EP83. How waterless beauty greenwashed the beauty world

Water scarcity is a major global crisis. One in three people globally do not have access to safe drinking water. About 4 billion people, representing nearly two thirds of the global population, experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. It should therefore not come as any surprise that the beauty industry has turned its attention to water. Waterless beauty is now a common term that you'll hear on social media, in publications and in marketing materials. The first waterless beauty brands originated in South Korea. Skincare brands initially touted their waterless cosmetic formulations as being more concentrated than conventional beauty products. Their thinking was that more potent formulations have a greater beneficial effect on the skin. However, the term waterless beauty has since changed. Most beauty shoppers would now equate the term with a more sustainable lifestyle. Have you ever read the labels on your beauty products? You'll undoubtedly have seen the word aqua sitting right at the top of most of the ingredients list on the back. That first ingredient on the label typically makes up the bulk of the formulation. Shampoos can consist of as much as 90% water. Even your expensive anti aging serums potentially contain up to 70% water. So it's understandable that the industry has turned its focus to waterless formulations. But is waterless beauty a real concept or is it just another attempt by the beauty industry to gloss over the underlying issues? Can a formulation ever truly be waterless? And if so, is a waterless formulation going to be the answer to our sustainability problems? In this episode, we pick apart a term that's overused and potentially has very little meaning. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversation, 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 chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 175 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. In today's episode, I'm joined by my colleague Anna Green, who is Formula Botanica's Deputy Education Manager and who also loves talking about the environmental and sustainability challenges of the global beauty industry. Hi Anna, welcome back onto the podcast. It's so nice to have you here again.

Oh, I'm thrilled to be back on Lorraine. I'm really excited about today's topic, and we've also covered some fantastic topics previously, so I'm really, really looking forward to this one.

Yeah, me too. And it fits so well with the other topics that we've covered. So let's jump straight in. What is waterless beauty?

So waterless beauty refers to products that have been manufactured without water in the actual formula. So the term we use to describe these products as formulators is anhydrous products because the ingredients used do not contain any water at all. So think about things like face and body oils, lip balms, facial balms, or body butters blended from oils and butters with no water or emulsifier. Waterless beauty products mainly consist of ingredients such as plant oils, butters, and waxes, all of which can be blended together in a formula without any water. In many products we see on our shelves, water will actually be the main ingredient that you see at the top of the ingredients list. And there's a reason for this, which we will talk about a little bit later on in this podcast. But there are different ways for people to use these waterless products. So, for example, many people make masks that come in a powder form, and then they get their customers to activate the mask with water at the time of use. So it's not entirely waterless, but the product itself is formulated that water. Or there's other products like lip balms and body oils that can be applied to the skin without adding water, although there is a case to argue for the fact that they could in some cases, work better on slightly damp skin.

Well, I should caveat this whole podcast before we get into the details by saying that both you and I do love a good waterless beauty product. I think I know that we teach these at Formula Botanica as well. We work with both water and waterless beauty products and in the formulations that we teach our students. But yes, there are a few more nuances to the conversation that I think we're going to get into today.

So, Lorraine, let's start with an important question. Can beauty products ever be truly waterless? And how would that happen?

And this, I think, is the most important question in the whole podcast. And the answer is no. Which I know flies in the face of literally everything we've seen and heard in the beauty industry. But the fact is that there is no such thing as waterless beauty or waterless skincare. It is just a marketing term. And the reason for that is that every single consumer product has a water footprint. So a water footprint measures the amount of water used to produce each of the goods and services that we use. So it doesn't really matter if your beauty product contains water or not, it will still require water to be produced. And then by claiming that your formulation is waterless when it requires loads of water to be made and shipped and even used by the customer, in my opinion, it's just greenwashing and I think it needs to stop. And let's not forget that our agricultural crops use 70% of the world's water. Even if you make a beautiful balm packed full of oils, butters and waxes, you still need water to grow and harvest those ingredients. And shipping also has a huge water footprint. For instance, even when using bioethanol, a plane transporting shea butter from Ghana to the UK might still use as much as 136 liters of water per passenger kilometer. And then there's the manufacturing process, which will also require water to operate machinery and clean equipment and run the general facilities in your lab. And then let's talk about packaging. I mean, globally we produce 400 million tons of packaging every single year across all industries. And this uses between 650 and 800 billion. That's billion cubic meters of water. And that doesn't even take into consideration the water footprint of your customer using the formulation and then its consequent disposal. So it's not as straightforward as it initially sounds. And then I've got one final bugbear, so humour me, which is that people who use hydrosols in their formulations and claim that they're waterless, well, that's not true either. The distillation process of essential oils uses a lot of water, which then mainly ends up in those hydrosols. And you simply cannot claim to be making a waterless product if you're using an ingredient that contains lots and lots of water, but isn't pure water itself. So I got on my soapbox for a little bit there. I feel quite passionately about this topic. I am seeing it throughout all these publications online saying, you know, waterless skincare is the answer to all our sustainability problems. And I just don't agree.

