EP145. Nine boundaries of planetary care

Last week I received a set of interview questions from a big online publication who wanted to talk to me about sustainable beauty. And of course I jumped on it straight away because it's important to have these conversations, and I always go out of my way to help journalists. But as I was going through the interview questions, I realized that we're stuck in a narrative that isn't getting us anywhere. Let me give you an example. Firstly, I was asked the question, in terms of sustainability, I are natural ingredients always best? Well, the answer to that, of course, is that the sustainability of an ingredient has precisely nothing to do with whether it's natural or synthetic. We've covered this previously on the podcast Even. And that was closely followed by the question, what are some commonly used ingredients that are unquestionably sustainable? Which of course is almost impossible to answer since an ingredient's sustainability will vary from location to location, from batch to batch, from lab to labor. And I understand why these questions were asked in the interview because they're good conversation openers. But as I told the interviewer, they're the wrong questions to ask because we've become so fixated on finding one single quick fix, or on making our decisions binary, that we lose sight of the big picture. The big picture, of course, is that our planetary systems are all connected, and most things aren't simple or binary. In fact, the complexity is what makes our world so incredibly beautiful. So in today's episode, I want us to take a step back and look at that big picture. What needs to change? Are we having the right conversations around sustainable beauty? Well, to find out, I'm delighted to tell you that today I'm joined by Candy's Joanie. So stay tuned, settle in, and prepare to think big picture with both of us. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make or sell your green beauty formulations. In my weekly episodes, I explore the sustainability of the beauty industry 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 thousands and thousands of students in over 180 countries around the world who study with us to become organic BT4 formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And 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 Candice Joni, an independent sustainability consultant, chartered environmentalist and multidisciplinary artist. Candies is passionate about storytelling, creative thinking and systems change, which has culminated in her entrepreneurial spirit and advocacy for an improved understanding of sustainability. She's worked in the film, media and creative sectors for 20 years as a hair and makeup artist specializing in green beauty and has also run an award winning creative agency for eco, ethical fashion and beauty brands, published an online beauty platform that celebrated green, natural and sustainable beauty, and guest written for various publications. Her most recent project, which I do recommend you go and check out, is called the I Am Impact Project which is which looks at humanity's relationship with the Earth's tipping points. She uses art such as body painting and photography to start conversations around the most significant challenges that we as humans collectively face. And I should add that Candies has been on the podcast before in episode 62 when we talked about conscious beauty. So I'm thrilled that she's back to continue with that conversation. Hi Candies, welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm wonderful. Thank you for having me, Lorraine. I'm so happy to be back.

Me too. I'm thrilled you're here. And I know we've had lots of chat over the last few months and we've got some big topics to get stuck into today. So we're going to talk about the big impact that the beauty industry has on the planet. So not a small topic. And I guess the question I have for you is the first one is where do we even start? Like what is the impact of the beauty industry on the planet?

Let's go in with the biggest question out there. I think really what it highlights is that I don't know that there is enough real quantifiable information out there. You know, we've got statistics around packaging, we've got. There's a lot of conversation as we were talking off mike around ingredients, but not really the conversation around the beauty industry's relationship with land use change or biodiversity loss or its relationship with water, fresh water uses. So there's a lot of bigger conversations that are often not had because when we talk about beauty, it's something small and delicate and refined. It's very hard to make it tangible in these bigger conversations and relationships with planetary boundaries.

Well, let's talk a little bit about those planetary boundaries because I know this is something that you talk a lot about on your website. You talk about the nine boundaries of planetary care and the impact of our actions on Earth's tipping points. So what does that mean and why does this matter for beauty?

