EP175. Evolve or die - what's the future of clean beauty?

Ever since the term clean beauty made a splash into the world of cosmetics, there have been passionate debates for and against this category in beauty. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that I think clean beauty has been one of the most polarizing topics for discussion in the cosmetics industry, eliciting anger on both sides of the debate, the people who want to rid our cosmetics of particular synthetic ingredients, and the people who argue passionately that there was nothing wrong with those ingredients in the first place. The arguments have been heated and clean beauty has dominated much of the conversation for the last decade. But now we're starting to hear an increasing number of people saying that clean beauty is disappearing. Is that really true?

Though?

I certainly haven't noticed a decrease in the number of people talking about clean beauty, but I have noticed an increased interest in the science behind cosmetics, Even in episode 172 a few weeks ago, I explored the concept of skin tolectuals, people who want to understand more about how their formulations are made. So is an increased interest in the science behind our cosmetics leading to the demise of clean beauty? Anna Green and I explore this topic today on the podcast and also put forward how Formula Botanica feels about clean beauty. So settle in and be prepared to join us to ask Is Clean Beauty disappearing? Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations. The podcast challenge 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 industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeier. 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. 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 Anna Green, Formula Botanica's Education Manager. Long time beauty industry expert and regular guest on the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, Anna has a wealth of experience in understanding beauty trends, beauty brands, cosmetic ingredients and everything to do with the wider industry. It's always a pleasure and a privilege to have her on the podcast with me. So let's get started.

Hi Anna, how are you doing today?

Hi, I'm good, thanks Lorraine. How Are you good?

I'm really pleased with tackling this topic. I know it's a bit controversial, but I think it's one that our listeners will enjoy and I think I'm going to enjoy this one as well. So as we're talking about clean beauty, maybe you could start us off by telling us where did the term clean beauty come from and is it a recent phenomenon?

Well, it's really interesting actually, because skincare brands like Origin and Aveda, for example, were early adopters of the term natural, and that was sort of back in the 1980s. So natural sort of predates clean. But the consensus is that clean beauty itself emerged from Southern California like many, many trends do in the 1990s. And it was very much coupled with the clean eating movement as so both clean eating and clean beauty are based around this idea of well being of things that are good for us. You know, sort of a bit of a holier than thou sort of movement. And we tend to think of clean beauty as relatively modern phenomenon. But actually when you think about it, it's been around since the 1990s. It's been around a while. However, I do feel that what happened is that certain brands capitalized very much on the clean beauty term, especially sort of as we came into the digital and e commerce era. So think of brands like GOOP by Brent Gwyneth Paltrow. I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow pretty much is associated with the term clean now. You know, all her branding is around this. And her brand initially started as a wellness and wellbeing newsletter, talking about things that she was interested in. And it was a communication movement that then turned into a brand. They partnered with Juice Beauty, which is a huge natural sort of beauty brand in the US and they brought GOOP as a brand to physical retail stores as well. So it's very interesting to see that both clean eating and clean beauty are equally vague terms, really. And they also have some similar challenges. And I know we'll talk about the challenges later on in the podcast, but they're both still terms that are very much prevalent in public consciousness. They've been around for a long time now. So, you know, we're talking 20, 30 years. And as I said, both are linked to this idea of well being, of people wanting to take care of themselves and to use products and ingredients that enhance that well being. So in the US for example, you've got several retail stores that are entirely based around this concept at the moment, like Detox Market in Credo. But also clean beauty is very Much on the radar of the big retailers such as Target and Walmart. So it is everywhere and it has been around for a while.

Interesting, because I suppose that I don't know if clean eating has attracted the same sort of backlash which we're obviously going to talk about today in the podcast as clean beauty has. But it's, it is interesting to hear that it dates back that far. Interestingly, we actually had Karen from Juice Beauty come on the podcast a good hundred plus episodes ago, so I'll have to have to dig that one out and reshare it with our audience. But, yeah, fascinating to hear the history of it all.

Yeah. So, Lorraine, what does clean beauty actually mean? Because we've talked a little bit about where it's come from, we've talked about its origins with clean eating, but what does it actually mean?

