EP22. Defining Green Cosmetic Chemistry in Easy Steps

Hello and welcome to the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you want to find out a little bit more about our award winning online natural and organic skincare and hair care courses, hop on over to formulabatanca.com and try out our free sample class. In this episode, Lorraine and I are talking about green cosmetic chemistry and what that means and what the Formula Botanica definition of that is. Enjoy. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Lorraine.

Hello and thank you for having me again. I love being on our Green Beauty Conversations podcast. I'm always happy to be here.

I'm really glad that you are happy to be here because we always have an interesting discussion about various things in the green beauty world when you join us. And this week we're covering a topic that we've been wanting to discuss for a long time, haven't we?

Yes, absolutely. It's something that is close to our heart and that really ties in with quite a few of the other topics that you've covered on the podcast previously with some of our other guests. So I'm very excited to talk about it.

So this week we wanted to chat about what is green cosmetic chemistry or. Well, we've developed a definition of what we think green cosmetic chemistry for artisan formulators is, and we've chatted about this across the entire team and we're really pleased with what we've put together. And yeah, we want to just chat with everyone about that today. So, Lorraine, I was hoping you would kick us off with the definition that we've developed.

Absolutely. So for us, making products is not just about using natural ingredients, it's about being sustainable as well. And it's about really embracing those principles of sustainability. And with that comes green cosmetic chemistry. Green chemistry, which is basically the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products. So it's quite a long definition there, and we'll obviously break that down a little bit in this podcast. But basically it's about being careful in the way you formulate the ingredients you use and the principles that you adhere to.

So we've also gone ahead and put together the kind of main components or points that we think green chemistry for artisan formulators consists of. And I was hoping that we could start at the top, which is the logical place to start. And you've put here as the first point. We want to prevent waste rather than reduce it. So let's just talk through that point.

Yeah, so that's the first point. Of green cosmetic chemistry. Obviously, if you look at the waste hierarchy and you and I recently recorded the podcast about zero waste beauty and what that means, prevention is the place to start. And the same goes with green chemistry. So basically we want to prevent pollution to air, water and soil as well as any bioaccumulation. And we also want to prevent waste of energy, avoiding certain hot processes, for instance. And we want to prevent waste in terms of packaging and plastics whenever possible. So it's quite a big catch all topic there. Basically we want to be responsible in how we formulate. It's quite interesting actually because l' Oreal have recently. And you wouldn't expect me to talk about l' Oreal on this podcast, I know, but l' Oreal have recently come out with a semi natural hair care range which is really clever actually. It's refillable. And so people buy the first shampoo or whatever product they buy and then they can take the bottle back to the salon and have it refilled up to three times, which is of course brilliant because you know, you're, you've got a lower carbon footprint. The manufacturer doesn't have to transport or buy in more packaging. The consumer doesn't have to pay for new packaging, which over time is obviously is often more expensive than the formula itself, let's be fair. And of course there's no waste to recycle or send to landfill.

Yeah, I mean that's an interesting topic in itself, the future of refillables in the green beauty industry. And it's something that I discussed in more depth in a podcast I recorded with Barbara Olioso of the Green Chemist consultancy. So if you're interested in further discussion on that, you should check out that podcast. I mean obviously that, that is, that is a big goal.

Yes, prevention of waste. I think we should probably all prevent that in every single business. But when you're, when you're working with chemicals, obviously want to try and prevent pollution to air, water and soil and bioaccumulation. So your formulation lab or your formulation factory, however big you have it, you should be really thinking about these things. And I know I mentioned this in the zero waste podcast as well that we recorded, you might want to have some kind of environmental management system in place like ISO 14001, where you're actually trying to make sure that you do the very best you can by the environment. So I think that is really the first principle of green cosmetic chemistry for.

Us and it's a, it's a big one. So we wanted to Start off big and then move down. So the second point that you've made here is that we want to use all chemicals economically. So if you could just expand on that and explain what you mean by the economical use of chemicals.