Just for a little bit of context. But before I go into that, I think it's worth noting that when you mention what I'm doing on the website is a bigger conversation, so it's not specifically around beauty, but because my background is in beauty, it's really nice to sort of have this conversation, especially have it with you. So the nine planetary boundaries are a set of nine tipping points, interrelated connected Earth tipping points that every single one of us are reliant on. So I wrote down some definitions of tipping points just for context. The definition of a tipping point is a critical point in a situation, process or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place. And I think it's important to really highlight that it's once we get past these limits, because let's define it right. It's unimaginable. Rolling down a hill can't stop it impacts to our biosphere. So the nine tipping points are biosphere integrity, quite literally Earth's ecosystems and balances. And I know as a fellow environmentalist, like these are the core of what we do. Climate change, of course, stratospheric ozone depletion, freshwater use, land system change, biological diversity, biochemical flows, also known as the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and chemical pollution. And the interesting thing is going back to the beauty conversation, every single one of those is related to beauty in some way. The new WWF report that's come out has basically said biodiversity because there's so much conversation around climate change, and rightly so. But biodiversity security is equally as important and we are part and parcel of that as we extracting stuff. Currently, land systems change or land system use is the biggest driver for biodiversity loss. If we don't reach 1.5 above pre industrial levels, climate change will become the most significant driver. But right now it's land use change and as green beauty as beauty in general.

Right.

If we are using land for beauty products, we should be having this conversation or at least be aware of it as part of these conversations. The same with water. Water is the most ubiquitous chemical in the beauty industry. How can we not be talking about this on a systems level? Because we are dependent on it.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I find that the conversations that I see happening often go into really tiny detail, like I haven't got any water in this product, therefore I'm doing the right thing by fresh water use globally Totally ignoring the water footprint that that product might have had in order to be created. Or for instance, I looked at l' Oreal sustainability report last year or the year before and it said we're going to keep our land use the same as 2019 levels. That was their commitment to sustainability. And I sat there and I went, well, who determined that 2019 levels were sustainable? I mean, what does that even mean? That means literally nothing. But no one challenges them on that. So you've listed these nine planetary boundaries. What impact do you think the beauty industry has on them and what impact do they have on the beauty industry?

I'm going to start with the second question first. They have a significant impact on the beauty industry because if we go beyond these tipping points, if we don't have clean water that we are reliant on, on the beauty industry, costs are going to go up to purify water. Water is going to become more expensive to go into your products. Costs are going to be pass to your customer. They just might not be available to use water in your product. Just as an example, again, in the natural space we are very often reliant on plants. Where are they growing? What is being done to make sure that the soil is safe, not just now, but going forward, that will impact the quality of your product, the quality of the ingredients going into your product. These things cannot be separated. None of them work in isolation. And I don't know about you, but I always find the conversations are so siloed. People talk about water use but they won't talk about the land systems change that have an impact on the water flow.

Yeah, it's all too complex, I suppose for some people to link it all together. And it is complex. I mean our ecological systems are incredibly complex and that it's taken billions of years to get to that stage. But yes, the conversation does tend to be dumbed down a little. Talked about the impact on the beauty industry. What about the other way around? Beauty industry's impact on our nine planetary boundaries.

So again, it is, it is so interconnected to the beauty industry. If we are, we are an extractive industry. Right? We can't deny that as a thing. We, it's easy to pretend that we're not as big as fashion or not as big as aviation. And there's all these statistics thrown around and personally I hate statistics because they're very often not qualitative. You'll have the statistic of 9% of plastic has never been recycled or whatever it is, but what's it compared against? And I think when we, we only show stats in the singular form, we miss the whole picture of what we are talking about. For today, I'm not going to talk a lot about stats at all. I think I just want to have a conversation around relationships. But our impacts are, if we are taking out plant materials and we are not replenishing the soil and the ecosystems, are we having that conversation in beauty? What indigenous communities are potentially reliant on that plant source for their food and for their medicine? Are we having that conversation in a really meaningful way? Not just talking about we've got this lovely exotic ingredient or it's grown in this organic way. That should be the bare minimum, not the exception.

Yeah, you're right. It is about relationships. It's about seeing the links between all of these different systems and linking them up and having the conversations around that. But I do find that the conversations tend to be dumbed down a little bit on, particularly on social media where we all live in our little echo chamber bubbles. So I often talk about the fact that I think the beauty industry is one of the world's most unsustainable industries. Honestly, I'm not really hearing other people speak up about this yet. I know that you have opinions on this. I mean, do you feel that the beauty industry has means of achieving sustainability? No.