Yeah, when you start to look at all the different ways that water is involved in the processes, not just in the formula, then you really start to understand that this is a very small part of a big, big problem.

Yeah. So why do you think that the concept of waterless beauty has caught on so much?

I think there's a few different reasons. I think one of the reasons is it sounds very trendy and it sounds very buzzy. As you've already pointed out, it is a little bit of greenwashing. But I think there's other reasons why it's also popular. So, for example, when we're talking about natural organic products, and that's our particular niche, because we teach people to formulate organic products, then waterless products are very appealing to formulators because they can be made very easily, 100% natural or 100% organic with very little need for other ingredients. So they really appeal to people for that reason, I think. And we have a whole podcast on the different shades of natural that we talk about when it comes to ingredients and how they can be classified in terms of the processing that they undergo. The second reason I think waterless products have really caught on is because you do not need very much of them.

So.

So they are, in terms of their use, very, very economical because you don't need as much as you would if you were using a water based product. If you use a lot of a facial oil or a lot of a facial balm, you are going to end up looking very greasy very quickly. You do not need as much as you would, for example, a moisturizer. You don't use them in the same way. They are used sparingly. And I think customers quite like that because they don't have to repurchase as often and they feel like they're getting very good value for money because the products are long lasting. The last reason I think that waterless beauty has taken off as a trend is because a lot of these waterless products can also be made to be multipurpose. And this is something that we've talked about before on the podcast, that actually multipurpose products are a good way to go in terms of minimizing. We talked about this in the Skinimalism podcast, minimizing the amount of products that we're using overall. So they're not always formulated to be multi purpose. But for example, it's very easy to formulate a balm that is for face and body, can be used on the hands. You know, lots of these products, you can have a multipurpose oil that can be used for face and body as well, for cuticles, for hands. You know, there's lots of different ways to use these products. So I think that's one of the reasons that they are doing quite well.

Yeah, I think based on what you're saying, and I completely agree with this, we don't have a problem with the products themselves. They're amazing, we love them. It's more to do with the marketing term and the way it's being heralded as the answer to all of our sustainability issues, I think that is the big bugbear.

Yes, absolutely. Totally agree with that one. So let's talk about the environmental impact. Lorraine, when it comes to looking at the environmental impact of a product, is water really one of our biggest concerns?

So I think no to provide a very short answer to start with, because as with any consumer product, beauty formulations will have multiple environmental impacts. There will be an ecological impact based on the ingredients used. There will be an air pollution impact based on the shipping and manufacturing of the formulation and its packaging. There'll be a waste impact based on the waste produced throughout a beauty product's entire life cycle, and there will be a water impact. But that won't just be the amount of water used within the formulation, it will also rely on the discharge to waterways from the manufacturing and shipping processes. And obviously we discussed this in our recent episode in which we unpicked biodegradable BC2, which was a very complex topic but absolutely fascinating and also has an element of greenwashing to it. So to come to your question, is water really one of the biggest concerns? I would say no, it isn't. It absolutely plays a part in the process, but it is not the biggest concern we face. I did some digging for this podcast actually and I discovered a couple of studies that confirmed this too. I found one life cycle assessment in particular that was undertaken for a cosmetic cream in 2016 and they found that the most significant environmental impacts prior to the cream making it to its customer resulted from the choice of ingredients, not from water or energy consumption. However, I should say this was only one study and it would be very interesting to undertake more proper life cycle assessments to to investigate the effect of so called waterless beauty further. So following on from that, how do you think waterless beauty fits into a beauty routine? Some people think that it's better for the skin to use waterless products. Do you think this is the case?

