Transforming the Beauty Industry: The Role of Corporations in Creating a Regenerative Economy

The $100bn beauty industry stands at a pivotal moment, facing the dual challenge of catering to the growing demand for its products while addressing the urgent need for sourcing, creating and disposing of products without wrecking the planet. 

As the world grapples with the impacts of waste and environmental degradation, corporations within this industry are uniquely positioned to drive the transition towards a regenerative beauty industry. 

This blog delves into the critical role these entities play, with a spotlight on how Natura &Co , alongside others, is leveraging its resources, experience, and global reach to tackle the big challenges in beauty.

The elephant in the room

We cannot shy away from the fact that plastic packaging waste from the beauty industry reaches over 120 billion units of packaging annually globally. This is compounded by the complex nature of beauty product packaging, which often combines different materials that are challenging to recycle. 

What’s more, the ingredients used to create some of the most in-demand products are some of the most controversial. 

The need for the beauty industry to collectively usher in a more regenerative and sustainable future is clear. But in doing so, it must be honest about the challenges and transparent about the efficacy of the work. A report in 2022 by Provenance highlights that although 90% of consumers consider sustainability when buying beauty and wellness products, 79% have difficulty trusting brands’ sustainability claims.

Getting smart about supply chains

Usually, when the word ‘smart’ is used in copy, it conjures up images of technology and dashboards and perhaps a bit of AI. While there is some of this that goes into managing a supply chain, being smart, in this instance, means having deep-rooted insight into what’s happening across the supply chain and making decisions based on this knowledge. 

Natura &Co is striving for 95% biodegradable formulas and ensuring all new formulas have a lower environmental footprint by 2030. To achieve this, we need to be almost obsessed with traceability and having a profound understanding as to where ingredients are coming from and what impact their utilization has. 

From here, decisions can be made as to how formulas are created, what ingredients can be replaced, or how we work with local communities to harvest ingredients regeneratively.

To evaluate the environmental impact, you need a scientific methodology and specific data for the ingredients and packaging materials throughout the entire lifespan of our products, covering the sourcing, manufacturing, use and end of life phases.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), is the most used methodology to evaluate the environmental impact of a product. However the complexity of LCA within cosmetics is that Natura &Co use more than 3,000 ingredients and this changes according to the different geographies, different energy matrices, water waste treatments and land use impact.

In the last two years, we have invested resources to foster an eco-design culture within our business. The initial step involved creating an internal tool to empower our formulators in making informed decisions. However, our primary focus has been on refining our data pertaining to Natura &Co's strategic ingredients. This effort aims to leverage our two-decade-long commitment to ethical and sustainable innovations, ensuring their continued advancement and reducing the environmental impact of 100% of our formulas.

It is crucial that we create data to substantiate the regenerative ingredients, organic alcohol or the palm agroforestry system, especially on land use. We need to make sure we capture the positivity created by the regenerative models. It is not a small challenge to say the least.

Natura &Co has been a partner of UEBT for over 15 years. Together, we have just concluded a regenerative pilot assessment on six key Natura &Co ingredients. We use the UEBT standard for ethical sourcing and UEBT’s regenerative add-on indicators, including conducting a living income and living wage analysis. The regenerative pilot assessment covered five countries (Brazil, Ghana, Namibia, Peru and Switzerland), five native species, two production systems and around 14,000 farmers and wild collectors with more than 200,000 hectares of land.

It’s through this R&D work that we can look to explore new horizons and work out how we can maintain a quality product in a regenerative way.

Closing the waste gap

Waste within beauty has two critical areas of focus. Packaging and the way people purchase beauty products. For a genuinely regenerative future to be ushered in, we have to consider both challenges and look at them deeply. 

The important thing here is to keep innovating and offering new experiences for consumers to enjoy so in turn they change the way they purchase. By investing in the shopper experience and making it more than just buying a bottle, we’re able to tackle both a commercial opportunity and solve an element of the waste problem. Avon has a collection scheme set up in the Philippines and is trialing a take-back scheme in the UK.

It exemplifies how filling the gaps in the circular system, by offering practical and accessible solutions, can drive both industry change and consumer behavior towards sustainability.

Packaging is the other challenge and opportunity. Our target is to ensure all packaging material is either reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2030. We’re continuing to make strong progress in developing innovative packaging solutions. Natura 's introduction of the new Kaiak line packaging is one example. Made with new, improved and more sustainable packaging, including caps containing 20% less plastic and 50% material derived from recycled waste from the Brazilian coastline by social cooperatives.  

But it’s not just what goes into the packaging, it’s what happens to it at the end of its life. Again, this is about providing opportunities for customers to do the right thing and help us on our journey. It’s why we’re so keen on implementing collection schemes in key markets where suitable recycling infrastructure does not exist so that we provide the infrastructure to reduce the impact of our work. 

Collaboration

A critical element to bringing about a cleaner, kinder and more regenerative beauty industry is collaboration. We work with other major beauty businesses to bring a voice to the table at major events and roundtables. From Climate Week, to COP28 to the Convention on Biological Diversity, it’s critical we all listen, learn and share our journey. 

For us, having the privilege of being a business representing the Global South is part of our DNA. So again, whenever there is an opportunity to speak up for natural capital, we’re making sure that the voice of the Amazon is represented by those who have feet on the forest floor and that the industry progresses with the communities it relies on being treated fairly in a just transition. 

The transition to a regenerative economy within the beauty industry requires a multi-faceted approach. The beauty industry's path to sustainability is fraught with challenges, yet it is filled with opportunities for innovation and leadership. Corporations like Natura &Co, with our global reach and commitment to sustainability, are well-positioned to lead the charge. By investing in solutions that reduce waste, promote circularity, and drive consumer behavior change, we can not only mitigate our environmental impact but also set new standards for the industry. 

In collaboration with around 70 global beauty and personal care companies, including industry leaders like L’Oréal, P&D, Unilever, Beiersdorf, J&J, and Shiseido, Natura &Co collaboratively established the EcoBeauty Score consortium (EBS) to develop a scoring system for communicating environmental impact to consumers. The complexity of evaluating environmental impact in the cosmetics industry, given the vast array of ingredients and geographical variations, necessitates a robust methodology and data-driven approach. 

Over the past two years, the EBS consortium has laid the groundwork, including developing the methodology, database, and IT prototype tool. Currently, we are conducting a large-scale pilot involving more than 4,000 products from consortium members to refine the scoring scales, with plans to launch the system in 2024. The pilot includes testing products in strategic countries such as the US, China, France, and Brazil to gauge consumer understanding, preferences, and feedback regarding the label. 

The insights gained from the EBS pilot will be integrated into our internal tools, allowing us to optimize our portfolio to minimize environmental impact. Additionally, the EBS methodology will facilitate the adoption of circular models and support substantiated green claims. We are actively advocating for the approval of the framework under the new green claim directive, underscoring our commitment to transparent and environmentally responsible practices within the industry. 

As we move forward, the collective action of all beauty businesses will be pivotal in transforming the industry into a model for sustainability and regeneration, paving the way for a more sustainable and regenerative future.