EP50. Can a Beauty Brand ever be Carbon Neutral?

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 Dallmeier. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school, Formula Botanica. We have thousands of students in over 160 countries around the world 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 podcast episode, we're talking carbon neutral beauty and the environmental impacts of the beauty industry. This is a big topic, but with the rise of conscious consumerism, it's also a topic that we need to be talking about. So welcome back to our In Conversation with Formula Botanica podcast and I'm joined again by our membership and content coordinator, Anna Green. So welcome back to the podcast, Anna.

Hi, Lorraine. Thank you for having me.

So today we're going to be talking about carbon neutral beauty. So can you tell me a bit about the process you went through to collect the questions for today's podcast?

Yes, of course, Lorraine. So we reached out to our student community and we asked them what they wanted to know about carbon neutral beauty. We had really great response previously when we talked about the topic of beauty miles. So we asked our community what they wanted to know and they came back with some amazing questions. Lots of questions that we will be running through today.

Oh my goodness. Well, I'm looking forward to it, so let's get started.

Fantastic. So to start off with Len and Lorraine, I've got a question for you. So I wanted to, to start with the question of basically what is carbon neutral beauty and how is that different from beauty Miles, which we discussed in a previous podcast.

That is a big question and I will try to do it justice. It's a topic. Well, carbon neutrality is a topic that a lot of people are talking about at the moment, particularly as we're moving more towards sustainability in the beauty industry. And you know, as a chartered environmentalist, I've long been waiting for the beauty industry to really grasp sustainability properly. So it is a breath of fresh air to see people actually really go for this now. So a carbon neutral beauty product results in no net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So in other words, you're either avoiding releasing carbon dioxide in the first place or you remove as much carbon dioxide as you put into it. Now, at the moment. And we'll come on to this a little bit more. The beauty industry seems to predominantly rely on offset schemes, but of course, the holy grail in carbon neutral beauty is that you avoid releasing carbon dioxide emissions in the first place. And this is strongly where I feel the beauty industry should be aiming to go.

Excellent. Thank you, Lorraine. So we've got some questions from our students now that I will get on to. And the first one is from Naz Bashir in the uk. How can we become carbon neutral? How can we measure our performance and should we be setting targets as a brand? And then the fourth question is, once we have measures in place, should we be sharing this with our customers?

Wow. Lots of questions from Naz. Thank you, Naz. So how can we become carbon neutral? Was the first one, I think, and that's a really big question. And I think let's look at this on a product basis first of all, and then we can look more at the business itself. So in order to look at the carbon footprint of a beauty product, you first have to look at its life cycle. And I've noticed that the industry gets really hung up on packaging when talking about sustainability. I don't quite know why packaging is such a big thing. I suppose it's because it's a tangible product that you then see go to landfill. But people often think about that, first of all, well, it's the most visible part of your beauty products lifecycle. But to measure a carbon footprint, you have to think about the whole life cycle of your formulation from cradle to grave. And each formulation will be different, but in general, the main stages will be firstly sourcing of raw ingredients. So you're either harvesting natural ingredients for processing or you're synthesizing ingredients in the lab. The second one is manufacturing the formulation itself. And this process can potentially be very carbon intensive, but it depends entirely on how those formulations are manufactured. Then there's the sourcing of the packaging, then there's shipping the overall beauty product to retail or to your consumer directly, as well as, of course, shipping its individual ingredients from source to manufacturing plant. You've got the usage of the beauty product by the consumer and then finally the disposal of final product or packaging or any leftover formulation. And I suppose when you look at all those different phases, the sourcing of raw materials and packaging as well as manufacturing will likely account for the biggest part of your beauty products carbon footprint. And shipping will also play a role. But of course, much of the shipping undertaking for the beauty industry, whether that's raw materials or finished products will be done by sea and road rather than air. So that's maybe a little less carbon intensive. So for a beauty brand to become carbon neutral, you really have to look at all of the aspects of your beauty brand's operations day to day, and the carbon that's emitted by those operations. And of course, I've just listed a number of them and see where you can make savings. The other option, of course, is that you offset your carbon footprint, which is what most beauty brands are doing at the moment. In fact, I've seen very few who are actively trying to reduce their footprint. But you have to look at the whole life cycle, as I said, from cradle to grave, and really look at those touch points and where you're emitting carbon. So how can you measure your performance? Well, that's where you have to start to undertake measurements of your carbon footprint. And there are plenty of tools online, although the jury is out on whether all of them are that efficient. But I like to think that they give you flavor, at least of what you're dealing with, and particularly when you're an indie brand. When you're starting out, it's good to go to a high level assessment of where you think the main carbon emissions in your brand come from. So I think Naz's third question was, should we be setting targets as a brand? I don't see why not. I think it's a good thing to do. And you're running a business, you're leading a business, you want to have a positive environmental impact rather than a negative one, and you're trying to improve all the time, which is an essential part of all business management. So I don't see why not. I think you should, and I think if you set those targets year on year to say next year we're going to reduce our carbon emissions by 10% and the following year by 15% or whatever works for you based on what you've measured. I think that's a very positive thing to do. And then what was the last one?

