EP47: Should Vegan Beauty Brands be run by Vegans?

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeyer. I'm a biologist, environmental scientist and the director of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have thousands of students in over 150 countries worldwide who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free formulation training. In today's episode, we're talking about the rising tide in beauty brands making vegan claims for their formulations. Veganism is on the rise. In fact, interest in veganism has increased sevenfold in the last five years according to Google Trends. And as part of that rise, cosmetics represents the fastest growing sector in brands gaining the vegan trademark, where the indie beauty sector sees a great opportunity to appeal to the ever growing vegan community. But should beauty brand founders be vegan themselves in order to make and sell vegan cosmetics? If you're making and selling vegan beauty products, should you walk the walk as well as talking the talk? And that's the topic we'll be exploring in today's podcast. As part of my research, I recently ran a poll in our big free networking group on Facebook and I asked whether you need to be vegan to make vegan cosmetics. The answer I received was a resounding no. 95% of our 200 plus respondents felt very strongly, in fact, that you don't need to be vegan to make and sell vegan cosmetics. But they would say that, wouldn't they? I was talking to formulators, many of whom are not vegan. But would their customers feel the same way? How would you feel as a vegan if you were about to buy vegan cosmetics from someone who didn't embrace those same ethical and environmental principles? How would you feel about spending money with a meat eater, a meat eating beauty brand founder? Now, in the interests of transparency, I am not vegan, so this is not a 100% vegan podcast today. So for that reason I enjoyed enlisting the help of several vegans and prominent players in the vegan sector for this podcast. My first guest on today's podcast is Louisa Sales, who was one of the lone voices in my poll who said that you do need to be vegan to make vegan cosmetics. Louisa is a beauty therapist who trains other beauty therapists in the uk. She's also a vegan consumer, which is why I was so keen to have her on this podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Louisa.

Thank you for having me.

So, let's dive straight in. Do you think vegan beauty brands should be founded by a vegan ideal world?

I do, because I think if you are a vegan or, you know, living a sort of vegan lifestyle, or at least close to a vegan lifestyle, you have a better understanding of, know, a, I think how hard it actually is to do and, you know, things. It's not just about cutting out certain ingredients and so on. There is a whole sort of lifestyle around it, whole ethical thing around it. And I think it helps if you are a vegan to understand those issues.

How would you feel then about buying beauty products from a vegan brand that was run by someone who wasn't vegan?

I would probably feel a little bit let down. I mean, I do want to differentiate in that. Obviously, if you are a vegan, it is much easier. We do need to, in terms of labeling, I think that's fine, you know, label so that we can understand or see that a product is suitable for us. But if it was a brand which was specifically marketing to the vegan market and then the brand owner or developer, however you would like to know, classify that was not vegan and participating in things that, you know as a vegan or vegan spines, you know, against our ethical code of practice. I guess I think I'd feel quite let down by it and it would make me not purchase from them again. If I'd made one purchase and found that out, then I would not make another purchase from them.

So why do you think then it's so difficult for a person or a business to be vegan?

Well, it's difficult in one sense in that you would be really surprised if you went down a vegan route and realized how hard it is actually in terms of ingredients to source things which are fully vegan. I mean, things that you might think are vegan actually often turn out not to be vegan. But you might not know that unless you really, really, you know, properly researched it and you knew what to look for. So I think that's one of the difficulties. And then I think, you know, understanding the ethics behind veganism, I think, you know, people don't just become vegan generally. It's not a overnight decision. It's quite a big thing. So I think if you're not coming from that background or that understanding, I think it makes it difficult for you maybe to, I don't know, become on the same wavelength maybe as your cousin, customers understand the things which are important to them.

So where do you think things can go wrong then with indie brands becoming certified vegan?