Absolutely. So it really ties in with the last one. You know, you're trying not to use too many chemicals in your production processes, and you want to be economical in how you use them. This means that we want to make sure that all the chemicals we use along the way end up in the final formulation and aren't wasted. You might want to, for instance, choose chemical reactions that are more favorable to the ingredients that you're using and that limit the production of secondary chemicals. Certain chemical cosmetic ingredients are produced through fairly extensive chemical processes, even ones that are natural, or depending on your definition of natural. And obviously we covered this in our very, very first podcast, what natural mean? For some people, an ingredient that has undergone a chemical process is not natural, whereas for others, they'll say, well, the original material, the raw material, was natural, so therefore it is natural. For me, some of these ingredients undergo fairly extensive chemical processes, and sometimes they use what they call catalysts. They're ingredients that effectively help you produce the final product, final ingredient, but that ingredient itself doesn't end up in it. Of course, if you're formulating a small batch, then that. That isn't necessarily a huge issue because you're not looking at a lot of waste. But once you start to scale up, if you're formulating say, 10,000 units of day cream and you're using 100 kilos of catalyst, then ultimately you're going to have to start thinking about how economical your use of ingredients is. Any catalyst or waste that you end up with in your formulation lab will have to be either treated on site or taken away. And that itself comes with more environmental issues, with more carbon footprint. So you have to really think about the chemicals you're using, what ends up in your finished product and what doesn't, and whether you're using them economically or not. And if you're an artisan formulator, that may not necessarily always be that relevant to you because you might not be the one undertaking these chemical processes. So you have to really think about what your suppliers are doing in order to create the ingredients that you're buying from them.

So you need to do really, like, kind of like an ingredient and chemical audit.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's a really good idea. You have to write down all the ingredients you're using, really think about how they're produced. Quiz your suppliers, get all the documentation you can, read up on it and try and find out where they've come from, what their origin is and really understand them.

Yeah. And how they are disposing of the things that they don't need. Or how. Yeah. How you could revise something so that you didn't have the waste being created in the first place. Another big, big undertaking, but extremely necessary.

Yes, yes. No one said it was going to be easy to be a green cosmetic chemist.

Our third point is we want to use fewer hazardous chemicals. So I want you to expand on that in a way that a green formulator would understand that, because obviously a lot of people think in the natural world that we don't use any hazardous chemicals. So let's have a big chat about point number three and the hazardous chemical concern.

I'm sure everyone sat here nodding along going, I don't want to use hazardous chemicals. Absolutely. You've nailed it there for me, Gemma. And of course, if you're in the green beauty world, then you don't really want to go anywhere near particularly synthetic chemicals, which may not. Which may not be hazardous at all, of course, but you certainly don't want to be working with hazardous chemicals. However, I found that generally people think of hazards in terms of human health alone and they don't really think wider than that. And that's what I want to tie into this point here. So you want to make sure that your chemicals can't undergo dangerous reactions, including explosions or fire, for instance. I mean, there are quite a few natural ingredients that can't, for instance, be transported by air. They have to be transported by road because they have certain flammable issues, they have certain risks associated with them. And certain chemicals can produce hazardous byproducts that can be toxic to human health and the environment, which is of course part of the reason that the global green beauty movement found its legs in the first place. But I found that generally natural formulators only look at human health and well being rather than ecotoxicity. And this is a really important point. So I see a lot of people talk about silver. For instance, I want to use silver as a preservative. I want silver in my formulations. But silver has been shown to demonstrate levels of ecotoxicity. And certain environmental groups around the world are very, very concerned about silver. I mean, it comes back in all sorts of things in our clothes, so it's really accumulating around the world. Another example is the use of sun pigments, so titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, which end up accumulating in the sea. I mean, before this podcast, I was even reading an article by Jean Michel Cousteau who was saying, I don't like these ingredients. They're not biodegradable. You know, they're coming up in the sea and, you know, 4 to 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen is washed into the sea every year and is accumulating. Even though you're using ingredients that are deemed to be naturally derived, nature identical, or even purely natural, they can sometimes still have a degree of ecotoxicity. And you must think wider than only human health, because ultimately we only have one planet and we need to look after it. The principles of green cosmetic chemistry basically dictate that we want to avoid using and producing such hazardous chemicals.