The last one was how should we communicate once we have measures in place? Should we be sharing this with our customers?

Of course. I think conscious consumerism is a really big thing for a lot of people now and people want to know that the brands they buy from are doing the right thing. And from my perspective, I mean, we've interviewed quite a few people for jobs over the last year, and the one recurring theme we've picked up in a lot of job interviews is I want to work for a place that does the right thing, that has strong ethics. And so I'm seeing this come back in many different places where people want to. They want to connect with companies, they want to buy from companies, they want to work for, companies that they feel hold the same ethical standards as them. So I think you should absolutely be sharing information with your customers and show them that you care and it may well be part of your brand as well. So that and then really ties in with your overall marketing message.

Yes, absolutely. I agree with you on the last point, especially Lorraine, of making sure that your customers are aware. I know some of the larger brands, more established brands, do sustainability reports where they break down some of these issues for their customers. And I know I've seen one in particular from Weleda. And it's not a small document, it's a large document, but it breaks everything that the company is doing down into manageable chunks for people to understand. And, you know, people want that information, but it also means that they set themselves targets then and they can measure themselves against previous year's targets. So it's a great way of talking to your customers, really, isn't it?

Absolutely. And the bigger your company gets, the more it will be expected of you. But I don't see why an indie brand shouldn't hold themselves to the same standards. The same goes for the testing you do of your products or, you know, the claims that you make. It doesn't matter how big your business is or how small it is. I think it's good to communicate with your customers and tell them that you are doing the right thing. So definitely, absolutely.

Our next question comes from Ian in Malaysia and he says, besides donating to Tree Sisters, are there any organizations we could contribute towards to offset our carbon footprints?

That's a good question. So the reason I think that Ian brings up Tree Sisters is of course, because we have donated to Tree Sisters in the last few months, actually, and we've created the Formula Botanica Forest with a goal to grow or to plant quarter of a million new trees by 2025. And we're paying into that every year and our students are paying into that. So we're donating a percentage of all of our course enrolment fees directly to Tree Sisters. So I do recommend you go and check them out because they're doing fantastic work in different projects all around the world. Are there any other organizations you could contribute towards? Of course, there are plenty of different carbon offset schemes. Some of them are more robust than others. I'm not going to name any on this podcast because I haven't vetted all of them myself, but I've seen quite a few mushroom out of the ground in the last six months. Even where you can contribute on a direct debit every single month or you can put a lump sum in. But I think the bigger question is, should we be offsetting or should we be preventing releasing those emissions in the first place? And you always want to avoid impact rather than offsetting it, because if we all offset, then it's not going to work. There are almost 8 billion people on the planet and many different companies, millions of different companies, and if all of them said the only way we're going to handle our carbon footprint is by offsetting it, then we wouldn't really be doing ourselves and our environment any justice. I think offset probably has a role to play, particularly in the beginning, but I think long term we should all be looking to avoid as many emission releases as possible.