Well, two areas, one I touched on before. I do believe that, you know, maybe if your ingredients somewhere along the line has issues, but obviously if you're certified, I would guess that would maybe not be too much of an issue. But things like, I mean, for me, I'm very much into animal welfare, so little things like I would expect from a vegan brand that any coconut oil, for example, is sourced ethically, there's no harm to monkeys. You know, things like that, that would be something that I would be very aware of. But if you didn't share the same ethics as me, you might not be quite so aware of that. And I would think that things like that could backfire against. And then obviously if there were, you know, I obviously do not eat meat. If I'm paying into a brand and there's somebody behind that brand taking my money and making profit from it and then eating meats, I would probably feel a little bit, you know, I suppose a little bit like we sort of mentioned before that I was paying for someone else to put meat on their table. You know, that would kind of not sit so well with my ethics. Now I personally might not, you know, go on social media and make a big thing out of it. However, I do think there are people out there who would. And I think that once your brand has had its reputation, say tarnished or those things have become sort of public knowledge, you could go from quite a successful brand to, to quite an unsuccessful brand, you know, quite quickly. Because obviously the power of social media can do that.

Yes, the, the modern call out culture can be quite terrifying for brand owners, definitely. So I think that's a really interesting point. So finally, why do you think beauty brands are so keen on becoming vegan at the moment? Where is this coming from?

Well, I think that veganism is the fastest growing, I don't like to call it a trend, but you know, that's how it's referred to, the fastest growing trend at the moment. Moment. And so, and I think this is something which makes, you know, obviously people have been vegan, you know, forever, but of a very small percentage of the population nowadays, people are becoming, there's more and more vegans. Even if people are becoming 100% vegan, the issues that around veganism, like climate change, the environment, animal welfare, they're much more in people's minds. So people are making buying Decisions based on those ethics, I guess, or based on trying to do something, you know, to help those things. And so I think brands are jumping a little bit onto this bandwagon to cash in, which sounds awful, but that's my view, that people are kind of cashing in on this a little bit. So, and that would make me, and I'm pretty sure other people who follow certain lifestyles a little bit, you know, that issues which are important to us or serious to us or not may be taken, you know, just paying lip service to those important issues. But yes, I think, I think they're just cashing in basically.

Oh, controversial. I like it. Okay, so as a vegan consumer then, where would you like to see the industry going?

Well, Obviously I absolutely 100% support, you know, probably products which are ethical, vegan, you know, animal welfare, and I have to say human welfare, you know, all of these things I absolutely support. And you know, one of the things, because I work in the beauty industry, which does upset me, is that, you know, we don't as an industry, you know, we're quite, we're not very clean, you know, we do, you know, take advantage of humans or animals, you know, throughout the whole sort of supply chain and ingredients and so on. So I'm not saying that I don't want people to go down this route. I do. I just think that you have to have an ethical backup behind it and it shouldn't be, you know, we're a big brand, let's take a share of that vegan market as it were, without having the ethics behind the brand. So I'm absolutely 100% supportive of us moving more towards vegan skincare, but maybe less of a enthusiastic about more cynical moves towards it. Does that make sense? I don't know.

It does, yes. Right, well, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your opinions with us today. It was really nice talking to you.

Thank you.

Thank you to Louisa for joining me today to talk about the complexities of being vegan and translating that into a business. She's right, of course, since we've seen brands get it wrong deliberately or not. For instance, in September 2019, Florida based Beauty brand Truly Organic was told by the US Federal Trade Commission to pay $1.76 million in a settlement for claiming to sell vegan formulations that contained honey and dairy derived protein lactose. And then of course there are all the big beauty brands claiming to be vegan and still selling in certain countries around the world where animal testing is sometimes requ. My next guest on today's podcast is Abigail Stevens, Trademark Manager at the Vegan Society. The Vegan Society is a non profit organization that coined the term vegan in 1944 and introduced their vegan labeling scheme, the vegan trademark, in 1990. Abigail has worked with the Vegan Society for the last five and a half years and works with businesses of all sizes and from around the world to improve the recognition of their vegan products and help them access new customers. We've worked with the Vegan Society for several years now as Abigail has spoken at Formula Botanica's live conferences and was also a guest lecturer in our online Diploma in Beauty Brand Business Management. So welcome Abigail. It's lovely to welcome you onto green beauty conversations.

Thank you for having me.

So let's start straight off with the main question that this podcast is exploring. Do you need to be vegan to make and sell vegan cosmetics?