Yeah, again, this is something that we touch on in our podcast with Barbara Olioso and also that we, we skirt on in the Zero Waste podcast. So if you want some additional points and information on it, go and check out those podcasts as well. I mean, the, the point three is something that I think initiates or gets debate going within the natural beauty world. And, and obviously there is a massive debate that rages and continues to rage with no clear consensus about sunscreens and about natural sunscreens. Done a blog on that. You can go and check that out. It'll be linked in the podcast notes and it's something that we will hope to cover in future podcasts because it, it does make for a very interesting topic. So moving on to point four, which links obviously into point three. We've said we want to design fewer hazardous chemicals. So what do you mean by design?

We really want to. Well, there's a lot of new ingredients coming onto the market all the time. You know, we really want to use ingredients that are safe for human health and the environment, which is why all new cosmetic ingredients have to be tested for human health and ecotoxicity. And that's what this point really comes down to. It's how we test and what we, what we get out of that testing. There's a massive movement around the world against animal testing in cosmetics, and rightly so. I mean, these poor animals have gone through enough. Quite frankly, I think humans should be testing a little bit more. But that is my own personal opinion. We want to create fewer hazardous chemicals coming onto the market. We want to see the industry pushing forward a lot safer ingredients in general. With animal testing being phased out in many, many parts of the world, researchers are bringing in all sorts of innovative research test methods. So we've seen 3D printed skin in the last couple of years, seen artificial intelligence, we've seen lab grown human organs. I mean, genius what they're coming up with. So, so clever. But these tests are still a necessity because we want to make sure that the ingredients that are produced that are pushed out into the world are absolutely safe for human health and for the environment. And basically don't put so many hazardous chemicals into the world.

Okay, yeah. Quite a simple point there.

Yeah, basically. Yeah.

So we want to stop doing it.

Yeah, we want to use fewer hazardous chemicals and we want to design fewer ones. So it really comes down to the design process there.

And like you say, there's so much innovation in the world. I think we're going to get to the point when we don't really have an excuse anymore to have these hazardous chemicals, you know, to be producing more of them and to be using them.

Absolutely, I completely agree. And really and truly, a lot of the reasons that some of these chemicals that are a little bit dubious are still used is because of the cost factor. So we need to see people thinking beyond just the financial bottom line. They need to be thinking about the environment, about socioeconomic impacts. They need to be thinking sustainability in general.

Yeah. I had quite an interesting conversation about this with our cosmetic chemist yesterday, and she was saying often this goes to convenience as well. Some of these slightly questionable ingredients are used because they're considered more stable within, you know, a batch of cosmetic products. Like, you can make batch after batch and be absolutely assured of the stability of these ingredients, whereas some natural ingredients are a little bit more kind of tricky. Each batch has to be tested. Each. So she was saying that often it's. It's convenience as well.

Absolutely. And of course, don't forget, you know, a lot of these ingredients have decades and decades of data behind them.

Yeah.

So, and, you know, if you go and study chemistry at university, you will often be using ingredients that have been used for decades and decades. So pushing yourself into this newer sphere of these newer ingredients that are coming on the market, it is often a leap into the unknown because you don't know exactly how they'll behave. And you have to find the right tricks for working with them. But make it any less worthy or necessary.

Yeah, I suppose. I suppose again, I mean, which we. Something which we covered on in the Barbara Olioso podcast and the Zero Waste podcast is skirting this line between safety, like effectiveness and the environment. And you know, a lot of people use that excuse that these tried and tested chemicals are tried and tested. So we know these ingredients, these chemicals, these, however we want to term it, they are effective and they've got, they're safe, they're stable and we've got years and years and years of data. So let's just keep doing things the way we're doing them.

Yeah, absolutely.

And ecotoxicity comes further down.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

We see this with a lot of the sort of mainstream chemists, particularly the ones who have spent quite a lot of time ranting on the Internet. You know, they're used to working a certain way and they don't really want to push themselves down that innovative route to throw themselves out of their comfort zone. So, yeah, we want to see people innovating and doing exciting new things.

But again, we haven't said that this is going to be easy.

No, no, it's not.