Fantastic. Our next question comes from Rita in Australia and she says, should brand owners offer their clients options to donate to carbon offsets? So we're sticking with the carbon offset question.

It's an interesting one. I don't see why not, because I think a lot of customers will really like that. We were even looking to see if we could maybe tie Tree Sisters in with each of our course enrolments and we haven't set up the tech for that yet, but I think a lot of people would really like the idea that they're buying a product and doing something good in the process. I think it depends on your customers, really. I think if you're a beauty brand that holds sustainability as a very high criteria, very important criteria in its brand, then yes, absolutely, put that out there. But again, I think you should also be looking at avoiding carbon emissions in the first place rather than relying too much on carbon offsets. Ultimately, it's not your customer's responsibility to offset your carbon footprint, it's yours. So. So maybe carbon offset donation isn't quite the right way of doing it, but if people felt that they were maybe planting new trees or donating to projects that can help with reducing carbon emissions, that people might be quite keen. But I think you as the brand owner, have the responsibility to drive this forward and to take care of most of it.

Absolutely. Next question is from Leslie and she hasn't said where she's from. What is the carbon level of individual product packaging and shipping? I would also love for you to touch on the environmental impact of plastic versus glass for individual product packaging.

And this is where that life cycle aspect comes in, which is so interesting, because it's very easy to think glass is better for the environment than plastic, and sometimes it is, but you have to really look at the overall life cycle assessment. A lot of work has been done out there on life cycle assessment and different materials. So I would encourage anyone listening to this podcast to go out there and research this in more detail. The problem, of course, is that glass is very heavy, and that means that if you're shipping glass, you might actually have a higher carbon footprint than if you're shipping plastic. Now, plastic, we know generally isn't recycled. A lot of it is recyclable. But I think I read somewhere the other day that I think only 9% of plastic in the UK, at least, is recycled, which of course is shocking because all of us happily put our plastic bottles in the recycling bin and think that it will be turned into another bottle before we know it. But that is not necessarily what is actually happening. Now, the individual product packaging and shipping carbon levels will depend entirely on the packaging that you're using, the distance that you're shipping. But there is some work you can do on this, and I thought it was really interesting to see that Bulldog Skincare and I talked about this recently on my social media accounts. Their moisturizer is now carbon neutral, and the way that they did that was they offset all the emissions from extraction and processing of materials and packaging, manufacturing and distribution of the product. And luckily, they themselves admit that simply offsetting is not sufficient. But what I found so interesting was that they undertook an internal assessment and concluded that using glass instead of their sugar cane plastic packaging would mean that their emissions per bottle would increase by approximately 65%. That's really high. And it's very easy to think glass is better, but not always. And in this particular case, they obviously use that sugar cane plastic, which I still think needs to be recycled. It doesn't decompose or it can't be composted, but it contains a lower level of plastic in it and seems to be better for the environment in that respect. So there you can see an example of a brand that undertook this life cycle assessment, came to this stunning conclusion, you know, 65% higher emissions by using glass, and thereby use that data to then make an informed decision about how they were going to make sure that their moisturiser was on its way to being carbon neutral. Obviously also relying on offset schemes, but doing their bit at the start to avoid those emissions in the first place.

That's really, really interesting. I do feel for brands making these decisions around packaging because there's so many factors to consider, because it's about the product you're going to place inside and all the other things, because it's not just about the carbon produced by the packaging itself. You've got lots of other considerations as well, shelf life and all of those things. So it's a complicated decision for brands, but again, lots to communicate with your customer about there. And Bulldog's a great example of that.

