know, we feel quite upset about the fact that palm oil is vilified because red palm for us is so incredibly important. It's part of our heritage. And I think it's very easy again, to take the nuances out of the conversation. I think palm oil is maybe a topic that we should dedicate an entire podcast episode to because it's so incredibly emotionally charged and so important. But I'm glad that we tackled it in this episode as well because it does tie in with the whole conversation and I hope that people understand it isn't as clear cut as just saying, I'm not going to use this ingredient anymore because you're going to have to replace it with something if you're going to keep consuming the same amount of beauty products. So I guess let's close off on quite a challenging question then. And I know this is something that you've been looking into, Anna, is how can we know whether our ingredients are sustainably sourced?

Yes, it's an incredibly good question, Lorraine. I think this is an area where the industry still has a very long way to go. We always say to our students and our community that supplier relationships are key for indie beauty entrepreneurs and that suppliers know that sustainability is an increasingly important area when we purchase any ingredient. As cosmetic formulators, we have access to some technical documentation, for example, an msds, which is the material safety data sheet. And this document will give lots of information on how to safely handle the ingredient, for example, any environmental toxicity and precautions for the finished ingredient. It does not, however, give us information about how that ingredient is grown or the social or environmental concerns that may be associated with that process. So that kind of information is generally provided by suppliers on a voluntary basis basis if they have that information. And it's also covered by some third party certifications available, things like Fair Trade, for example, which looks at the trading conditions for people within the supply chain. So we covered this for our members in the membership site because you see so many different logos popping up on ingredients. And so we wanted to teach people what these different logos mean, what the different standards were. Third party certifications can be useful. They are something that most consumers are familiar with at this point. However, they all have their own criteria and that will vary depending on the certification. So some will involve checking the brand or supplier is meeting this criteria in the form of an external audit, whereas others are far less Rigorous. So understanding each individual stamp of approval is important when trying to understand how they influence sustainability. And there have been criticisms leveled at lots of these third party certifications by NGOs, for example, saying that the standards just aren't stringent enough, that they're not doing enough. I personally would like to see supply chain transparency as a key topic for the beauty industry moving forward because it is not always easy to know where ingredients come from, how many different hands they may have passed through before getting to the consumer. Is a supplier purchasing directly from farmers and growers or are they purchasing from another supplier? These conversations matter when it comes to sustainability. Supply chains are currently very, very complex and this means that we are relying on brands and corporations to do the work of investigating and mitigating the risks involved in their particular supply chains. I think indie beauty entrepreneurs can sometimes find this a little bit frustrating because they're trying to do something similar, but with reduced access to resources compared to large corporations. And they also have less buying power, so their choices are going to be more limited when it comes to the ingredients they can access in the supply chain. But we know that our community is very, very engaged in this topic and I think it really gives me hope for the future that we will see some meaningful change happening hopefully soon.

Yes, absolutely. And I think it's the indie beauty players who are driving a lot of this forward. Although saying that I've spoken to some very sizable ingredient suppliers such as Croda, who I believe are doing incredible work on some of these topics. It's interesting you touch on certification schemes because I agree with you. I think there are just far too many of them now and it's confusing matters. And I was on a panel recently with one of them. I won't name any names, but I said, just think there are far too many certification schemes because it's becoming confusing for brands, it's becoming confusing for shoppers, it's becoming confusing for everyone, really. I mean, how many of these labels do you want to put on a product? And what does it actually mean? And wouldn't it be amazing if we could just combine them all and have one giant super certification? And the scheme in question said to me, if that happened, Lorraine, then we probably wouldn't have anyone certified. And I think that's the issue, really. It's probably that the beauty industry as a whole, and no one in it yet is doing enough. And that's going to be our big challenge for the next decade. I really liked what you said earlier about local supplier relationships. I think that's a fascinating topic to explore because when I think back to the interviews I've done here on the podcast with Made Lindstrom of Made Lindstrom Skin and Sarah Brown of Pie Skincare, who both have kept their manufacturing in house and produce a sizable number of units and have lots of people in their own manufacturing lab on their own premises producing all their products, they said the same thing. They do that because the quality of their ingredients outweighs absolutely everything else. It is the most important thing for them. And May Lindstrom said in the interview that I did. And if you haven't listened to these two interviews yet, I do encourage you to go back to them in the podcast and find them. She said that, you know, she has spent over a decade forging these relationships with the suppliers that she knows and trusts, and people often come to her and say, where did you source your blue Tansy? And she goes, well, I'm not telling you that. I've spent a decade building this up. You know, go find your own suppliers to work with. And that's the key really, isn't it? It's cutting out all of these middle people so that you know how your ingredients were sourced or synthesized or grown or harvested or whatever it is that takes to get that ingredient to you. And that's the hard bit. And that's why, obviously running your own beauty brand with the aim of being as sustainable as possible is always going to be challenging. But I know that there are many indie beauty players listening to this podcast at the moment who are hopefully up for the job, and I personally can't wait to see what they come up with. So thank you for coming on the podcast again today. Anna, what a fascinating conversation.

Thank you so much, Lorraine. I've really enjoyed it. I think it is a very important conversation. I'm sure we will come back to it at some point.

Again, I couldn't agree more. I'm sure we'll be back talking about the sustainability of ingredients before you know it. So thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I have no doubt that you might feel quite strongly about some of the topics we've discussed today. I would love to hear your thoughts. So please do come and leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. Ultimately, the sustainability of ingredients is a highly complex topic and taking a binary approach is of no use to anyone because as with everything to do with sustainability, ingredients need to be reviewed on a case by case basis and we need to look at their overall life cycle in the way that we use it in the beauty industry. So I look forward to hearing what you think. Do come Leave us a comment. Thank you for joining Anna 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 or whatever your favorite podcast app is. We're everywhere and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.