That's a very, very weighted question, but in my humble opinion, my answer would be no, you don't have to be vegan to be making vegan cosmetics. Yeah. Would you like to me to tell you a little bit more about why I feel that way?

Please do elaborate. Yes, that'd be great.

Okay, so to first of all, just to give you a bit of context of where I'm coming from to have developed this opinion. So I myself have been vegan for I think about seven years now. After a certain point you actually just stop counting. But I've been with the Vegan Soc for over five years, working in the business development team that is working alongside brands, helping them to reformulate their products, making them vegan, helping them label them. Clearly, with our vegan trademark and in my role as marketing manager of the trademark team, I've met so many different types of companies from all around the world who make all different types of products. And yeah, not all of them are vegan, but it doesn't mean they can't make a fantastic vegan product. That makes veganism so much more enjoyable and accessible.

Yeah, and that makes perfect sense. And I thought you'd probably say something along those lines anyway, given what the Vegan Society stands for. So how then do you think most vegan customers would feel about buying from a non vegan?

Well, it's difficult, isn't it, to say how individuals kind of feel about things. And veganism, people who are vegans tend to be very conscious consumers. They have very strong ethical, moral values that kind of guide them in their purchasing decisions. So you might get a vegan who it's kind of good enough for them to just purchase a product that has no intentional animal ingredients in and is not tested on animals. It's like a basic standard. And then you might get a different individual who's also a vegan, who wants it to be locally sourced, organic and wants to know a lot more about what goes into making that product, to make sure that the impact on the environment, for example, is as low as possible. And yeah, as I said, it's such a personal thing. It really does come down to the individual speaking kind of more broadly on behalf of the vegan community. And I can only really speak about it from my personal point of view. What I've seen, I think there are people out there who do expect more from brands and expect them, like the individuals who are running that company who are making those products to live their values. That's not just exclusive to the vegan community, though. I feel like that also extends to all different kinds of movements. You've got low packaging movement, you've got people who love organic, natural skincare. They will also be expecting the people behind those brands to be living those values. So, yeah, you will find people in the vegan movement of that persuasion, but then you'll also find people who are doing it because they want to have basically live their lives in a simple way as possible. That might be having products that are widely available, very affordable, and it doesn't really matter to them who's behind that product, provided that product meets their ethical requirements. It is a tricky one. There's no straightforward answer to how a vegan would feel about it, but from my experience, I don't think it's a real sticking point on who's behind the brand.

That makes perfect sense. Have you ever seen any examples of people complaining to you about vegan brands or non vegan brands? How has that worked at the Vegan Society?

Yeah, so it's quite interesting. As I said earlier, we work with brands of all different shapes and sizes, all different types of structures even. And there's one beauty skincare brand called Tropic Skincare, and the way that they operate is through a system of ambassadors. I think they have like hundreds of ambassadors, maybe even in the thousands. I don't know.

I think they have about 12,000ambassadors in the UK at the moment. So they're doing phenomenally well.

Yes. Oh, that's a lot. Yeah, no, they're doing very well. So they register some products with our trademark and yeah, I received feedback once that somebody, an individual, had gone to, like one of their local vegan markets and at this market, Tropic Skincare were being represented by their ambassador for that region. I'm guessing that's how it works. I'm not too sure. They were represented by an individual who decided they wanted to grab some lunch and they, their lunch of choice was a sausage sandwich that they consumed on the Tropic Skincare stand. And yeah, and to that person who, that potential customer who had saw that and witnessed it, they confronted that individual, Tropic Skincare ambassador and said, you're a vegan brand. Like how can you eat sausages? Like to an extent I can understand, like you really shouldn't be taking those sorts of meat products into a space which is quite sacred for vegans. Like a vegan market. It's been curated to cater for people who only consume vegan products. So it's very an interesting approach to go and source a non vegan lunch option to then consume at the show. And I can kind of understand where the distaste was around that. The thing that I found really interesting was that potential Tropic Skin Care customer, they took a real issue that the ambassador themselves weren't vegan. And for them they did expect that ambassador to be living the morals, living the lifestyle, living what that brand story really represented. So for that person it really did matter that the person selling the products wasn't vegan. But I mean, in response to that, you know, I shop at supermarkets, I have to, I live in a city like I try and go to markets where I can to reduce waste. But yeah, I shop in a supermarket and I buy vegan products. But I would never expect the woman serving me behind the till, the man serving me behind the till, you know, the member of staff helping me get cans off the top shelf. I don't expect them to be vegan in order to buy those vegan products. So there is a disconnect there. I think it's quite interesting what we expect of brands.

