EP254. Are beauty brands really as green as they say they are?

When was the last time you read a beauty brand sustainability report? Well, I'm guessing the answer is probably never. And you're not alone in that. Because most of these reports are buried on company websites, they're hard to find. And when you do manage to unearth one, you're often met with something that looks more like a marketing brochure than a report on genuine progress. Now, if you caught last week's podcast interview here on the show, I spoke with Laura Rudow of Evolve Organic Beauty, and Laura's brand is one of the few indie beauty companies I've seen that openly publishes an impact or a sustainability report on their website. And this got me thinking about the bigger question of what a sustainability report is actually for, and also what the big players in beauty are publishing and what's missing from their sustainability reports. Are they really as green as they say they are? Let's explore this topic on the podcast this week. Hi, it's Lorraine Dallmeyer, chartered 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 challenge the beauty industry's terrible track record on sustainability and share my thoughts on how we make the beauty sector a better and sustainable place. If you want to be the first to hear all of my latest episodes, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. So let's talk about sustainability reports, and more specifically, let's talk about what's missing from them. Because most sustainability reports I've seen from the large beauty brands are, if we're being honest, they're marketing reports. They're slick, they're shiny, they're filled with pictures of sudden drenched fields and factory workers smiling at the camera. They're designed to make you feel good about buying their products. Now, there is genuinely some environmental data in there most of the time, but it's often limited. And what's often missing is any real accountability. They might apply some of the requirements to a few of the products in their range, but then not publish data about the whole range. Or they're heavy on claims about carbon neutrality and recyclable packaging, but surprisingly light on hard data about scope 3 emissions, which is something I talked about with Laura last week. Now, Scope three emissions are the elephant in the room. These are the emissions that come from everything outside of a brand's direct operations. So think of the emissions from the raw materials they buy, or the transportation of their goods, or even how consumers use and dispose of the products that they sell. This is the biggest chunk of most brands carbon footprints, but it's often the least reported. And you know what? That's not just me being cynical either. The Carbon Trust in the UK, they published a report in 2023 called Greenhouse Gloss, which found that most large cosmetics companies focus almost exclusively on their operational emissions, what's known as Scope one or Scope two emissions, while Scope three, the emissions outside of a brand's control, remain largely invisible. This isn't a coincidence, because scope 3 emissions are hard to measure, they're hard to track, they're even harder to control. And yet, despite how important they are, many of the biggest players in the beauty industry still aren't leading the way on this. Take Unilever, for example. I've mentioned this before here on the podcast, because I was so stunned by it. In a 2022 interview with Bloomberg, Unilever's then CEO, Alan Jobe, admitted that he had no idea. I'm quoting this literally, he said, I have no idea how the company would meet its net zero target, taking into account scope 3 emissions. Now, let's just take a moment to let that sink in. This is one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, a company that sells billions of products each year, and its CEO publicly stated that he didn't know how they'd meet their climate commitments. So if that's not an indication of the scale of the problem, then honestly, I don't know what is. I even ran some of the big beauty brand sustainability reports through AI tools and asked the AI to compare those reports against the standards that are required of companies of those size. And I was then given massive lists for improvement. Honestly, it doesn't take very much effort to pick apart what some of these companies are publishing on the Internet. In fact, I might even make a future episode a review of a specific brand sustainability report. That might be quite fun, because here's the thing. Sustainability reports and the data within them could be really powerful tools for change. But only if they are transparent, if they're data driven, and if they're honest about the realities of their impacts. All the way from raw materials to consumer use. No beauty brand is perfect. And that's okay, because we're not looking for perfection, we're looking for progress. Imagine if every beauty brand's report included a section titled here's where we're struggling. Honestly, I'd have far more respect for a brand that openly admitted its challenges than one that airbrushed them out of the story. So my challenge to you for this week is this the next time you see a beauty brand's sustainability claims, particularly from a major player in the beauty sector, see if they're publishing a sustainability report and then if they are, read it with a critical eye or give it to an AI machine to review it. Look for the numbers, look for the hard data, and most importantly, look for what's missing. Does it talk about scope 3 emissions? Does it mention the supply chain in detail, or does the company gloss over its supply chain impacts? Does it provide data on social impacts? And when it talks about water, does it talk about the use of water in growing the ingredients they use, not just the use of water in the factory? Does it talk about end of life planning for its beauty products? Do they end up in landfills or are they typically recycled? Does the brand even know the lifecycle impact of the products it makes and sells? Does it list tangible commitments? Or is it just a series of vague goals with no clear deadlines? And if you can't find the information, go and ask for it. DM them, email, tweet them, post on their social channels. Let them know that you care. Because the only way that these reports will get better is if the brands know that they're being watched. 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, 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.