Consumer & Beauty Brands Collaborate on Environmental Impact Scoring System for Cosmetics
Beauty and consumer products companies Unilever, Henkel, L’Oréal, LVMH and Natura &Co announced today a new collaboration to develop an environmental impact assessment and scoring system for cosmetic products.
Aimed at meeting growing consumer demand for transparency into the impact of products, the new system will provide clear and comparable information across the product lifecycle, providing an overall environmental impact score and enabling comparisons across cosmetics products within the same category.
Sunny Jain, President of Unilever Beauty & Personal Care, said:
“Many of us want to make more considered choices in our lives, but it’s not always easy to know the environmental impact we are making through simple things like selecting which soap to buy, or which shampoo to use. This is where the new Consortium can make a difference. Working alongside our peer companies, we’re aiming to provide people with easy to understand, transparent and comparable information, based on a robust scientific approach.”
The companies have committed to pool their experience and knowledge in developing environmental impact assessment methodologies and an environmental and social labelling system. The proposed system will include a common method for measuring environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of products, a database of environmental impacts of standard ingredients and raw materials used in formulas and packaging, and during product usage, and a tool enabling each brand to calculate the environmental impact of individual products.
The consortium will be open to all cosmetics companies wishing to join and contribute to the design of the system.