Yeah, it is, absolutely. So your vegan trademark certifies individual products rather than whole brands, which of course means that non vegan beauty founders can run vegan brands. Would you ever consider certifying an entire brand instead of a product?

Would we ever consider it? It's a difficult one and it's something that we, I think maybe like 10 years ago we actually used to do something that was more all encompassing. We called it the Sunflower Standard and that was essentially looking at. It was actually focused more on caterers because that was the sector that required that the most restaurants and catering we were looking at the business more in a whole, but it's very difficult to register a certified entire brand. There's so much that goes into making a company. And as I'm sure yourself and Formula botanical students and anyone thinking of doing the Formula Botanica course or running a skincare brand will know there is just silly things like packaging stationery. Like, if you're running a beauty blogger or an ambassador event, what food do you serve? That's just like a very small detail. But if you're claiming to be a vegan brand and wanting to be certified for that, those are the details that you have to consider. And it's just not easy, is it? I was approached not too long ago, actually, for it was industry awards and they asked, we were working quite closely with them on a vegan award and they asked if we'd like to sponsor a table at the award. And I said, that's great. Will you be serving meat products on those tables to those people attending the awards? And they said, oh, I've not thought about that. We'll be serving steak. And I said, you know, we're associating our name with it. Then, like, who wants to sit at the Vegan Society table and eat steak? Like, that's going to be awful publicity for us. It's going to be probably quite comical for the people attending that someone's going to think, oh, somebody really missed the trick there, didn't they? And that's something that, as the Vegan Society, is the organization that created the word vegan, I have to consider those details because those are the things that really matter. Our reputation is why consumers trust our logo. It's why they gravitate towards it. Because we've been doing this since 1944 and our trademark is actually turning 30 next year. So they've been looking to our trademark for a sign of trust for 30 years. And it's because of that attention to detail, because we truly live and breathe those values. However, brands don't have to go to that extent. Like, it'd be great if they do. And I definitely know of some vegan beauty brands who do truly live their values. That's fantastic. But yeah, that level of detail can't be expected of everybody, otherwise there wouldn't be any vegan beauty and skincare products out there that the options will be so limited.

Yeah. Oh, gosh. Can you imagine someone putting a photo of a steak on Instagram? Hashtag vegan society? I just can't even picture it. Awful.

Yeah, it's really tricky, isn't it and I mean those are things that you have to consider. Consider. But if you flip it to the other side, if it's a brand who is making several claims, their skincare, I know that allergy friendly skin care is a big thing these days and that's growing. So if natural, organic, plastic free vegan, those are the claims on the product. You don't expect the founder to be living those values either. You don't expect the founder to be gluten free because they've produced like a gluten free range of products.

That.

It's interesting how the story really flips when we're talking about ethics. And I guess that is a key differentiation, isn't it? Is that veganism? We are looking at ethics rather than dietary requirements or like manufacturing methods. It's very personal.

Yeah, absolutely. And you can take this further, I suppose as well. And you can say, you know, if you're making halal cosmetics, do you need to live a halal lifestyle? If you're making kosher cosmetics, do you need to. Do you need to live kosher? And I suspect that actually the responses we would get to those questions might be slightly different to posing the same question for vegans. So it is very interesting what people expect from founders and from the whole brand. Yeah, so we're seeing a huge increase in people talking about vegan beauty. But do you feel that this is done as part of companies jumping on a bandwagon or is it part of an actual shift towards veganism in the sector?

