Lorraine Dallmeyer, CEO of Formula Botanica, questions whether beauty's many certification schemes—natural, organic, vegan, clean, sustainable—create clarity or confusion. She argues the industry needs better harmonization and ingredient transparency, and asks listeners which certifications actually matter to them.
Chapters
Have we over certified the beauty industry? With so many standards now available, both from professional certification schemes as well as retailers that now expect beauty brands to be natural, organic, vegan, clean, safe, green, circular and sustainable, you've got to ask the question, do we actually need all of these different standards or are we just confusing everyone and everything? After all, if I'm presented with the option to buy from a beauty brand that's vegan or a beauty brand that's plastic, negative, which one should I choose? And let's not forget that I'm in a position of privilege by knowing what all of these standards actually mean, because I've interviewed their founders and their staff here on the podcast. Most shoppers, very understandably haven't got a clue. Last week here on the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, I shared an interview with Yashi Shrester and Head of Science and Research at Novi, a platform that allows formulators to design their beauty products to comply with a huge variety of standards set by both certification schemes as well as retailers. And we dug deep into how they vet ingredients and suppliers behind the scenes and work with companies to create transparency. The scale of what Kimberly, the founder at Novi and Yashi and their team have built is really impressive and undoubtedly much needed. But it does beg the question, have we as an industry taken things too far with all of these standards? Hi, it's Lorraine Dallmeyer, chartered environmentalist, biologist and CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. I host the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and these are my green beauty opinions which I share my takeaways from the podcast interview we released last week. I'd set you a challenge to make the green beauty sector a better place. If you want to be the first to hear all of my latest episodes, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. As I was interviewing Yashi last week, I kept coming back to the fact that we've made life so difficult for ourselves by creating all of these certification and retail standards for cosmetic ingredients and consumer products. But we've also made life really hard for ourselves by not harmonizing our definitions of natural, clean or sustainable cosmetics. And the ship has sailed for that to happen. We are long past the day that we could all collectively agree on what those terms mean. It doesn't mean that people haven't tried, though. The International Organization for Standardization, ISO has in fact even created a standard to define what natural and organic means in relation to cosmetics. You can buy and download this standard for yourself. Its number is ISO 16128 and it's poetically titled Guidelines on Technical Definitions and Criteria for Natural and Organic Cosmetic Ingredients and Products, and I can hand on heart tell you that I have met only four people since it's been published who actually know of it and know its contents. So I think we can safely say here that ISO has not been our savior when it comes to defining what natural cosmetics are. Furthermore, the conversation has moved beyond natural now anyway, and the world has embraced terms such as clean, green and sustainable, which are left wide open to interpretation. Although I like to think we've done a very good job here on the podcast in defining what those terms mean from a practical perspective. And do delve into the podcast archives to go and find those episodes because they're awesome. Now, I was on a panel discussion last year with a couple of certification bodies and I brought up the fact that there are a crazy number of certification schemes out there now for beauty brands. If you want your company to be organic, vegan, plastic, negative climate, positive, microbiome, friendly, you name it, then there is a certification for all of that. There isn't one big overarching scheme that certifies everything, though of course you have to work with and pay lots of different bodies. And I mentioned on the panel discussion that perhaps in an ideal world, having one central scheme would make life easier. One of my fellow panelists obviously pointed out that no one would consequently ever become certified, and he was probably completely right. And then the U.S. of course, has taken matters one step further by allowing retailers to effectively set their own internal standards in what I personally view as a void of proper regulatory guidance. So not only are there dozens and dozens of certification bodies setting standards for beauty formulations, but there are also an increasing number of retailers unwilling to stock brands unless they meet certain ingredient standards. And it goes without saying that all of those standards are are different. Now. The other big issue, of course, is that the beauty industry is shrouded in pseudoscientific secrecy. As a formulator, it's really hard to discover exactly what's in or behind some of your ingredients in the first place, particularly when buying certain functional ingredients such as preservatives, emulsifiers, surfactants, fragrance solubilizers. Although many of them originate from plant matter, formulators don't necessarily have an insight into how they're manufactured or processed. In fact, formulators are entirely reliant upon the paperwork that comes from suppliers. And I can tell you from first hand experience that paperwork is often not very informative. In other words, many formulators are forced to work in the dark. So we've created a rod for our own backs here where we expect possibly unattainable standards from beauty brands, but then don't really provide them with a clear way of meeting all of those standards without either having exceptionally deep pockets or using platforms such as Novi or Provenance who've also been here on the podcast who can help to verify that information, and who have of course been here because they're doing amazing work. Now I guess the ultimate question is, retailers aside, are shoppers looking to see brands meet all of these different standards, or are we just confusing the hell out of everyone? So my challenge to you for this week is to come and tell me on my social media channels, Lorraine Dalmeyer, what really matters to you in terms of certifications. I would really be fascinated to hear from you comment on this podcast post when it goes out on our Instagram channels or DM me. I genuinely would love to hear what you think because I want to find out more about you and your thoughts. Which certifications matter to you? Do any of them matter to you? Come and tell me. Thank you for listening to my Green Beauty opinions. Remember to visit the Formula botanica website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you haven't subscribed yet to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, please make sure you do so now in your favorite podcast app. Leave me a five star review if you enjoy the conversations I host and I'll be back soon with my next episode.
