Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

With beauty trends predicting a big return to colour cosmetics post pandemic and spiralling demand for plant-based skincare, 2022 looks set to be the year of growth for botanical makeup. And right on cue at Formula Botanica, we are launching our first, botanical makeup mini course as this podcast airs. Behind the scenes, our in-house formulation team led by cosmetic chemist Rouah Al-Wakeel has exp...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in the run up to International Women's Day 2022 (IWD). In this opinion short, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier follows up on the previous podcast on the role of indie beauty in empowering a new generation of women entrepreneurs.  Lorraine reflects on why female entrepreneurship is so valuable in our societies. Against a backdrop of the p...

Indie beauty may be driving a generation of female entrepreneurs but women in other sectors still don't make it to the boardrooms. With this in mind, we ask what is gender equality today? Think of the people running the beauty industry in your locality. The beauty salons, nail bars, hairdressers, spas, and the beauty counters of drug stores are likely to be staffed by women. From a quick survey li...

In this Green Beauty Opinion, Formula Botanica CEO, chartered environmentalist and biologist Lorraine Dallmeier comments on the often knee-jerk tendency of some in the beauty world, both formulators and consumers, to boycott cosmetic ingredients that they deem unsustainable.   Talking to the Responsible Mica Initiative in the last podcast, Lorraine heard about the complex world of mica mining that...

As we go to air with this episode of Green Beauty Conversations in early 2022, the predictions are that frosted eye shadows, glittery nail art and luminescent blushers are going to be big trends this year. Adopting the hashtag #Y2K , a new generation of beauty consumers is exploring makeup trends of the 1980s to the millennium, and rediscovering the allure and bold shimmer of mica minerals in cosm...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion on the challenges of changing consumer perceptions about the image of solid formulations from homespun artisan goods to luxury cosmetic purchases.   Following on from the last podcast episode on innovative sustainable packaging solutions, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier asks why consumers won't see solid formulations as on a par with th...

Imagine beauty packaging given to us by nature and that returns sustainably to nature once we, as beauty consumers, have unboxed our product and have no further need for its protective cartons, filler materials, mailer boxes and more? Imagine then the infinite possibilities of magical mushrooms and plantable cosmetic containers. Does this all sound too far fetched? In this episode, you'll hear jus...

In this Green Beauty Opinion short, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier challenges all indie beauty founders to make a real difference to the beauty industry. Picking up on her interview in the last episode with Formula Botanica graduate Sandra Velasquez, who built her Nopalera brand firmly rooted in her Mexican heritage, Lorraine urges the indie beauty sector to make products...

Does an indie beauty founder's mission matter as much as the products they formulate? This is scary territory for formulators who love creating products and dream of one day launching a beauty brand. But decisive answers to questions like this are fundamental to any beauty entrepreneur's journey. What will your brand stand for? What do you as a founder bring to the brand story? What is your philos...

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier starts the year sharing the message that cosmetic formulation is within everyone's reach. In this opinion short, Lorraine says history shows us that homemade cosmetics were in fact the norm from ancient times until the early 20th century. Then, a change happened when marketing, branding and big business took over convincing us that only cosm...

It is not every day you get the chance to have a refreshingly honest, down-to-earth conversation with the founder of a beauty brand that is taking the world by storm. Sarah Brown, founder of Pai Skincare, joined podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier for an epic Green Beauty Conversation that takes us on Pai's journey from garage start-up in 2007 to being voted the 5th most popul...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in which Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier picks up on an important issue raised in the previous episode on carbon neutral beauty in her interview with the co-founders of BYBI Beauty. BYBI's Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minorovic said that to date, the time, effort and money spent on developing BYBI as a truly sustainable brand was not making a mark on c...

Uncontrolled beauty consumerism is inherently not a sustainable economic activity. We've said it before on the Formula Botanica podcast but it's worth stressing again: the entire life cycle of a consumer beauty product from cradle to grave can be a long list of carbon-producing processes. The growing, harvesting, processing and shipping of raw, natural materials coupled with beauty product packagi...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in which Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier shares her opinions on the polarised debate about the sustainability of beauty ingredients that pits naturals vs synthetics - yet again.   Lorraine's interview in the last episode with Emily King of FairWild raised nuanced questions about not just the sustainability of wild-harvested cosmetic ing...

Wild harvesting plants as cosmetic ingredients sounds idyllic. It conjures up visions of nature's botanical bounty going straight into beauty product formulations, barely processed or adulterated by human hand, and carefully selected from woodlands, hedgerows, forests, mountains and moors. Wild harvesting is certainly a marketer's dream. You will no doubt have seen beauty products sporting 'wild h...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in which Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier asks if by using trending terms like 'waterless', the beauty industry is shying away from the very real challenges of sustainability.  Waterless is on the beauty industry's lips, and follows on from concepts like carbon neutral and biodegradable beauty, skinimalism, beauty miles and more. But, waterless is a part...

Waterless beauty is on everyone's lips these days and waterless products are being touted as a key pillar of the beauty industry's drive for sustainability.  But, as with most beauty industry buzzwords, the term waterless has the potential to be hype, hot air and just another case of greenwashing. In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a biologist and chartered environmentalist,...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in which Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier shares her main takeouts from the previous episode interviewing Jessi Baker, MBE, Founder and CEO, of Provenance, a software solution helping brands build trust and enabling change through transparent communications. Traditionally, the beauty industry and consumers have thought of transparency as relating to ingr...

The beauty sector is a half-a-trillion-dollar global industry, but it's only recently that beauty brands are finally starting to take part in the sustainability conversation. Largely, this is in response to greater consumer demands for transparency in how beauty does business - all the way from its supply chains to the truth behind its claims. We've seen this play out on this podcast. Over the pas...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion on the challenges indie beauty faces in sourcing natural ingredients. Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier shares her views on the main takeouts from the podcast interview with Timo von Bargen of Covalo, a one-stop platform representing 40k beauty industry suppliers. Lorraine welcomes the arrival of innovative marketplaces like Covalo and pr...

Finding cosmetic ingredients is one of the first challenges every indie formulator faces. After all, we want our ingredients to be natural, sustainable, efficacious and, ideally, available in small Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs). However, the big wide world of cosmetic ingredient suppliers has not set itself up to cater for indie beauty. Suppliers generally don't realise that today's indie formul...

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion on the sustainability of the beauty industry. Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier shares her own views on the main takeaways from the previous episode with guest Anna Teal of the British Beauty Council. Lorraine, a chartered environmentalist herself, praises the British Beauty Council's 2020 report 'Courage to Change' which raises the indus...

"For beauty brands, the risk of not changing is starting to outweigh the risk of changing, uncertain and fraught with challenges as it may be." When Green Beauty Conversations' host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier read words like these in the British Beauty Council's report, The Courage to Change , she realised that the beauty industry had reached more than a light bulb moment in its d...

Welcome to our Green Beauty Opinion on the sustainability of essential oils hosted by Lorraine Dallmeier, Formula Botanica CEO, who is also a Chartered Environmentalist and biologist. In this short opinion piece, Lorraine picks up on the key takeouts from the last episode when she spoke to Dr Sally Gouldstone, a long-time conservationist and founder of Scotland-based natural skincare brand Seilich...

A few decades ago, essential oils were used mainly by aromatherapists and barely featured in our daily lives. Now, we use essential oils in everything from cosmetics to household cleaners. Essential oils are also a mainstay of natural skincare where they are used for their gorgeous scents and also as skin-beneficial ingredients. However, our use of essential oils is putting pressure on plants, pol...