MEETING THE DEMAND FOR CLEAN AND GREEN BEAUTY
At L’Oreal’s recent Transparency Summit, we learned how the cosmetic giant is meeting consumer demand for clean and green beauty through its research and innovation, which has been strongly committed to green sciences, green chemistry and biotechnologies since 2019.
“Our ‘L’Oreal for the Future’ commitments include pledges that in 10 years, 95 percent of our ingredients will be derived from renewable plant sources, abundant minerals, and 100 percent of all formulas will be respectful of the aquatic environment,” said Nicolas Hieronimus, deputy CEO of L’Oreal. “The safety of our products has been a central pillar for L’Oreal. Every year we sell between six and seven billion products to around 1.2 billion consumers worldwide. We have the highest number of controls at every step, and our charters of formulation comply with the most stringent regulation in the world: that of Europe.”
At present L’Oreal has 4,000 employees working on research and innovation, and has invested almost a billion euros in 21 research centers around the world.
In March 2019 they dedicated a website called “Inside Our Products” to providing information about their composition and ingredients, and it’s now available in 45 countries in eight languages.
L’Oreal brand La Roche-Posay “has developed augmented products where consumers will be able to scan a QR code to get access to full transparency information about their products,” Hieronimus said. “We will also be transparent on the environmental profile of our products, measured according to a methodology validated by scientists and environmental experts, as well as NGOs. This will start with Garnier and will be progressively rolled out to all our brands.”
Today, 80 percent of L’Oreal’s raw materials are biodegradable, 59 percent are renewable, 34 percent are natural or of natural origins, and 28 percent are from green chemistry.
But perhaps L’Oreal’s most significant contribution is how it has been able to reconstruct human skin in the lab, thereby eliminating the need for animal testing.
“We started working on it as early as the ’70s because, even then, we were convinced that testing on animals should not be done,” said Barbara Lavernos, L’Oreal’s chief research, innovation and technology officer. “To achieve this, the solution was to successfully model human skin, enabling us to test the safety and the effectiveness of our ingredients. We have even devoted an entire research center to this activity.”
L’Oreal has also developed new, environmentally friendly ingredients like Pro Xylane, the first eco-designed anti-aging ingredient in the cosmetic industry.
“We are on our way to shaping the future of beauty by leveraging the best of science and technology increasingly inspired by nature to create the beauty that moves the world,” Hieronimus concluded.