I feel personally that it's actually a little bit of both. I feel like the shift happened that was existing, I think about five years ago really when I first joined the vegan society, I noticed just how widespread cruelty free was getting. The notion of people looking for products that weren't tested on animals. That was a really strong movement. And the thing that kind of struck me most about that was that it wasn't led by people who were vegan or animal rights activists. It was everyday people who just didn't want to be part of that cruelty. They didn't want to be contributing to that. And it was led by bloggers, individuals like people like lobbying and pushing for supermarkets and retailers to change their habits. And now I see like the like not tested animals logos and like writing on so many products. I saw it on, I think it was like a bleach product in Aldi the other day, which was, it's huge, isn't it? It's a real shift. I think about 3 years ago I started noticing the same thing with vegan. It wasn't necessarily people who are living a vegan lifestyle, especially with skin care and beauty, who are really pushing for the demand to get vegan products. I do genuinely believe that. It's just, it's that thing of like, if I have the option, why would I contribute to that? If I can have natural, really pure, like products that don't use any animal ingredients as well as without chemicals or not chemicals, but you know what I mean, like synthetic ingredients, if that's an option, why not take it?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, so finally, where can people find out more about the vegan society and the vegan trademark?

So there are a few ways you can find out more about our trademark. We have some social media accounts where we post about all of the new products that we register, which include some really great skincare and beauty brands. Obviously, we register products of all types because, you know, veganism is a lifestyle. So we'll be posting food items as well. On Instagram, we're egantrademark and Twitter egantrademark. And another really key place to find out more information. If you are a brand owner and you're interested in labeling your products clearly and having that reassurance as a brand owner that your products are vegan that you can then pass on to your consumers through using our logo and your packaging, you can get in touch with us through our website. So vegansociety.com™ is the best way to get in touch with us and we have all of the information there. But if there's any questions you do have that aren't answered, you're more than welcome to get in touch with us directly.

Brilliant. And we'll include all of those links for this podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today, Abigail. It's been brilliant to hear from you.

No worries. Thank you for having me.

Thank you to Abigail for joining us to discuss the work the vegan society is doing. As you can tell from the interview, it would be a huge challenge to certify an entire brand as opposed to certifying an individual formulation. Would you have to go down to the level of checking that the food served at events is vegan, that the ink used in the office printer is vegan, that the team all wear vegan clothing taking on that challenge? My final guest has just launched a scheme that certifies entire vegan businesses. As soon as I heard about vegan founded, I knew I had to interview them for this podcast. And I am delighted to welcome Claire Mikalski. Co founder of Vegan Founded with me today. Claire started Vegan Founded only in November and is already busy certifying 100% vegan founded businesses across the globe. As Vegan Founded says on their website, veganism is on the rise, but it's mostly the non vegan companies that are cashing in. Are your vegan principles being exploited? Are you happy to be paying for someone to eat animals? Welcome Clare. It's great to have you on the podcast.

Amazing. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Awesome. So let's dive straight in. What do you think? Do you need to be vegan to make and sell vegan cosmetics?

It's not a straightforward answer for me. I'm sorry, it's not a cut dry answer with yes or no. I think if you're going to have a vegan company, vegan cosmetics, then if it's truly vegan, then yes, you absolutely do need to be vegan. However, I would never deter anyone from doing that from making more vegan cosmetics and making it more accessible for everyone, for all the consumers. So yes and no.

So why yes and why no?

I think you do have to be vegan if you're wanting to portray the real message, for instance, as many vegan cosmetic companies or vegan cosmetic products, I should say that aren't vegan at all. They're so far removed from that lifestyle. Their sister companies or just products on the, you know, another line that they've got actually test on animals which is just so confusing and the opposite of being transparent and that needs to stop. So that's why I think if you want to completely trust a company and have that full transparency, 100% vegan founded businesses are the way forward.

So let's talk a little bit about Vegan founded, the organization that you've recently launched. Can you tell us a little bit about bit more about it and why you started it?

