Lorraine Dallmeyer marks 200 episodes of Green Beauty Conversations, launched February 19, 2018. Early debates about what 'natural' means have shifted to sustainability and biotech ingredients. Formula Botanica grew from 5,000 to over 20,000 students across 190+ countries.
About 5,000 students at launch; over 20,000 enrolled now.
Chapters
We've reached a huge milestone here on the podcast and I want to celebrate this with you because Today marks the 200th episode of Green Beauty Conversations. But more than that, we are also almost six years old because the podcast first launched on February 19, 2018. And isn't that amazing, because most podcasts don't last that long, but this one just keeps going from strength to strength. And I know I have so many wonderful, loyal listeners all over the world and thank you so much. We reached 1 million downloads last year and this podcast just keeps on growing. It is so super exciting. So for this episode, I wanted to look back on six years of Green Beauty Conversations and talk to you about the ways that I've seen green beauty change and evolve in that time. So much has changed in terms of the topics that people are talking about and also the direction that the beauty industry is taking. And looking back at the last 200 episodes actually documents that change really clearly for me. So I'm going to use today's short podcast to tell you exactly how I think green beauty has evolved since we started this podcast. Because those shifts, let me tell you, they are fascinating and they signal a very significant change in the cosmetics industry. So let's get started. Hi, it's Lorraine Dallmeyer, childhood 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 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. So now that we've been going for six years on the podcast and we've reached our 200th episode, can you tell I'm excited? Let's take a look back at how things have changed in Green Beauty in that time. So I think the first big shift that I've seen is the shift in the conversation around what green actually means in relation to beauty. So the very first episode we ever recorded on this podcast was released in February 2018 and it is still also our most popular one to date, as so many people have referred back to it time and time again over the years. And in that episode we asked the question, what does natural skincare actually mean now? At the time, it was a question that people asked us continuously because they didn't really understand the term natural in relation to cosmetics. Now, six years later, I can tell you that we don't receive that question nearly as much anymore. I feel like everyone sort of got on board with the concept of natural and has now shifted the conversation very much to sustainability. In fact, I'd say that I feel people now actually confuse the topics of natural and sustainability a lot of the time. In fact, in episode 123, Anna Green, Formula Botanica's education manager, and I discussed how the two concepts are linked, but they are not synonymous. But the conversation has definitely moved more towards sustainability in the last six years, and that's a good thing. It took the beauty industry a really long time to do so, though, and I can tell you that when we launched this podcast, sustainability was still really a fringe topic for most people. Now, on the other hand, sustainability is a buzzword, and I'm still actually not sure that the beauty industry gets it right much of the time, as I do see a load of nonsense float around me often. But I hope that we here on the podcast have at least been able to set the record straight. Some really important topics, like what circularity means, which I covered with anna in episode 66, or what biodegradability means, which Anna and I covered in episode 69, or the countless episodes I've recorded with amazing guests on upcycled ingredients or refillable beauty, or rejecting the toxic marketing messaging that tells us that we're not good enough unless we buy beauty products, which of course drives insane consumption levels. And I feel proud of the fact that we've been able to tackle such complicated topics that seem overly simplified everywhere else or are just not being discussed anywhere after all. Slightly controversial viewpoint here, but when you're not beholden to a big corporate cosmetic overlord, which of course I'm not, you can say it exactly as it is. And I feel that we've done this successfully over 200 episodes of speaking My Mind, My team speaking their Mind, My guests Speaking their Minds. So what else? Well, since launching the podcast back in 2018, I've also seen a massive change in the number of conversations people are having around plastic. Plastic is the topic of the moment, and I don't think that I have many guests on this podcast who don't touch on it at least once in some way or another. Now, plastic is an amazing human invention and has afforded us all sorts of improvements in our lives, but like with many other things, humanity has become totally addicted to it, and we use it far too much in a very single use manner. In fact, beauty is so dependent upon plastics in so many ways that I found that we're now dedicating more podcast recording time to this topic than we were six years ago. It's good to see that the conversation has shifted so much, although I have honestly yet to meet a podcast guest who has a complete solution for the plastic problem, which suggests that it's going to be a combination of all the efforts undertaken by all those amazing thought leaders that I interview in order to make that shift. The other big shift that I've seen is a rather ironic one, and that's the shift from lab synthesized ingredients to natural. Back when we started the podcast and everyone was talking about naturals, and then back to lab synthesized again. Nowadays with this huge boom in synthetic biology or biotech beauty, and I've dedicated quite a few episodes to this topic over the last year, the beauty industry has found a way of harnessing the power of nature by creating ingredients at scale in the lab by cultivating the cells of plants and then replicating them in yeast cultures. And the implication of these lab synthesized so called natural ingredients are far reaching and I think they could be very positive, particularly for the big industrial cosmetic companies who use millions of tons of ingredients. This wasn't a discussion we were having when the podcast launched back in 2018, and now it's really taken hold, which is fascinating to see. So the final big shift that I want to talk about is the reach that we've achieved here on Green Beauty Conversations in the last six when we started this podcast, Formula Botanica had about 5,000 students all studying with us to become formulators. And now We've enrolled over 20,000 people from over 190 countries around the world and helped them to become organic beauty formulators, skincare, hair care, and indie beauty entrepreneurs. We are the leading voice in formulation education and we've also led the conversation around sustainability and beauty in a large part down to this podcast. But the industry has so, so, so much more to do to get it right. And that is where you come in. Because you're here, you're listening, you're hopefully subscribed and hopefully tuning in regularly to my weekly episodes, but we haven't made enough of an impact yet. I need your help because we need this podcast to grow and get more listeners so that we can create more of a movement around green and sustainable beauty. The more of a movement we create, the the more community we create and the more chance we have of actually changing the beauty industry for the better. So my challenge to you for this week is to share the Green Beauty Conversations podcast with your friends, with formulators, with beauty brand owners, with people in the cosmetics industry, with people who care about sustainability, with people who are interested in beauty. Let's create an even bigger movement as we move into 2024 and beyond, and let's change the beauty industry for the better together. 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, what have you been doing for the last 200 episodes? 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 next week with my next episode. Sam.
