The 21st century made one thing imperative – lowering carbon footprint whenever and wherever possible. Believe it or not many started thinking about this and they have started to make changes in their way of processing and creation which brings a lot of hope for the rest of us.
Whether you know it or not Cosmetics industry is also reconsidering its way of doing business to reduce energy consumption and lower its carbon footprint. Many of you don’t know but in the creation of a certain beauty product so much energy is wasted and so much carbon produced, hence their efforts of making their products and businesses overall greener and climate neutral. Many companies are striving towards this goal, and one of those is Heal Nature. Smaller companies are a bit more agile in reorganizing their processes than the big ones, but they will all get there eventually.
Source: popsugar.com
As far as cosmetic ingredients and formulations go there is something everyone can do to make them greener and eco-friendly. Sustainability is one of those things and it means that you can regrow whatever u use in your formula or ingredient. This way you are protecting the planet and lower the bad impact on it.
What most don’t understand is that being sustainable and being natural doesn’t necessarily mean that you are lowering your carbon footprint. The big irony is that when making some of the naturally-derived materials cosmetic companies end up using a lot of water, a lot of energy and end up creating a lot of waste and byproducts.
Lowering carbon footprint, waste creation, energy and water consumption is imperative to help maintain the health of the planet. The way to do that is to change the formulas to reduce water consumption. Water is one of our main resources and if you didn’t know human body consists of almost 70% of water. Most businesses so far end up consuming a lot of clean water and end up expelling waste one that is very bad for us and the environment. Cosmetic products can and are reducing clean water waste by changing the formulas or changing the processing of that product and its materials. Another thing they are considering is making formulas that are cold processable meaning that they do not require heat to process the finished product. This is another breakthrough that many are working on and it might be the best case when it comes to reducing carbon pollution.
Source: thebespokeblackbook.com
There are going to be times when these are not suitable options when creating a certain cosmetic product, but there is a way around that as well. Taking a look at the materials that are going into a certain product can tell you a lot about how it can be treated and still has the same effect. For example, a naturally derived ester takes about five steps and an enormous amount of heat and cold to reach from the raw material to the end product without consideration toward the environment and our planet. With clever innovations called enzymatic production, we can reduce waste, use less energy as well as benign solvents and auxiliaries. It also reduces the number of steps from raw material to end product to only one meaning a lot less time will be used and dramatically less energy than before.
With this, the result is the same naturally derived ester from the same natural source but with a lot more consideration to the planet and our environment. Using these new techniques and innovations we can reduce more than 50% of the carbon footprint per product which is huge considering how big of industry this is. When you consider all things everything comes down to processing part of all these materials that go into a beauty cream, for instance. With innovation in material creation, innovation in processing has to follow as well if you want to have the best result possible.
The question from the title has already been answered throughout this article, and everything summed up will be climate neutral and organic cosmetics are better for the planet due to lower water consumption, lower waste creation and lower energy waste and carbon footprint reduction. This is all true but only if you have the processing part of the materials following the same innovations as the materials themselves. These two have to go hand in hand or the results will be visible and better for the planet but very slim.
Source: climateaction.org
Question two that rises from the article itself is whether the all-natural cosmetics are good for you as well? Well, yes! Why wouldn’t they be? All-natural cosmetics with organic materials is trying to utilize minimalism in their practice to get the best results. The less you tinker with certain organic material the best it works for the client. Crams that consists of Aloe Vera for instance have to be treated as little as possible for the Aloe Vera to feel less industrial. All you have to do is extract what you need and package it. No out of the ordinary steps, no additional industrial processing, just get the gist and package it. Low effort, low carbon footprint, low waste and water usage, with an outstanding product that has all the qualities.
There are lotions, lip balms, crèmes, that are made with so many proven natural materials like green tea oil, avocado oil, shea butter, rosehip oil and others that simply can’t be bad for you. So many natural ingredients, obtained in the most basic ways to preserve their natural effect. This is what the future of cosmetics should be and this is truly the way they are all heading one by one. The natural and organic cosmetics industry is probably the fastest-growing so far since there was a wake-up call with consumers. Now, almost every third consumer is worried about what is he/she putting on their skin which is our biggest organ. We are all turning to mother nature, or at least to the closest things some of us can turn to – natural and organic cosmetics.