There's a couple of reasons why I started it. So another nonprofit that I did, I was having designs stolen illustrations that I made stolen and they were being used by a non vegan company to make vegan T shirts. So I was doing a non profit business, a youth campaigns company and you know, it was a nonprofit. So for me those designs was very important. They was going to fund vegan activism, you know, a niche within a niche youth campaign. So to have those stolen and then placed on vegan garments that aren't vegan and the profit actually just goes to non vegans was heartbreaking and wrong on so many levels. So this is where my initial thought process started to come from and I started being very wary of vegan T shirts that I was buying and cosmetics and everything really. You know, just because a T shirt says the word vegan on it, it doesn't actually mean that it is. And that's quite mind boggling really. So that's where it began. And then I started to think a lot more about where my money ends up. And to put it simply, for someone that's not really living this lifestyle, I just have to imagine two people. So one person is vegan and the other person is a meat eater. And I have got to pay for one of their meals. I've just got to in this silly scenario. So I would of course choose to pay for the meal of a vegan because I know that it's not going to contribute to any animal suffering, cruelty, you know, environmental problems. If I put a product in between me and those people and I've still got to pay for one of the meals, but I do get a product in return. The principle doesn't change. I'm still going to give my money to that vegan over the meat eater. And I realized there was a demand for this and people desperate for transparency within the industry. So here we are being the symbol that symbolizes all of that. You know, you're 100% guaranteed it's cruelty free, it's vegan, which, you know, the two are very different things, they can't really be used without the other. So it summarizes everything. And you know, that company isn't then going to give the profits from that product to another part of their country that completely contributes to animal suffering and exploitation.

Yep. Oh, that makes perfect sense. So you basically certify founders and businesses, but isn't that almost impossible to do? How do you go about something so complex?

Well, it's a matter of a fair few forms and questions and a declaration, which is imperative. When we first had the idea, we had a friend through activism that we knew was a lawyer. So we sort of rang in a few favours and we set up a meeting and we said, you know, how could we actually find all of this information out? And in the same way that other trademark symbols do, they go through a series of questions and they just ask for a list of ingredients. Now for us to find out if the founder is vegan, we get them to sign a legal declaration basically, which would mean they'd be committing fraud if they said they were and they weren't. So it's just not Worth it for companies, they wouldn't do it. And we can do sporadic investigations so we know their social media account so we can sort of have a bit of a spying eye from time to time and we'll just check up on things like that to sort of just check that it's all authentic.

And would you expect everything in their businesses to be vegan then as well?

So being vegan founded it, the person and the products. It's not just the products, it's the people. We don't expect that all staff to be 100% vegan. We think, you know, that's quite unrealistic. I mean it'd be amazing. And I do know in certain organizations that do specify that if you're going to work for them they must be vegan. And naturally vegans tend to work for vegan companies anyway. But yeah, everything within business. But this could be a plumber, you know, it could be a hairdresser or you know, any sort of freelancer, a writer which is then, you know, they'll be using a laptop. So it's very difficult to sort of where to draw the line on it. But the main thing is that all the products that they're going to be selling are 100% vegan, cruelty free. And the person that founded the business is also vegan. So you know that they're not going to be starting up another business that isn't vegan. And that's what's most most important.

So what would you guys do if someone came to you like a member of the public? Because I interviewed the Vegan Society earlier on this podcast and they talked. Abigail was talking about this example of a member of the public phoning them up and saying, I was at a vegan festival and I saw someone eating a sausage roll next to a stand selling vegan cosmetics. Imagine something like that happened with you. How would vegan founded react to that.

If a member of the team on for the company that's been certified, right?

Yeah. Or the founder, for instance? Well, I can't imagine the founder would. But let's hypothetically imagine that someone in the team was doing that. How would you guys react to that?

Well, we'd investigate it and make sure it wasn't the founder and just really flag it with the founder. I imagine me being a vegan founder of businesses and if I had a staff member doing that, I would not know about it because I wouldn't employ someone that would do that. So my first port of call there would actually to be supportive of that business and Let them know that that's happened. Because I wouldn't like to believe that they would be knowingly letting that happen and then just it would go through an investigation process. But if it was the founder, that they would actually be stripped of the certification. They wouldn't lose the rights of use of the logo, you know, the certificate.

Yeah, I understand. So how do you personally feel about vegan brands being run by non vegans in the beauty industry? Because that's what we're talking about today.