Very bluntly, no. Because we're not having a meaningful conversation around what sustainability even is. Everybody's cherry picking what this definition means. They're talking about sustainability from, oh, are we reducing our plastic packaging? That's great and that's one stream of it. But that's not what sustainability is. Sustainability is a state. It's a sustained, maintained state. So if we cannot get systems, and I'm going to talk about systems as our bodies because it's so related to the beauty industry, but also organizations, businesses of all sizes, governments. Right. That is what I will refer to as the system. If the system is unhealthy and we leveling that as the sustainable state, it's impossible to achieve what we all are interpreting as sustainability. So how do we focus the industry to get healthy? What nourishment and resources do we have to put into this body to get to a state that is healthy so that we can then sustain it and then we can help other people do the same so that we can then regenerate nature?

Yeah. So what sort of meaningful conversations would you like to see the beauty industry having? Because you're right in saying that everything is so siloed. Where would you like to see that.

Going I would like to be able to have a conversation actually around our relationship with beauty. Going back to your previous question, right, can the beauty industry ever be sustainable? Well, it is total consumer industry and yes, we need certain beauty products, but why are we buying products at the rate we are buying them? Because it makes us feel better about ourselves, so it hides a part of ourselves. So I think we have to have more of an honest conversation about our relationship with beauty so that we can start changing behavioral patterns to how we use and consume beauty to have any meaningful conversation about where this industry is going.

Do you feel that people in the beauty industry, and possibly consumers as well, are ready to have that conversation about our relationship with beauty?

No, because it makes people money. It makes people a lot of money. I think there's some people, some smaller brands that are, there's some braver brands out there. But at the end of the day, why does a business exist irrespective of the size that business exists to make money? So how do we change the language of business? How do we make products that benefit all life? And that for me is what the conversations I would love to see coming into the fore. But you know, I think the word sustainability in itself is so problematic because it's just become another marketing tool and we missing actually why we are trying to achieve this healthy, resilient state. I don't know if that's a very positive response, but that's my honest response.

That's fine. We like honest responses here. I suppose what we're seeing in the Formula Botanica community is there are more mission driven businesses coming out and many of their missions are around wanting to do the right thing. From a consumer perspective, an environmental perspective, a social perspective. How do you feel small businesses, small indie brands in particular, can play a role in driving forward this conversation and making profound change.

Have the hard conversations. I guess one of the challenges or barriers for SMEs and indie brands that I've seen in the work that I've been doing in a consulting space is resource, right? Resource of time, of skill, of money to invest in these type of things. There are some truly, truly wonderful, mission driven brands. And I think knowing that they exist give me hope. But we have to collaborate, we have to come together, we have to share knowledge. And I think if we can get the smaller brands to really collaborate in a meaningful way, that's when we're going to drive change. As an example, right? Mehron Glass. Fantastic solution for having to reduce the number of preservatives that go in to extend the life of a product all that much higher CO2 emissions to produce the glass, not always possible to recycle it in your curbside recycling. Depending where in the world you are. Getting that glass back for refilling is again emissions and transporting them across the earth. But mirror on glass, when you scratch off the labels that are printed on there, the bottles are all the same. Why can there not be a way to collect those bottles and clean them and re share them where they are in the world? I think there's so many solutions that are achievable if we can sit and have difficult conversations and come up with ideas together as small brands.

Yes. And hopefully more of those platforms will start to be created as well as time goes on. Because I know a lot of people listening as well will be very interested in that idea of collaboration. So I just want to change the subject slightly. Ever so slightly is you're an activist and on your website you talk about the Extinction Rebellion protest that you've attended and there's some lovely photos on there of you taking part. So I've seen activist groups like Extinction Rebellion host so called die ins to protest against Fashion Week, for instance, because fast fashion has a profound environmental impact. But I don't yet see any activists really targeting the beauty industry and sort of shouting from the rooftops. Now there are lots of different climate activists online. I follow lots of them. I find them really inspiring. These are young individuals who want to make profound change and I love seeing that. And many of them latch onto the fashion industry as an industry they want to change and there are other industries they go after, but no one really seems to be talk about beauty in that way. In fact, when they do talk about beauty, they seem to just be talking about the ingredients in mainstream beauty products rather than the overarching impacts that we've been talking about today. So why do you think that level of activism hasn't reached the beauty industry yet?