But, you know, we've seen the green beauty people within the green beauty community like to take on a challenge. So, you know, hey ho, we know you can do this. Okay, so moving on to point five, which I think is a really important point because these ingredients get discussed a lot. So we want to use safer solvents and other chemical agents. So let's just talk a little bit about solvents.

A solvent is obviously the base that you put your extracts in or that your chemical is carried in. And certain solvents can be toxic to human health and to the environment. So again, we want to make sure that the solvents we use are safe. Now, if you're a natural formulator, you're sat there going, I don't work with toxic solvents. I work with water or oil or glycerin. Glycerin or vinegar or alcohol. But there are certain ingredients, even natural ones, which are produced by using solvents or catalysts that are not particularly safe. If you look at plant absolutes, for example, they're prepared by soaking botanical matter in hexane for several hours. This solution is then filtered and the hexane is evaporated by a vacuum pump. Because hexane has a boiling point of 69 degrees Celsius, we don't want to obviously heat that up. You know, if you're, if you're an artisan formulator, you're working with very small quantities. If you're in a factory, you're working with massive, massive quantities. So the heat required for the hexane is obviously far beyond anything that we would ever see in an artisan lab. Ingredients manufacturers, they may also want to recycle the solvent they used in the first place. Yeah, you have to really think about these things when you're buying ingredients. Now, when it comes to absolutes, obviously, you know, they are very safe and the residues remaining these solvents in absolutes are in the order of about 10 parts per million. But nonetheless, you know, you sort of think, actually, maybe I would want to choose a different ingredient. Maybe I want to use an ingredient that hasn't had such solvents used in the first place. And I suppose this also ties in with the research that goes on in the industry. And I see this a lot because I'm often reading scientific articles about plant ingredients in particular and how they're tested on, on animals. It's, it's horrible to read, I have to say. And they always use these synthetic and, and fairly unpleasant, pleasant solvents as well. So think about the solvents you're using. Think about the solvents that your ingredient suppliers have used. Think about the solvents involved with the catalysts, with everything that's gone into the ingredients that end up in your final formulation. So coming back to the point you made earlier, Gemma, go and do an audit on your ingredients.

Yeah. And I think this, this point also highlights the fact that you need to build very good relationships with whoever is supplying your ingredients. And this is something that we kind of bang on all the time. And, you know, I know that sometimes relationship building is not easiest thing to do, but it is good to take the time and effort to do that so that you can have a very clear understanding about the processes and things that your ingredient supplier uses. And the more information that you have and the more you can work together with them, the better. I think.

I completely agree, completely agree. Go and get to know your ingredient supplier if they'll let you. You might be working with a smaller retailer. They may not be that communicative. But try, really try, because I've seen some of our graduates build up the most phenomenal relationships with sustainable suppliers all over the world. And they, they really support them. And it's small business supporting small business, and that's exciting to see and that makes this whole industry so exciting.

So moving on to point six. You or we have said we want to be energy efficient in how we design and manufacture our formulations. So let's just talk about what a formulator needs to think about in relation to this point.

So this ties into our waste point, point number one. But it's basically we want to be careful with our energy footprint. So we want to think about the energy we use in manufacturing our batches and in running our artisan labs. So you want to think about the carbon footprint basically involved with creating, harvesting, shipping ingredients. Go all the way back through your supply chain again and think about the life cycle of your formulation. We talked about the whole cradle to grave aspect lifecycle assessment in the Zero Waste podcast we did. It's the same principle with your ingredients. Go all the way back to when it was originally in the ground, what happened from that point onwards. And then we really recommend that you start to think about the carbon footprint involved with everything that you're doing, Think about where your electricity comes from and consider offsetting your carbon footprint if you can't really minimize it. But worth doing one of these carbon footprint exercises as well for your artisan business because you never know what might come out of it and what energy saving exercises you can come up with or changes in your business that will really help. Now, I also think this is me personally again, but I think you should really be thinking local rather than global in how you source your ingredients. It's very easy to want to stuff every single exotic ingredient in the world in your formulation as a green beauty formulator, but do you really need it? Is there an alternative that is local to you, which has similar chemical compounds, which can do a similar thing? So think about your carbon footprint and try and be energy efficient in how you run your business. It's something you really have to consider as a, as a green formulator or a green chemist.

