What is regenerative beauty and how can you tell if a brand is really trying to make a difference?
Laura Rudoe is a regenerative beauty expert and the founder of ethical skincare brand Evolve Organic Beauty. In our November edition of “Ask the Experts’, we asked Rudoe what regenerative beauty is and how you can tell if a brand is really trying to make a difference.
Rudoe says: Regenerative is a concept that goes beyond sustainability. Rather than “less bad”, regenerative is actually positive: restorative for the planet and restorative for the body and mind.
To be positive for both the planet and for humankind, regenerative means we need to put back more than we take out.
This could be measured in several ways, such as improving the health of life on the land and in the sea by focusing on biodiversity and soil health.
One of the main ways a beauty brand can be regenerative is to use organic and regeneratively grown ingredients.
Regenerative organic agriculture is a holistic, sustainable approach to farming that aims to restore the nutrient content of the soil during the farming process – as well as sustaining the world around it with conservation and rehabilitation measures.
One very important part of that ecosystem is the microorganisms in the soil. There are more organisms in a handful of soil than humans who have ever lived, and they all help to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and trap it in the ground. By reducing their diversity, we risk losing this benefit.
Large-scale commercial farming is characterised by large monocrop fields, over-tilling, and the use of pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilisers.
These efforts deplete the soil, resulting in eroded land, a significantly depleted planet biome, and reduced quality of output. This has a severe environmental impact on a broad scale.
In fact, a report by the Rodale Institute, an organic agriculture research non-profit, suggests that if all our land capable of being farmed or ranched was managed with soil health in mind, it could trap all the annual CO2 emissions produced by humans and then some.
The situation becomes more dire when you consider the research on the opposite end of the spectrum; previous studies have found that if we don’t make this transition, most of the world’s topsoil will be depleted within the next 60 years.
Although current organic certification doesn’t cover every aspect of regenerative farming, it is still a real improvement on commercial farming, which is why at Evolve Organic Beauty we choose to purchase organic ingredients wherever possible, and we have certified our products to the COSMOS organic standard.
Research shows that greenhouse gases could be reduced by 40-50% by 2050 by following organic principles, and organic soil is 25% more effective at storing carbon long term than non-organic.
Although it is currently hard to track and measure the true extent of how regenerative ingredients are, at Evolve we are committed to purchasing as many regenerative and organic ingredients as we can find, and also to tracking and measuring how regenerative our current ingredients portfolio is and improving it year on year.
What else are professional brands doing to be more sustainable?
Professional brands continue to make strides to be more sustainable in the key areas of ingredient sourcing, packaging, recycling and operations. We look at a few of the most recent initiatives.
Sourcing sustainable ingredients
Clients have become increasingly interested in the provenance of the products they use, whether they’re looking for UK-sourced ingredients or cruelty-free options.
Another area which can affect their decision making is whether the ingredients used in products are sustainably sourced and cultivated.
Marine skincare brand Phytomer, for example, doesn’t use pesticides in its ingredient cultivation, and its molecule extraction is solvent and chemical free. Two thirds of the ingredients are sourced locally to Phytomer’s laboratories in Brittany, France.
Phytomer has a 1,000m2 seaweed cultivation plot where the seaweed is harvested by hand and certified organic. Once the seaweed has been used to manufacture ingredients, it’s used for compost and mulch.
The rise in demand for vegan products has also led to some sustainable ingredient sourcing. Heaven Skincare’s Nettle Venom range – a plant-based alternative to the Bee Venom range – features founder Deborah Mitchell’s patented Nettatoxin, which is extracted from nettles collected by hand from hedgerows near her home in Shropshire.
Sustainable business operations
Environmental impact goes beyond what salons, spas and their clients can see.
The way in which brands choose to run their manufacturing and warehousing facilities is also important – for example, IIAA has solar panels on the roof of its warehouse, which it uses to partially power the building.
Meanwhile, Phytomer has set up filtering gardens with local plants in order to filter wastewater from its production site and also uses renewably sourced electricity.
Sustainable packaging and recycling
The beauty industry has a reputation for creating a lot of waste product, with products needing to be well packaged in order to maintain their integrity and efficacy. However, this waste is something many brands are aware of and have been working towards reducing for several years.
IIAA, for example, has a recycling scheme for its Environ brand, whereby it buys back empties that have been returned by clients to salons.
The scheme even recycles containers from other brands, but doesn’t offer a credit for these items. IIAA then sends these empty containers on to a firm which repurposes the plastic into secondary products.
Meanwhile, towels and robes specialist BC Softwear has launched a new flip flop recycling initiative to help tackle the “flip flop mountain” that sees billions of pairs thrown away every year.
“We supply approximately three million pairs of footwear per year and are all too aware of the impact that has on the environment. We’re delighted to be piloting a new scheme with the Exclusive Hotels Collection to collect, recycle and re-purpose all their discarded flip flops,” says BC Softwear chief executive Barbara Cooke.
Sustainable salon and spa equipment
Sustainability can go beyond the products you use in treatments and retail to clients – the equipment you use has a role to play too.
For example, the creation and maintenance of traditional cotton towels has an impact, with current mainstream cotton requiring a lot of water to produce and using agricultural practices that negatively affect the environment.
An alternative to this could be towels made from more eco-friendly materials. Towel manufacturer Easydry has developed disposable eco-towels which are biodegradable and 100% compostable in two weeks, meaning you don’t need to be endlessly washing towels in your salon or spa.
