EP178. What is end of life beauty planning?

I was recently reading an article by the UK's Royal Society of Biology, where I'm a member, about the microbes that can eat plastic. It's a fascinating and terrifying concept, this idea of releasing microbes into the environment unchecked. But when you consider that humans have created over 9 billion tons of plastic since the 1950s, of which 7 billion is still here on planet Earth, you realize that something desperately needs to be done. We're effectively already in the Anthropocene, a new geological time period defined for the massive impact that human beings have had on the planet. Anyway, at the end of that article that I was reading about microbes and plastic, the author wrote, the fundamental point with regard to our plastic problem is that the majority of plastics in use today are still designed without any end of life plan. So just to explain what that means, end of life in the context of manufacturing and product life cycles is the final stages of a product's existence. And as I read that sentence in the article, I thought to myself, gosh, isn't that just the case for virtually everything in the beauty industry too? This of course ties in with the conversation I had with Shane Price of Green Circle Salons last week here on the podcast when we discussed the waste streams that emerge from salons around the world every single day. The beauty industry is enormous and encompasses all sorts of different companies, products, services, and you know what? I would hazard a guess that the majority of those products and services are designed without an end of life plan. So for today's podcast, I want to put forward the bold vision that I think the cosmetics industry should start planning for end of life beauty. From what I can tell, it's not even a term that exists yet, but I don't see why I can't invent it here on the podcast. Hi, it's Lorraine Dallmeyer, Chartered environmentalist, biologist and CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation simulation school Formula Botanica. I host the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and these are my green beauty opinions in which I share my takeaways from the podcast interview we released last week and 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. The truth is that we don't really know the extent of the beauty industry's waste problem, but we know it's enormous. There are figures floating around the Internet, such as 120 billion units of plastic packaging per year being produced for beauty, but when I trace that figure back to find the origins of those numbers, no data or studies actually seem to exist, at least none that I could find. If you have them, please drop me a line. Nonetheless, we know the beauty industry's waste streams are enormous, and I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the big players have a good idea of what we're dealing with, but don't necessarily want to share that information. Information. For instance, when Vogue Business approached several big cosmetic corporates to ask them about the amount of waste produced by their stores, they declined to comment. The secrecy that shrouds this industry definitely suggests that they have one giant dirty waste secret to hide. And that more than anything, this industry needs to incorporate end of life planning for its products and services. So what would an end of life plan look like for beauty? Well, firstly, it would mean that formulations are designed with the end in mind. Many new formulators think that we absorb literally everything we put on the skin, but this is in fact one of the first myths we bust when a new formulation student enrolls with us at Formula Botanica. In reality, most formulations will either penetrate the top cellular layers of our skin and then be removed with dead skin cells when normal cellular turnover takes place, or those same formulations will be flushed down the drain or put to landfill if the product isn't fully used up or if it's a rins. So there are really only a few places that our formulations can end up. Our bodies, our vacuums, our waterways, or our landfills. There aren't many formulators thinking about the end of life of their formulation, but some of the big laboratories are doing exactly this, which is heartening to see because they're thinking about the way that waterways can safely disperse their formulations without causing ecotoxicity. Some of them are even thinking about the myriad of ways that customers use their beauty products, which can still sometimes take any brand by surprise. For instance, I don't know if you've ever bought that great massage bar that Lush sells. It's called Wiki Magic Mussels and it's super simple and contains lots of lovely natural ingredients including aduki or adzuki beans. And those beans provide the massaging effect that the bar has and it's a really cool formulation. However, I can only imagine the surprise of the people at Lush when they realized that their customers were using these bars in the shower. So the dried beans were eventually falling off as they're meant to do, and they were then sprouting plants in their customers shower drains. This was all over social media a few years ago. So you see that end of life beauty means considering many different eventualities, but this can take time to fully understand. End of life beauty also obviously means thinking about what happens to your packaging. I've had a couple of brands recently pitched to be on the podcast to talk about their plastic neutral certification, and honestly, I applaud them for at the very least thinking about removing plastic from the oceans. But as I also covered in episode 117 when I interviewed Peter Wang Heimdall, the CEO of Repurpose Global, the plastic neutral certification scheme, neutrality unfortunately isn't sufficient and it certainly doesn't take the end of life of your packaging properly into account. And then of course, we're also talking about waste from cosmetic manufacturing plants, cardboard waste, plastic packaging waste, aluminium waste, water waste, and as Shane mentioned last week in our interview, the waste from salons counts too. Hair waste, unused hair color waste, packaging waste. And let's not forget the waste from our ingredient suppliers, agricultural waste or lab synthesis, chemical waste, or distributors and stores, endless packaging waste and out of date or rejected product waste. Now my vision for the beauty industry is that every single player starts to think about the waste from their products and services. As Mia Davis, previously of Credo Beauty, my guest in episode 111, rightly said, we don't talk about waste enough. It's not a sexy topic. So right here on the podcast I'm coining a new term, End of Life Beauty Planning. And my challenge for you for this week is to join me in using that term end of Life Beauty Planning. Let's start having these conversations. It doesn't matter if you're a formulator or a beauty shopper or a cosmetic exec or a journalist or any of the other lovely people who tune in weekly for my podcasts. All of our beauty products and services end up somewhere. So let's make sure that ending is responsible. All of us can make a difference, so let's begin with the end in mind. Thank you for listening to my Green Beauty opinions. 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. Sam.