So this is a really interesting question because our skin needs water to function optimally. It's part of our skin's makeup. So if your skin is dehydrated it can look dull, we can experience sensitivity and there's a common myth that just drink more water and your skin will be hydrated. But actually drinking water is great for overall health, but it's not always the optimal way to hydrate the skin. So water has a few different functions in a product primarily. Whilst it may be considered by many a cheap filler it also serves the really important function of being a really good delivery system for certain ingredients. So we know that many active ingredients, many plant compounds, are soluble in water and that's primarily why it is used. I think the fact that it is inexpensive is very beneficial for the beauty industry, but it's not the only reason why it's used so widely. When you think about something like a simple moisturizer, if it's well formulated, it should have a balance of water loving ingredients which we call humectants that attract and keep water in the skin, oils or other emollients which soften the skin, and ingredients called occlusives which have the ability to slow the loss of water from the skin. And water loss is a natural process that is part of the skin's normal function. However, for many people who have, you know, skin that is compromised, they end up losing water much more quickly, which is why something as simple as a moisturizer can be beneficial for people. So whilst I love many waterless beauty products and I have used many over the years and I really enjoy their benefits, I personally would never create a skincare routine from entirely waterless beauty products. There has to be some water in there for my skin personally to be working as well as it should. So plain water as well isn't the only option when you're talking about formulas. As you've already said, hydrosols also really are a substitute for water. They have additional benefits, they have additional aromas and things like that, but they are ultimately also used as water in a product because they can deliver those water loving ingredients into the skin. And that's the important thing that you have that balance in your skin of water and oil.

I think that's such an interesting point as well about the water soluble components of plants. I mean, most plants survive because of water and you know, a lot of the compounds, the chemical compounds you'll find in plants are water soluble because of that. And a lot of people don't realize that initially. But yes, if you want to work with some of those more high performance ingredients, they are generally only water soluble, which is a very interesting point to make as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Lorraine, waterless beauty is often heralded as a major part of the sustainability drive in the beauty industry. Do you think it's as important as it's made out to be?

Well, this is such a good question and I think, I think ultimately using fewer natural resources is definitely a really important step in getting the beauty industry to the stage that it can even vaguely claim to be sustainable. But I don't think making our skincare waterless is going to be quite the world saving solution that some people seem to think and make it out to be. Obviously, we covered this in the biodegradable beauty podcast that you and I recently did as well. And in a very similar way, waterless beauty is also a term that's used to make a product sound really environmentally friendly, but really isn't going to be the answer to all of our problems. Now, aside from the fact that there really is no such thing as waterless beauty, let's for a minute just imagine that we remove all water from our beauty formulations. We then still need those oils and butters and waxes and stabilizers and functional ingredients that still need to be harvested or synthesized. So we're still using natural resources which still have a water footprint. Is it a good thing to use less water? Yes, but as we've discussed in this episode, your formulation will never be waterless because your entire supply chain relies on fresh water. And to be truly waterless, you'd make no consumer product at all because then you'd have no water footprint. Now, clearly that's not realistic either, which is why the term water responsible is maybe more appropriate and probably far more important. So do I think waterless beauty is going to be the answer to make the beauty industry sustainable? No. The only way we'll achieve that is by consuming less, embracing circular beauty, and completely changing the model that the industry is currently based on. There is currently a lot of talk and I have to say, a lot less action than we need to be seeing. And I fear that the term waterless is just one of those that is driving more greenwashing. But that doesn't mean that we can't formulate beautiful natural products that don't contain water. I just think we need to use the change the terminology around it a little bit. What do you think?

Yes, absolutely. I agree with everything you've said. I think overall water consumption is something that everybody should be thinking about, including businesses and beauty businesses especially. But it goes beyond the water in your formula and you need to think about water efficiency across the board in your business. And I think a lot of small businesses still aren't there yet in thinking about some of these things because it is a little bit more complex. We talked about this with biodegradable beauty. You know, some of these complicated concepts really aren't sort of mainstream yet. But I would like the beauty industry to focus on water availability of fresh water in certain areas of the world. And, you know, making sure that we are as efficient as possible. I just don't think it is the solution to all of our sustainability problems, as you've already said.

Yeah, completely agreed. Well, I hope that's given all of our listeners some food for thought for today as we bust another greenwashing term in the beauty industry. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast again, Anna. It is always a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you Lorraine. I've really enjoyed it.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope it's made you look at waterless beauty products in a slightly different way. Anna and I would love to hear what you think about the whole debate. Please do come and leave us a comment on our social channels as we love hearing from you and make sure you take part in the sustainable beauty polls and chats I run over on my Instagram channel at Lorraine Dallmeyer, thank you for joining Anna and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to our podcasts on itunes or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanicaormula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, Clubhouse, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. It.