And related to that point, when I was chatting with our cosmetic chemist yesterday, she made a point about, in relation to this, about the amount of ingredients that we use and how it's tempting to stick loads and loads and loads of ingredients on a label. If you think about efficacy, could it be that three ingredients could work just as well and efficiently as 20 or 25? And she said when you go through and you break it down, she said, more often than not, you'll find that for certain products, you can get away with two to three to four really, really wonderful ingredients that work synergistically and create a very effective and efficient product rather than having an inky label with, you know, that reads like an essay. And that also helps your customer as well because they will be able to cut through some of the massive overwhelm that you feel when you're looking for beauty products and natural beauty products. So, so that, that, yeah, I completely.

Agree to think about, completely agree, because that's our principle at Formula Botanica and how we teach as well, you know, keep it simple. We often see a lot of people come to us who want to throw the kitchen sink at their formulations before they've even learned how to make an emulsion. But you need to take it right back to basics and try and work with the bare minimum of ingredients. And yes, our chemist is absolutely right in that. And in fact, a couple of weeks ago, I received a product from one of our graduates, a lady called Shelly Ann in the US who runs a brand called Kiss Kiss Goodnight. She sent me her three in one baby bath gel. And I have to say, it's probably one of the best products I've ever seen. And it only has five ingredients. Ingredients in it. And it smells amazing. It feels amazing. It's just.

And it's a gel.

I know it's a gel. It's fantastic. So there you something that simple.

I know. And I was thinking about the in Cosmetics podcast we did about when we said that gels and things are really on trend and we want to see more kind of gels in the natural world. And there you go. A gel, five ingredients, and it works.

Yeah. And it smells fantastic as well, and it feels great. And everything about it was just fantastic. So go check out Kiss Kiss Good Night, because she's a Formula Botanica graduate.

So it can be done. There you go. And it's being done by a member of our own community, so take inspiration from that. Okay, moving on to point seven. We've said that we want the ingredients we use to be renewable and sustainable. And I think it's really. This is a really, really important point because there's a. Often a. A myth that operates in the green beauty community that everything. That everything that we use is natural. First. First myth, second myth. Natural is always going to be more renewable and more sustainable. So let's. Let's just expand on that point as well.

Yeah. It's probably the most important point for me personally, given that we work with botanicals. It's so important that you understand the provenance of your ingredients. Coming back to what we've been saying throughout this whole podcast. So the whole industry is totally mad about finding the latest exotic ingredients. And we saw this again at. In Cosmetics. We put this in our top 10, didn't we? Everyone's just trying to find that elusive botanical ingredient that is going to just take away every wrinkle on your face. Yeah. Very little thought into whether it's actually sustainable to use that ingredient. So one of my biggest issues, my biggest pet peeves, is the way that the industry uses so much rosewood essential oil. If you use rosewood essential oil and you're Listening to this podcast. Go and read up on it. There are so many people who are blissfully unaware that this is an endangered plant. It takes years to grow this tree. They chop it down, they float this trunk down the river in the Amazon and then it's used. And it takes years, decades for this tree to grow back. It's not the same rosewood as the kind you find for wood, by the way. It's a different one. People just don't seem to understand that this is an endangered plant. So if you want your formulation to be green and sustainable, learn where your ingredients come from. And don't just buy an ingredient from a shop without knowing what it is. You can't be sustainable by only using natural ingredients. Natural does not equal sustainable.

Exactly.

You can be very unsustainable if you're not aware of the impact that formulation is having on the world's habitats and ecosystems. And this ties in with the energy efficiency argument. Again, you need to try and limit the carbon footprint of your ingredients as well. So, you know, our chemist was saying, basically, and I completely agree, you know, be prepared to pay a little bit more rather than trying to chase the lowest price at the highest cost for the planet. Sorry, go on.