Well, I think it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But as we are Formula Botanica and we're the online organic cosmetic formulation school, we've had to come up with our own definition because I, and I know that the entire team at Formula Botanica feels this way too, and I know you feel this way as well. And we, we don't set out to vilify synthetic ingredients. And I know we're going to come on to this because we're going to talk about how most people interpret clean beauty in a minute, but I think most people look at clean as being the opposite of dirty. We couldn't really get on board with that because it just doesn't fit with who we are as a school. It doesn't fit with, with how we teach. We only work with organic and natural ingredients in our courses. But nonetheless, we're here about the positives, we're not here about the negatives. So we came up with our own definition. And in fact, episode 44 on this podcast, which was at least four years ago, sets out those. That whole definition as well. So if you want to go even more in depth, go and have a listen to that episode. So the Formula Botanica philosoph for the four points that we think define or should define clean beauty are firstly, it's clean as in it's good for us. We're not focusing on the negatives, we're focusing on the positives. And that really ties in with what you were just saying as well. It's about that wellbeing component. It's about celebrating what is in the jar rather than what isn't. And that is absolutely what Formula Botanica stands for. We're all about lifting up amazing botanicals, amazing ingredients that can have amazing properties for us on our skin and hair. And I think that's what, first of all, what clean should be. Secondly, it's clean in terms of business dealings. So that means transparency, that means ethics, that means doing the right thing. And I think that's often overlooked in the world of all the complex beauty definitions that are out there. But for us, being clean in beauty means that you are. You've tidied up your house effectively in terms of how you're running your business, and many businesses are very much attempting to do this, and some of them, particularly some of the bigger ones, aren't doing quite as well. So that's the second point. The third point is that clean beauty should be clean for the planet, clean for our environment. That very much ties in with the Green Beauty Conversations podcast that we have here, of course. And I think that's a really important point as well. Clean beauty should be sustainable, or at least be aiming to achieve a degree of sustainability. And then fourthly, and finally, when you look up the word clean in the thesaurus, the main word you're given is hygienic. And clean products should be safe. They should be hygienically made. And although it's a small point, because all beauty products should be safe and hygienically made, I think that very much fits with the whole clean ethos. So for us, clean is about the positives. It's about being environmentally responsible. It's about working safely hygienically. It's about being clean in terms of transparency and ethics and doing the right thing. And I know that doesn't entirely tally with what the rest of the beauty industry says. So, Anna, how do you think most beauty brands interpret the term clean beauty instead?

Well, the beauty of clean beauty is that actually it's not regulated. So every single brand can interpret this as they want to, and they can adapt it to their own ethos. So the reality of it is, because it's not a regulated term, it's a marketing term. Let's be honest about that. It's a marketing term that is widely used, promoted. So it's entirely up to every individual brand interpretation. And you see lots of brands now using language like what clean means to us on their websites and social media because they're sort of putting their version of clean out there. I find it very interesting as well. We talked a little bit about the fact that clean isn't the same as natural. It's not the same as organic. We work with natural, organic ingredients, but natural obviously predates clean. But a lot of the brands that fall into a clean category or who describe themselves as clean don't just cover things like skincare, but they also cover makeup. And the Formula Botanica team has done a lot of R and D on makeup over the years. We've done a lot of experimentation. We teach a few courses on makeup within our membership site, which is called the Lab at Formula Botanica. And we can tell you from firsthand experience that formulating all natural makeup is not easy. So I find it very, very interesting the fact that a lot of brands that are sort of really using this clean terminology are makeup brands, because essentially they perhaps haven't been able to formulate to natural or organic standards in a way that has served their brand. And so they've gone for what they see perhaps as the next best thing, which is, okay, let's say that we're clean and let's say that we avoid certain ingredients. And it is very much still associated with sort of a freeform movement of lists of ingredients that aren't perhaps permitted in certain retailers, etc. So I find that very, very interesting that it's sort of. Lots of brands are going down that clean movement because they're not then tied to natural organic standards, and they have essentially a wider pool of ingredients to use. Essentially.

That makes perfect sense. And I suppose it is open to interpretation for everyone, really, isn't it? Which just goes to show that maybe we do need a definition, or maybe the term possibly does need to disappear. I don't know.

Maybe. Lorraine, I'd love to hear from you. Why have some people announced that clean beauty is disappearing? Because some people have been really vocal about this.