Yeah, it's never easy. I mean, running any business isn't easy. It's like a roller coaster of fun and despair at times. I speak from experience there, but you have to use data, and I'm a big fan of data. I always say this in all the webinars I do. You know, I always have my spreadsheets open. But the more information that you have, the more informed decisions you can make. And you're not just relying on a gut feel that what you're doing is the right thing, you're actually proving it. And that's the sort of information you can also pass on to your customers, who I'm sure would love to hear more.

Fantastic. Lisa in the UK asks, I'd love to hear your thoughts on purchasing ingredients from overseas if they can't be sourced locally, or is it a better quality of ingredient or more ethically obtained? I like to purchase rose oil from smaller cooperatives in Bulgaria, for example. But how does this fare against the carbon footprint? Footprint issue.

Right. So this ties in with the podcast that we did recently on Beauty Miles, because obviously once you start to look at the distance that your ingredient travels, you have to consider, well, it's very easy to say my ingredient has traveled further than it should have, therefore it has a higher carbon footprint. And that isn't always the case. And we also covered this in the podcast. And back in that podcast, I also talked about the example of green beans grown in Kenya, where, you know, they use. It's more mechanical, it's not quite so automated, and therefore it has a lower carbon footprint, even though it might travel a lot further than me buying green beans that have been grown in a greenhouse around the corner, which might be far more carbon intensive. If you want to purchase ingredients from overseas, you need to find out how they're grown, how they're manufactured and then how they're shipped to you. This really ties together with you needing to get to know your ingredient suppliers. And we've been working together with Naissance Trading here in the uk, who are a great ingredient supplier. And, you know, they do a lot of work at exploring and work setting up different projects around the world that are as sustainable as they can be. And I think once you start to work with ingredient suppliers like them, you'll start to find out more about how your ingredients are grown, how they're manufactured, how they're shipped, and that is very important if sustainability is important to you. And I personally think it's going to be something that every single indie beauty brand is going to have to really embrace, because your customers are going to start demanding it from you. And I'll talk a bit more about this in a minute, but I think that the mainstream beauty industry is actually starting to beat the indie beauty industry a little bit at this. So I think we have to up our game as a sector.

Lots of interesting points there. It's very easy to think that local will always be best, but like you say, it depends on how things are produced. And I suppose, you know, the climate locally isn't always, you know, the right one for certain ingredients, etc. So there's lots of things to think about there as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Dominica asks, how can a brand be carbon neutral and also be affordable to every customer?