No, no, I think this is the most important point for me as well in this, in this whole thing. And it's something that we also discussed with Barbara Olio so about, you know, looking at, looking at what the most sustainable option is. So it might be that a naturally derived ingredient created in a lab or something, nature identical, will be far more sustainable and far more efficient than something that has to be harvested under difficult conditions. And, you know, or, you know, there's so. There's so many factors to this.

Yeah, I just, I really want to bring up the point of palm oil here as well, because.

Yes.

I mean, I get so annoyed reading some of these blogs by cosmetic chemists online because they often criticize people who campaign against the use of palm oil because they're saying that palm oil provides one of the highest yields of all oils grown. So Palm oil yields 4 to 5 tons of crude palm oil per hectare per year. That's a huge amount of oil. So they're basically saying you don't need much land take in order to grow a very, very efficient crop. Why are you campaigning against this people? And obviously, you know, they're saying it would require a far greater land take to grow an equivalent oil yield from another crop. Yeah, but this totally overlooks the fact that a people are using too much much. So we need to reduce consumption, which sort of goes against the whole principle of the beauty industry, probably. But it also overlooks the fact that palm oil is grown in one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet and therefore is going to have a far greater ecological impact to one that's grown in a different part of the world. So you can't compare a hectare of land in the UK to a hectare of land in Indonesia in terms of biodiversity, because it is going to be completely different. Now, obviously, you want to have environmental protections in everywhere. I'm not advocating that we go and completely strip one country to save another, but basically, you need to think about land. Take biodiversity. You know, it's bigger than just looking at oil yield and efficiency. There are a lot of very nuanced environmental and ecological arguments that I feel are really overlooked by the world of chemistry.

Oh, yeah. I mean, and it's easy to rationalize the use of something, again, that's convenient because, you know, palm oil, there's a reason why people use. Want to use palm oil in the food industry and the cosmetics industry. You know, it is convenient. You know, there's. There's loads of things that make people want to make an argument for why we should continue using it. And as we've discussed in, in loads of other podcasts, is sustainability is not just. It doesn't exist in, in a single vacuum with a single kind of point. You know, there's so many things that make up what sustainability is, and you've also got to factor in, you know, harvesting. How is these things harvested?

What.

What is the human kind of footprint as well? Like, there's, there's no point in, you know, in having these amazing sustainable ingredients if you've basically got like slave labor or child labor or something.

Yeah, absolutely.

Involved in the harvest of your product. You know, and I think one of our graduates wrote a blog post about ethical and sustainable harvesting, which is worth a read. But, you know, one of our, one of our graduates or two of our graduates, it's Dominica and Elsie from Bybee Beauty, talked about this and said that, you know, people are consumers are no longer just asking them about ingredient providence or to talk more about their ingredients and their packaging and their processes. They're asking them about the human element involved in making these beauty products.

Yeah.

So this is something, you know, we talked about animal testing, and obviously in relation to palm oil, animals might not be tested, but animals are hurt and damaged during the harvesting of palm oil, just like human beings can.

It's good to hear that consumers are asking these questions, actually, because that's what's going to drive the change in the industry. And I really want people listening to this podcast to think, okay, I've been buying this shampoo or this pot of makeup for years. I'm going to go ask what's actually involved in its manufacture. And that forces brands to go and think about these things and ask themselves very tough questions and maybe make some changes as well. So it's all going to be driven by the people listening to this podcast and consumers out there, you know, driving change in the industry.

Yeah. Moving on to our final point. We want to design our formulation so that it can break down easily in the environment. And I think this is probably the next most important point for me. So. So let's just talk about what happens when you put stuff on your skin and then what happens to it.