Yeah, absolutely. I actually urge all cosmetics to be vegan and cruelty free. Vegan versus cruelty free is quite a tricky one. An easy example is Garnier, owned by l'. Oreal. They're doing the new vegan formula. It's not vegan, it's vegan ingredients that company tests on animals. And it goes back to the transparency aspect of it. However, I wouldn't ever deter them from doing that because I think it's a step in the right direction. This day and age, do we really need to be testing on animals? Do we really need to be putting animal byproducts in cosmetics? It's a bit gross really. You know, let's get with the times. So I completely support that all vegan, all the cosmetic companies rather should be vegan. However, our appeal is to the consumer and not the companies. So we're appealing to the consumer to support 100% vegan businesses as opposed to appealing to, you know, all companies found us to go vegan. That's not our message. We're a tiny, tiny community. Still, people think we're big because we tend to shout quite loudly. But you know, we're 1 to 5% of the population. The businesses are not going to be doing their business plan around that percentage. It doesn't make sense. That would be bad business. So they're just ticking a box. They want to be seen as doing the right thing. Absolutely, I agree. And probably for the most part they want to do the right thing, which again I support. However, where my money ends up, and again, to appeal to the consumer, we should be supporting ethical businesses, not ethical products. So that can only be 100% vegan founded.

Okay, well, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast today.

You're very welcome.

So finally, if people want to know more about vegan founded, where can they find you?

They can just go online, google us@veganfoundedveganfounded.com and yeah, all of our social media handles are vegan founded. So we're really easy to come across. Brilliant.

Thank you so much. Claire, it was lovely to have you here.

Angie, thank you so much.

Thank you Claire, for joining me on today's podcast. This is clearly a controversial discussion and one which I'm sure will get the beauty community going. If there's one thing we've learned over the years at Formula Botanica is that it's easy to get it wrong with vegan formulations. We teach vegan cosmetic formulation in our award winning online Advanced Diploma in Organic Cosmetic Science and we know how hard it is to avoid all animal derived ingredients, even when you're trying your best. Ingredients, such as glycerin, ubiquitous in cosmetics, can be derived from animal fats as well as plant oils. Panthenol, an ingredient you see in your shampoos and conditioners, is often made from one of the components of of honey, but is also found in certain vegetables and meat. Even when you think you're in the clear, you may need to follow up with your suppliers and seek assurance that your ingredients are actually vegan. And Louisa is right when she mentions the rise of call out culture which can make or break any beauty brand. This summer we saw Kylie Cosmetics come under fire for allegedly making false vegan claims. Social media users started calling out the brand for using hydroxyacetophenone, an antioxidant which can be derived from beavers or berries, as well as Squalane, which historically came from shark livers but is now generally plant derived. In fact, upon closer inspection, it turned out that the ingredients in question were actually plant based. But that didn't stop the Internet jumping on this topic with glee. In fact, the more I delve into this topic, the more I think that you have to be prepared to answer some very challenging questions if you claim to make or sell vegan cosmetics. Making products that don't include animal derived ingredients or tests on animals is more than just a description of what you're selling. It's a moral code that forms the basis of a beauty brand and embraces wider ethical and environmental principles. We are now in an age where people are seeking out vegan brands because they genuinely want to do the right thing. Certifying vegan formulations to the vegan trademark is a fantastic step towards ensuring beauty brands offer their customers what they want. But could brand founders then go one step further and maybe also certify themselves and their entire business with vegan founded? And if they go down that route, are vegan beauty brand founders prepared to answer some very difficult questions around the way they run their business? So what do you think? This is definitely a contentious topic that we know can polarize crowds. Do vegan beauty brands need to be run by vegans? Whatever your views on this controversial topic, I want you to join the debate and leave us a comment on our social channels. The Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you, so please do come and tell us your views. Thank you for joining me and my guests for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations on Veganism in Cosmetics. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on itunes, Spotify or Stitcher and subscribe. Stay tuned for the next episode in which we'll be discussing beauty miles. Follow Formula Botanica at Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. We're everywhere. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for a free formulation training class today. Sa.