Writing on the Orean Personal Care website, managing director and CEO Dan Williams explores how biotech beauty could be the perfect solution to making the sector more sustainable, as more consumers become conscious of their impact on the environment.
Sustainable beauty is a constantly growing trend, and as an ethical cosmetic manufacturer, we are extremely happy to see its heavy influence on the personal care market. Especially since the global cosmetics industry is one of the planet's biggest polluters, a new approach to how the industry should operate is exceptionally needed. Studies show that the global beauty market produces more than 120 billion units of packaging, where the vast majority of it is not suitable to be recycled. Therefore, the urgent need for sustainable beauty to be introduced for good in the personal care industry is one of the major concerns that need to be addressed.
What is biotech beauty about?
One of the most promising and innovative sectors of sustainable beauty is biotech beauty. Its main aim is to reduce overconsumption and to avoid exhausting natural resources. Through the use of science, talented chemists can produce high-quality active ingredients, without using plant or animal-based raw materials. Biotech beauty uses microorganisms and enzymes to acquire particular products through fermentation processes and DNA editing. Through the process of fermentation of bacteria and yeast, the active ingredient can be created and will have the same features as ones that can be found in nature.
New alternatives
Modern technologies play a big part in sustainable beauty, the perfect fusion of science and nature allows the beauty industry to create lab-made products and ingredients that won’t impact the environment as notably as some naturally sourced products. For example, one of the biggest challenges that sustainable beauty is aiming to overcome is to minimise the extensive use of palm oil.
Palm oil is one of the most common ingredients to be used equally in cosmetics and food, and because of how it is sourced it poses a great threat to planet wellbeing. The vast majority of that oil is grown on the grounds of amazon forest, which is being cut out to cultivate the land. Sustainable beauty would offer an alternative product that will not need to be grown in nature and won’t require such a large amount of farmland, water, and energy to produce it.
It all starts and ends in a lab
As the biotech sustainable beauty ingredients are created in labs, the production process is way less impactful on the environment. Thanks to biotechnology the process of manufacturing and growing sustainable beauty, can be done in a controlled environment. Thus, lab technicians can manipulate ingredients' growth and development, and prevent the likelihood of impurities and irregularities.
The production of biotech sustainable beauty allows the manufacture of high-quality cosmetics that are not only safe and effective but doesn’t negatively affect the environment. For example, such products can include kojic acid, hyaluronic acid, and resveratrol which are popular to be used in anti-aging products.
Sustainable beauty that uses biotechnology to produce and obtain different types of cosmetics in a responsible manner, lowers the personal care industry's negative impact on the environment. This way of production generates less carbon footprint than the process of manufacturing natural-based cosmetics that require extensive use of water and sometimes land. Even though natural products are great quality cosmetics, the regulations on whether the ingredients are actually responsibly sourced are still relatively limited and contain labeling loopholes. As sustainable beauty's main goal is to not harm the environment, some brands can falsely claim to be eco-friendly and still produce their cosmetics in an unfriendly ecosystem way.
Sustainable beauty is our future
Sustainable beauty has a great potential to become the future of how the personal care industry will operate. The earth’s sources are limited, therefore, to fully enjoy the quality of products we need to seek better and more sustainable ways to access high-quality and effective ingredients for skin and hair care products. Sustainable beauty that uses biotech as a way to manufacture products gives a great opportunity to redefine the impact of the global cosmetic industry on earth. With such an approach we can produce a consistent product year and with much more consistent levels of active material.
There are many new trends in the personal care industry that keep coming and going, but we are certain that sustainable beauty is not going anywhere.
Photo by Bee Naturalles on Unsplash