So the big question, I think right at the end, it will be a struggle for any consumer industry to become carbon neutral without the use of offset schemes. So that includes beauty. And particularly when we look at the scale of the beauty industry, I think it's going to be a challenge, and I think that this is where there's an opportunity right now for smaller brands in particular to really start to break down their operations, look at where those emissions are coming from and looking at where they can avoid those emissions in the first place. Because my biggest concern is that the big brands will start to invest in offset stuff schemes without giving much thought to overall carbon emissions themselves. And as I said earlier, offset schemes undoubtedly have a role to play, but they're not a panacea because you're still generating carbon dioxide emissions in the first place. So we have an opportunity right here, right now, to talk about what carbon neutrality actually means for the beauty industry before that conversation is hijacked. Which is why I'm so pleased that we're doing this podcast today, because hardly anyone is talking about this yet, but we need to understand what it means to avoid and reduce impacts in the first place. But I think the conversation needs to go bigger than just carbon neutrality. It's a big topic in itself, because I think we need to talk about low consumption beauty alongside carbon neutral beauty as the Two concepts really go hand in hand in order for the beauty industry as a whole to reduce its carbon footprint and overall environmental impacts. Because, of course, carbon isn't the only issue here. We all need to start promoting buying using multipurpose formulations and fewer, longer lasting beauty products. Now, I do recognize this is a challenge in the face of the beauty industry's desire to achieve infinite economic growth, but that just isn't possible, really. And the drive towards sustainability involves having those difficult conversations, and this is one of them. So I guess it depends entirely on the type of beauty brand you're dealing with. You know, a large multinational might struggle more than an indie brand with a more localized customer base, for instance. But I'm seeing the big players already make big targets, set big targets and make big promises. And I'm not seeing the indie beauty industry do the same yet. Which is where I think there's going to be an interesting shift potentially if we don't catch up. Because over the last decade, Indy has really risen through the use of naturals in particular, and that's where the big players have really fallen down. But I think the new natural is going to be sustainability. Customers will look for sustainability, and if they see the big players offer more in terms of commitments, in terms of targets, in terms of actual realistic action, I think we'll start to see the indie beauty sector lose some of that market share. And so going through this process might raise some really uncomfortable questions for indie brand owners. For instance, I recently discussed carbon neutral beauty on social media to gauge the response from the indie beauty community. And I was so surprised and actually a little bit disappointed to be met with a number of comments from indie brand owners who were telling me that it was just too hard for them to tackle their carbon footprint because they were too small. And I thought that was really stunning, actually, because I think every business, regardless of the industry you operate in, has a responsibility to strive for sustainability. It doesn't matter what size you are or what markets you operate in, because sustainability is a moral responsibility for every business owner. And I think, as I said, consumers will start to prioritize buying from brands who meet those sustainability ideals. So those brands who don't change their attitudes might find themselves facing some fairly tough times ahead, because conscious consumerism and sustainable entrepreneurship are the future. So Dominika's other question, I think was, how can a brand be affordable to every customer if they are carbon neutral? Well, I don't think being carbon neutral necessarily means being less affordable, but it depends how you approach the concept if you view it very much as I'm just going to pay into offset schemes, then yes, you're probably going to be giving away a lot of money. But if you try to make your operations and the way that you engage with your supply chain and the way that you manufacture your products as well, I'm going to say carbon neutral as possible. But if you're trying to reduce your emissions, then I think you have a much better chance of making those products really affordable and having a lean, mean operating system. So I think there's a great opportunity here for indie brands and I think they have the opportunity to lead the way, because we're a global movement and I think we can bring about really significant change that causes those ripple effects throughout the entire beauty industry. Because, as I said earlier, I think the conversation is at risk of being hijacked by brands who haven't understood carbon neutrality and who do think that offsetting is just the only way forward. But I think we're going to have to have some difficult conversations and brands are going to have to dig deep and really start to critically look at how they operate and what they do. Because as I said, conscious consumerism and sustainable entrepreneurship are the future. So let's go get them as an industry, basically. Absolutely.

What a great point to end on, Lorraine. It's a work in progress and something that everybody needs to be looking at in their own businesses.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point, actually. It is a work in progress. You're not going to suddenly go from being unsustainable to sustainable overnight. It is an ongoing process of continuous improvement. And I think, I mean, you mentioned Wilda, I think, earlier, and we heard from Jane Sterland, the. The Managing Director of WIDA uk, at one of our conferences a couple of years ago, and she held up one of her products and said, this packaging is not as good as I'd like it to be. And I'm holding this up to you because I want to show you it. I want to be honest with you and say we're working on it. And I think as long as every indie brand out there is saying those words, we're working on it, it is a work in progress, then that's the way forward.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you very much for interviewing our students and for finding out what they wanted answered on Carbon Neutral Beauty. Anna, it's lovely to have you on the podcast again.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. What a great topic. I've really enjoyed it.

So what do you think? Is it feasible for indie brands to be carbon neutral? How can smaller beauty brands stay ahead of the big players who are now setting big sustainability targets and public declaring them? Can indie brands lead the whole beauty industry in terms of sustainability, or is this simply too big a burden for small businesses? 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 Anna and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations on Carbon Neutral Beauty. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on itunes, Spotify or Stitcher and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com and sign up for a free formulation training class today.