Lessons learned from being a regenerative forerunner
Lush executives explain why planting trees is far from enough to reduce your climate impact. Plus: 3 new industry initiatives we liked at Eco Living Scandinavia.
IN THIS ISSUE
INSIGHTS: Lush’s Creative Buyer Franziska Götz and Master Compounder Vendula Zlamalova on the approach to step beyond sustainability and towards regeneration
NEWS: Ecocert, Euromonitor, and Peer Accelerator on the latest in natural beauty at Eco Living Scandinavia in Malmö
NEWS: Catch up on the beauty launches we like in December
WORLD NEWS: What Is Regenerative Beauty?
Slowing down
The day after a historic agreement — or ”landmark deal” as The Guardian put it — at COP28 in Dubai, it’s time to speak about slow skincare.
Last spring, Danish science-backed beauty brand NØIE posted a LinkedIn newsletter. The headline — The skincare industry is broken - and we’re part of it — was self-critical, which was repeated in the text: ”The ’care’ has been taken out of skincare /…/ Last year, we had to admit that we’d chosen commercial gain over our users and that we didn’t listen to them at all. We had pushed our ideas instead of pulling toward theirs. All because we thought we were helping to improve the lives of people with skin issues - but we really weren’t.”
Swedish skincare brand Skinome calls this phenomenon, slow skincare, a micro trend, explaining their view in an online article: ”Like slow fashion, which has emerged as a counter-movement to fast fashion, slow skincare is about investing in products that are carefully made using sustainable methods and carefully selected ingredients. This philosophy emphasizes the use of fewer, but high-quality products to reduce unnecessary consumption and waste.”
To me, this sounds like an approach typical for so many emerging Scandinavian beauty brands, embracing ”less is more” and often experiencing great success when doing so. In one of my favourite pieces of the year, Johanna Rönkkö, who’s at the helm of distribution company Nordic Beauty Inc., stated: ”We, here in the Nordics, should join our forces and get a bigger ’N-beauty’ area there (at Cosmoprof, Ed’s note). We would be the coolest and most wanted area for sure!”
When will we see a marketing campaign pushing Scandinavian slow beauty in any of the world’s leading department stores?
This week, we go back to Malmö, Sweden to catch up on the natural beauty industry initiatives we liked at the recent Natural Beauty Show, as part of Eco Living Scandinavia. In the insights piece, Lush representatives Franziska Götz and Vendula Zlamalova share lessons learned about regenerative beauty.
— It’s clear that we can’t rely on offsetting, that we instead need to prevent emissions, Götz shares. To do this, we need to look at the origin. What is our impact in terms of, for instance, carbon emissions and water usage? Where does the impact happen? Can we reduce it? Can we prevent it? Or, ideally — can the way we source and the materials we use count towards net positivity?
In a guiding introduction to this coming megatrend(?) earlier this week, Country&Townhouse interviewed Ed Pycraft and Emilie Jaspers, co-founders of water-free botanical skincare brand Star Seed. In the article, to be found in the World view later in this email, the duo explained what regenerative beauty offers: ”A simple, nature-based solution designed to last. Think slow fashion, but for the beauty industry. If we slow down for a second and think about what we truly need, and which products add true value to our lives, we’d buy less and buy better quality products.”
Until next week, enjoy!
3 stand-out initiatives at Natural Beauty Show
We revisit Eco Living Scandinavia in Malmö, Sweden, interviewing executives from the brand-new Peer Accelerator, Ecocert, and Euromonitor International on the latest in natural cosmetics.
Launches we like: December
Catch up on our curated list of new releases by brands and beauty services from the Nordics and beyond.
WORLD VIEW
A briefing on innovations in the global beauty industry
Country&Townhouse: What Is Regenerative Beauty?
tocco: Lignin-based Renol out to eliminate fossil-based plastics
BeautyMatter: Pinterest predicts: The 2024 beauty and wellness edit
Impakter: EU’s New Ecodesign Rules to Make Products Last Longer and Be More Sustainable
INSIGHTS
Lush representatives on lessons learned from being a regenerative forerunner
By JOHAN MAGNUSSON
Creative Buyer Franziska Götz and Product & Development Trainer Vendula Zlamalova share their view on how to improve biodiversity and reduce climate change’s harmful effects on vulnerable suppliers with the help of agroecology and -forestry and carbon insetting.
— We can’t plant enough trees to offset all the emissions that are being produced globally, Götz states.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Beauty Innovation by Scandinavian MIND to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.