There is a myth in the green beauty world that everything we put on our skin ends up in our bloodstream time. It's quite terrifying to see that this myth is still pushed forward. And if you come and study at Formula Botanica, you'll learn that this is not the case. Some ingredients get into our bodies, but a lot of them don't. Our skin is a very effective barrier, which is why we don't turn in to a giant inflated bag of water every time we get into the shower, thankfully. Can you imagine, Basically, everything that you put on your skin will, at some point, some point end up in the sewage. And so you want to design your formulations for degradation. And this is something that formulators and chemists don't really do. Now, there was a very interesting article in an earlier edition of the International Journal of Cosmetic Science this year, and I'm hoping to do a live stream on this one at some point, actually. But I haven't got around to it since I've been so busy moving house. But it was all. It was about l'. Oreal. It was actually written by, I think, a research team at l', Oreal, and they were using eco design to produce their formulation. So they were thinking about the way that their formulations break down in the environment during the design process, particularly looking at waterways. And I thought that was brilliant. Finally, someone is embracing this because it's so easy to think I'm making an anhydrous product that's a body scrub, I'm going to use it in the shower. And then all my coconut oil, for instance, goes and clogs the drains up, up. These researchers and these formulators and chemists were designing their formulations to think about how it was going to break down. And obviously we touched on this in the Zero Waste podcast. It is so hard to dispose of ingredients. And I think most formulators overlook this because they're not necessarily aware of the way that our waterways and sewage systems handle certain ingredients or they label under the assumption that their customer will use the entire product. And of course, both of these are quite dangerous assumptions to make as some ingredients can have quite negative effects on the environment, natural or synthetic, and your customer may just dump the entire formulation down the drain if they don't use it. Because of course, we're not given advice on what to do with cosmetic ingredients that we don't use. People assume you'll use everything, so you must design your formulation with the end of its life in mind. And that is true green cosmetic chemistry. If we look at, for instance, let's give an example, Quaternary ammonium compounds, otherwise known as quats, are used in detergents and they can act as a biocide in the waterways, negatively affecting aquatic organisms. Quartz are found in a whole variety of different products. Shampoos, conditioners, toilet cleaners, hand soap, baby wipes, shaving cream, body wash, sunscreens, moisturizer. They're everywhere. And you might think, okay, they're not in the natural world, but actually they are because certain conditioning agents, for instance, such as behentriummonium methyl sulphate or benzathonium chloride, are still used in so called natural conditioners, even though these aren't natural ingredients. So we're seeing a lot of formulators go for ingredients that are easy to get, still call their product natural. But these ingredients, not only are they not natural, but they're also being washed into the waterways afterwards, which can have quite a negative effect because it is quite hard to find an alternative natural ingredient that doesn't have such a big impact. So again, this is where a formulator, this is where a green beauty brand really has to lead the way and say, I'm going to push to try and find an ingredient that absolutely fits all my criteria, does the right thing. I might have to pay more for it, I might have to import it, it might have a slightly higher carbon footprint. You know, you have to weigh off the environmental impacts against each other. But this is my choice and it's not going to be an easy choice to make. And we often see, you know, people come to us and say, when I study at Formula Botanica, will I be able to find every ingredient I want in the corner shop? Can I go Someone even asked us a while ago if they could go buy everything in the supermarket. It. You know, you're going to have to be prepared to be an entrepreneur if you want to move into the natural world, because you're going to have to find the right ingredients that meet all your criteria. And sometimes that means hunting them down, that means bartering, that means finding suppliers all over the world that fit your specifications. It's not going to be easy. But as I said, if you design with the end of your formulation's life in mind, that is true green cosmetic chemistry.

Wow. So that was our last point. I feel like we've ended on a high and it's certainly, I think, eight points with a lot of consideration and a lot of thought for people who are working as artisan formulators. And, you know, as usual, we'd be interested in hearing your feedback on all of these things. So if you have any questions or queries or anything about the points we covered in this podcast, please do get in touch. So I think that's all we have time for today and hopefully your head isn't exploding too much with our definition of green cosmetic chemistry and all the, all the things it contains. Hopefully it's been inspiring and uplifting and has given you something to think about. So thank you, Lorraine, for putting these together, for joining us on the podcast.

And thank you for running such an awesome podcast, Gemma.

It's a pleasure. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us for this very interesting podcast on what green cosmetic chemistry is. I know there's a lot to think about and hopefully it's not making your head hurt too much. If you want to join in the conversation and debate on green cosmetic chemistry and what it means, then head over to our free Facebook group, Skincare Entrepreneurs Mastermind. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Formula Botanica. Once again, thank you so much for listening. And if you have any feedback or any concerns at all, please do get in touch with us via our social media channels or via email on helloormulabatanica.com.

Sa.