They have. I've seen quite a few headlines that have announced this in the last year or so, which is, of course, why we're recording this podcast as well. And I think the first thing which really taps into what you were just saying, Anna, is, you know, it's not regulated. There is no standard definition of it. It's open to interpretation. It's a marketing term, effectively, which is, of course, why we've come up with our own definition of clean, which doesn't tally with many that. That of many other brands. And you're right, you do see the long lists of ingredients of. We don't include any of these, and therefore we are clean. And I just don't think that flies, because using the makeup example that you gave, you know, I had this conversation with a student in our classroom the other day he was saying, why haven't you launched a makeup diploma? And I said, well, we do actually teach makeup formulation in our membership site, the Lab. Go and check it out. However, you know, most makeup is made with micas and iron oxides, and those have some ethical considerations. Which comes back to the definition that I just gave for Formula Botanica, which is that a clean beauty product should also be clean from a business perspective. Anyway, I digress. The reason that some people are announcing that clean beauty is disappearing, and whether it is or not, it remains open to discussion. But I think a lot of it is down to the somewhat alarmist terminology that comes with clean beauty, because of course, the opposite of clean is dirty, and it assumes that everything that doesn't fall under that clean beauty banner is effectively dirty. And in some ways it sort of denigrates other brands, which isn't allowed in some parts of the world either, from a legal perspective. But I think more than that, I just don't think people want to be shamed into buying beauty products anymore. They want to buy them because they're good for them, not because they're sort of going, if you buy the opposite, you're going to do something bad to your body or you're going to cause disease or harm. No one wants to feel that way when they're shopping. I think another point which is quite important is that there's been a number of recalls of beauty products, clean beauty products, due to mold growth and possibly other microbial growth over the last couple of years, and with the rise of TikTok in particular and the social media world and community growing all the time, I think those case studies have been highlighted a lot more and there a number of brands have really struggled with this. And there have been lots of discussions on TikTok and on Reddit that have really highlighted problematic preservation with some clean beauty brands. Now, what I will say is that I think practically all beauty brands, particularly the big ones, have had recalls in the past because of contamination issues. This is not an uncommon thing to happen. In fact, we even wrote a whole case study about Liz Earle, a brand in the UK who had a big recall due to incorrect preservation a couple of years ago. And it probably just happened through the manufacturing process, which you can't always mitigate for. So it isn't as uncommon as most people like to think. But what's interesting is when I went down the Reddit, the Reddit rabbit hole, which I don't recommend, by the way, unless you are feeling brave that day, but I went down that rabbit hole. I saw quite a few users complaining bitterly that less preservation means that you have a shorter shelf life and that therefore your clean beauty products are inherently a scam, which I thought was a very sort of convoluted way of looking at it. And one user said, and I wrote this down, she said, clean beauty is all just an opportunity to grow your own toxins in these expensive, unpreserved tinted petri dishes. I sort of went, oh, that's a bit cynical. It's not entirely fair. I know. Can you imagine that? So, yeah, there is a bit of a backlash, and I think not all of it is justified because as I said, you know, preservation is an issue that all brands can struggle with at some point. But then finally, there have been lawsuits, and particularly in the US which does like its. It does like its lawsuits over there. For instance, there's been one recently for Sephora, who have the Clean at Sephora label. And according to the lawsuit that's been filed, it said the average consumer's understanding of clean beauty products aligns with that of the dictionary definition of clean, which reads as free from impurities or unnecessary and harmful components, and pure and thus in the context of beauty, means that products are free of harmful or synthetic ingredients. But the plaintiff in the case found that a significant percentage of the products with the Clean at Sephora seal contained ingredients inconsistent with how consumers understand the term. And they gave one particular mascara brand example, which, according to this lawsuit, included numerous synthetic ingredients, several of which have been reported to cause possible harms. So here you have a case of a retailer being taken to court because they're selling a product under their clean beauty seal and credo. Beauty has had this as well, and it is inconsistent with the dictionary definition of what it means, because, of course, there's no accepted definition of the word clean beauty. So you're opening yourself up to lawsuits as well. And in fact, episode eight of this podcast many years ago was all about how you could get into legal trouble by making outrageous claims for your beauty brands and claiming that you're all natural, for instance. So it is interesting to watch this play out in real time. So I suppose that's sort of a summary of why some people think clean beauty might be disappearing. So what do you think? Do you think clean beauty really is disappearing? Because I know you've had a good read around and you've looked at the stats, you've looked at the brands out there. Is it really going to disappear from our vocabulary and from the beauty industry?