It's a really good question and I don't know the answer. I think perhaps fashion has a far more tangible thing to talk about. It feels like you can do a lot more with it. You can, you can upcycle it, you can change it. You almost have more control over fashion, Right. In what we wear to a degree. You can choose what you put on your skin or whatnot, but it's, it's, I think it feels smaller as a concept. Oh well, this tiny little tube's not going to make a difference. And there's so much conflicting information. I think if we actually Start to look at beauty as an agricultural industry rather than a beauty industry, maybe the conversation changes slightly. We are. Even if you're not in the green beauty world, you're still reliant on crops, you're still reliant on water. So maybe that is the conversation piece that needs to change. And I just don't think that activists at this time have that knowledge in a way to speak as confidently about it. Because where are all those statistics coming from? It came from fashion revolution, it came from extinction, rebellion. It came from a lot of money being put into those reports being generated. And there is no body at the moment in the beauty industry that is putting real money behind doing this research. And while there are things popping up right, like there's Sustainable Beauty Coalition, it's still very new and it's still very focused on plastic packaging. And I don't know that there's a wide enough stakeholder engagement piece being done to really have that conversation. Certainly in the last report that came out, which was a great report, I think it was called the Courage to Change. So there isn't that information to share so quickly on platforms like social media where activists are talking about it. Going back to your point, I mean, I don't know if I feel comfortable with the word activist in the sense that the connotation of activist for me is very loud and physically active and as you said, doing die ins and protests. And I heard this really beautiful analogy the other day called heat and light. And I don't know where its origins come from, but there is this philosophy of heat being about disruption, about noise, about talking people down, not talking down to people, but talking people down, making them understand, almost using fear in a sense, which is what we're seeing. Which is what we're seeing with the activists. The world is burning and it is, and we have to have that conversation. But on the other side, there's light. And the concept of the light is that we meet people where they at and shed light and help them grow in their understanding. And I think for me, that's my type of activism is how do we accept that there is a limitation on awareness? Because we are all looking from our own point of view at things or from our own perspective. Wherever we are in the world, it's different. So how do we meet people there and shed light? And so I hope that the work that I'm doing offers that while other people who bring the heat in a very powerful and meaningful way can do that work there.

Yes, I love that comparison. That's Absolutely beautiful. And I think that we need more people bringing the heat as well. But I love what you're doing, particularly with the light. Maybe I can claim to be doing a little bit of. Bit of the light work as well here. So one final question I have for you is you're a storyteller and on your website, which of course will be linked and with the show notes and everything that we put out, it's called I Am Impact. One aspect of your work that struck me is that you're telling stories about a potential future world that could come to exist unless we make some profound change now or possibly if we make some profound change as well. What stories can you imagine us telling about the future beauty industry if we do change the way things are at the moment? Let's end on a more optimistic note, perhaps.

Wow. What a great question. What stories could we tell if the beauty industry changed? I think it would be something along the lines of nature is all around us. It's flourishing. Our inspiration is back because all the things that we use to draw inspiration from are always rooted in nature. There's life that we had never seen before because we had believed it had gone extinct and it is now flourishing around us. There is abundance for everybody. There is enough food. So beauty becomes a ritual. We learn from indigenous communities and honor the history of where these recipes for beauty come from. We have self expression, but not at the detriment of self or the detriment of nature. And it is a kinder, more compassionate world.

What a wonderful vision and I'm sure that everyone listening can buy into that. Candice, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Where can people find out more about you and your work?

Thank you for having me. So I have a number of different websites, but I'm going to point you towards the IAM Impact project. The URL is iamimpactproject.org because that is my creative practice at the moment where I'm using painting onto bodies to have these conversation opportunities around our human impact on these tipping points and. And the tipping point's impact on us as human beings. My Instagram is Candise K H A N D I Z And yeah, I would very happy to continue this conversation with anybody that would like to talk about it further.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been such a pleasure having you back on the podcast.

Thank you, Lorraine.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. How can we get the beauty industries to start talking about what really matters? What changes do you feel that we need to make, please do come and 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've covered, please do delve back into the podcast archives. Go and listen to episode 124, in which I share my four main pillars of sustainable beauty and talk you through that big picture that I talked about earlier. Or listen to episode 62, in which Candy's joined me previously to talk about conscious Beauty, or episode 77, in which I interview Anna Thiel from Aromatherapy Associates and the British Beauty Council to talk about the Sustainable Beauty Coalition's Courage to Change report. There is 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 Candice 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 the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is, and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica at Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn and come and give me a follow at Lorraine Dallmeyer on Instagram. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today. Sam.