Do you Think that's an interesting question. As you've just said, any movement always has a counter movement. And so clean beauty has plenty of critics, plenty of reasons perhaps highlighted why people shouldn't buy into clean beauty. But despite that counter movement against clean beauty, it's still very much prominent in many brands marketing. There's many brands that have based their entire brand around being clean and they have been going for many years now and are showing no signs of slowing down, down. And data shows that when people are asked if they have an interest in clean beauty, a large percentage of people will still say yes. One of the interesting counter movements to clean beauty is the skintellectual movement. So this consists of a hardcore group of people who are very interested in the science and evidence and the approach behind their cosmetics and sounds awfully, awfully grand. Skintellectuals. But they are, that's what they've called themselves on the Internet. And I think if you polled people within this group, you would almost certainly get a far more negative response to the term clean beauty because they are very much against it. It's very much against what they stand for. And they are people who are very much more motivated by evidence, perhaps. Whereas clean beauty sometimes might appeal more to emotion, it might appeal more to how we feel because again, it's that link with well being. So another interesting point around the data that I looked at is that age seems to be a determining factor as well when it comes to the search for clean beauty products. So younger people in the polls overall were far more favorable and react far more favorably to the term clean beauty and clean beauty marketing. They're also very much interested and motivated by ethical buying. So they're more interested in vegan, cruelty free cosmetics, things like that. So I think we're very much seeing a case of it's not disappearing, it's perhaps evolving in people's consciousness and it's attaching itself to other movements, maybe like vegan and cruelty free and things like that that very much again appeal to somebody who has a strong ethical sort of stance to their purchasing.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So perhaps clean beauty isn't disappearing, but instead it's evolving. I like that very much.

Yeah, absolutely. So why have we never really embraced the term clean beauty at Formula Botanica?

Yeah, well, I think this ties into everything both of us have been saying the whole way through. First of all, it's too vague and there isn't enough of a definition because that opens you up to criticism. And as a school, we're the world's largest formulation school. You know, we don't want to open ourselves up to criticism. We want to be above board with everything that we do. And actually the same goes for the word natural. Whilst we talk about natural ingredients a lot, we're not the natural formulation school. We're not the clean formulation school, because again, the word natural is so open to interpretation as well. And in fact, the first episode we ever recorded on this podcast was about what does natural even mean in natural skincare? It's also the most popular episode we've ever recorded. People go back to it over and over again because they just don't understand what that definition is. And the same goes for clean. And I feel that if we chose the word clean in relation to what we do, it would in some respects discredit what we do a little bit. When we've worked so hard, hard. And you and your team, particularly Anna, work so hard in education to provide evidence backed educational materials. And we're creating amazing formulators who create skincare and hair care and makeup using organic botanical ingredients that are safe and stable and sellable. But we don't mainly use the word clean because we're not in the business to talk about toxic or dirty beauty either. And the moment you use that term, you welcome that conversation into your space. And we don't sit here vilifying ingredients that we don't like. We just don't even work with. And we focus on the ones that are great for us, great for our skin, great for our hair. And so we use those two words. We use organic because organic means something. It can be certified organic. There are actual definitions for what that actually means. And we use the word green in relation to the podcast, this is Green Beauty Conversations, after all, as well, because it brings that whole eco and sustainability element into the discussion as well, which also really sits with organic too. So I think because we know exactly what we stand for and we know we want to use something that really means something, we tend to shy away from that term. I mean, you run our education team, Anna, what do you think? How would you feel about us using the word clean beauty at Formula Botanica?

Well, like you said, Lorraine, we put a lot of effort in the education team to providing evidence based materials on plants and plant ingredients and being able to formulate with plants. And that's what we do here, and it's our specialty. And it's really, really important that that evidence is now growing and we're using that evidence to teach our students. And clean is very much a marketing term. And we' not here to market to people. We're here to, you know, to educate our students and then they can market their brands however they want to. But I think what we tend to see is many of our graduates, you know, stick to the evidence based approach or stick to terms like green beauty and things like that because they also don't relate to clean, perhaps in the same way.

Yeah. So in conclusion, is clean beauty disappearing? Possibly not. But I think there's certainly some evolution to go through for this term as we, as the industry evolves as well over the years, which is a good thing. Lovely to have you with me again, Anna. It's always fun chatting to you. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.

Thank you so much, Lorraine. This was a really good topic.

I think so too.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Do you use the term clean beauty? Does it mean much to you? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Tell me what you think. 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 today, please do delve back into the podcast archives. I already mentioned a number of different episodes during this episode, so go and listen to episode 44, in which we define what clean beauty means to us at Formula Botanica in more detail. Or episode eight, one of our first ever episodes in which I explored why 100% natural claims could get you into legal trouble. Which is of course exactly what we're seeing play out in some countries around the world. Or episode 53, in which Anna and I put forward our thoughts on why safe beauty is the latest industry buzzword that you should ignore. There's a wealth of information in our old episodes and I do encourage you to go back and listen to them. Thank you for joining Anna and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it and 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, whatever your favorite podcast app is, and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn. We're everywhere.

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At Lorraine Dallmeyer on Instagram too. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.

Sam.