Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Welcome to our Green Beauty Opinion on sustainable beauty retail. Lorraine Dallmeier, Formula Botanica CEO, a chartered environmentalist and biologist, voices her views on the key takeouts of the last episode with Jazmin Alvarez, founder of retailer Pretty Well Beauty.  In this short opinion piece, Lorraine says that the retail industry has the power and responsibility to make sweeping changes to...

Sustainable beauty is sometimes seen as a subset of clean, green, natural beauty and more, however the single word sustainable hides a very complex set of questions and definitions. What is sustainable to one beauty brand, may not be for another. So when a beauty retailer sets out to attract and sell only sustainable beauty brands, it challenges itself to define sustainability and sort out the pse...

Welcome to Green Beauty Opinions. In this five-minute short, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier reflects on the key takeouts of the last episode with Austin Whitman, CEO and founder of Climate Neutral; a non-profit actively assisting beauty brands to become certified to its carbon neutral standards. Sustainability will define the next decade in beauty and beyond. With indie beauty brands comi...

Climate neutral is one of the hottest trending terms in the beauty industry at the moment. But, claiming carbon or climate neutrality is a massive undertaking which is why beauty brands that are investing in ways to reduce their carbon footprint tend to work on offsetting instead. When we came across a non-profit entity set up to help companies devise a road map to become climate neutral, we were...

Welcome to our Green Beauty Opinion on biodegradable beauty.  In our five-minute opinion pieces, Formula Botanica CEO, chartered environmentalist and biologist Lorraine Dallmeier voices her thoughts on key issues facing the beauty industry and sets us a challenge to make the sector a better place.  Commenting on the topic of biodegradable beauty, Lorraine says that the industry isn't yet leading t...

Biodegradable is a common label today on consumer packaging but what exactly does it mean? After all, everything can biodegrade over time, although it might take thousands of years. And while we tend to focus on the biodegradability of packaging, there is also the matter of the product itself. What happens to the expired face creams we dollop into our household waste bins or the hair conditioners...

Eryca Freemantle joins Green Beauty Conversations to take us through her life's work championing diversity in the beauty industry. Her career literally started out by accident and led her on a mission to help shape the lives of women of all skin tones working in the beauty industry.  From her own experiences in an empowering career in makeup artistry to stars and celebrities, Eryca has created a m...

So what's new in the world of CBD or cannabidiol skincare? Quite a lot it seems. Cannabidiol cosmetics are now mainstreaming as major supermarket and drugstore shelves testify. You can find CBD cosmetics ranging from skincare to haircare as well as, more surprisingly, in cosmetics like makeup - even mascara. With CBD in cosmetics commonplace - though still illegal as well as highly regulated in so...

Circular beauty is on the beauty industry's lips and may seem yet another trend that's here today and gone tomorrow. However, circular beauty should not be seen as a 'trend' at all. It comes under the concept of the circular economy or 'cradle-to-cradle' principle, which sees products as having a lifecycle in a loop. Most of us have heard of the 'cradle-to-grave' linear lifecyle in which products...

The story of green beauty in Africa is simply not shouted about. The natural cosmetics' world is familiar with African ingredients in their raw state, such as that mainstay of anhydrous formulations shea butter or newer oils on the market such as baobab and moringa. But what do we know about African green beauty entrepreneurs who view their native ingredients as an integral part of their cultural...

May Lindstrom, CEO and founder of cult LA-based indie beauty brand that carries her name, mother of two young children, and partner in business with her CFO husband, joined us for a remarkable episode of Green Beauty Conversations. If you know May Lindstrom, the chances are it is through her brand's fabulously coloured Blue Cocoon Beauty Balm Concentrate ; a product that has seen many a copy-cat....

Parabens is a collective name for a group of chemicals used as preservatives in consumer products such as food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. They have been synthesised in labs for almost 100 years. So far then, parabens seem quite boring ingredients. But, in just under two decades, parabens have become the bogeymen of the beauty industry, pitting at times the mainstream personal care industry an...

Over the three years of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, we have looked critically at almost all trending catchwords, phrases and terms used in the beauty industry. Clean, green, waterless, zero waste , upcycled , microbiome, essential, raw and blue beauty are just some we've covered. A term very much on the rise in early 2021 is conscious beauty. And who better to define conscious beauty t...

Did you know that the age of minimalist skincare had dawned in the beauty market? But is our desire to do more for our skin with less really filtering down to our habits as beauty consumers? Can we resist the allure of new products with their promises and claims? Just ask yourself how many beauty products are on your bathroom shelves? If you've 16 and counting then you are in good company as that...

This is a very special episode of our podcast as it marks three years since we launched Green Beauty Conversations. To celebrate our anniversary, we go behind the scenes at Formula Botanica. School CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier invited some of our now 40-strong team to chat about their roles and to share their insights and stories - both the fun and the mishap moments - in day-to-day lif...

Think of upcycled beauty and you probably think of DIY home formulators mixing up a body scrub or face mask from kitchen store cupboard ingredients. You may have even tried using left-over coffee grounds as scrub particles. But it takes brave, inspired and curious minds coupled with phenomenal drive and business sense to turn waste coffee grounds into a global and sustainable beauty business in ju...

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. Our host Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of online organic cosmetic science school Formula Botanica, tackles topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. The global green beauty communit...

Google raw beauty for a definition and you'll find it described as "stark and powerfully impressive" and the possessing qualities that fire up the senses. This is about raw beauty describing physical appearance. Raw beauty is also used to talk about outer radiance derived from inner wellness and often linked to a wholesome diet rich in raw, natural foods. So where does raw beauty skincare fit in?...

Do natural deodorants work? If you have tried natural deodorants and been disappointed by their performance in combating sweat and body odor, then this episode of Green Beauty Conversations will be a real learning curve and eye opener. The first question to tackle though is what is sweat? Body sweat has a primordial purpose even if today's taboos and societal conditioning have put paid to us broac...

We've all heard of sustainability. After all, barely a week goes by without news of activist movements' agendas, political and corporate pledges and celebrity campaigns on sustainability issues. Yet, do we really stop to ask ourselves how we as individuals can live more sustainably? For a start, do we know what sustainability is? Sustainability is made up of three pillars: economy, society, and th...

It's a first for this podcast to talk about green makeup, but rest assured we've been thinking about it for a long time. Behind the scenes at Formula Botanica, our R&D team is working on an organic makeup formulation course. A question we asked ourselves at the start was whether green makeup could take on mainstream colour cosmetics as a viable alternative? The natural beauty industry has been dom...

You've heard of green beauty, you've heard of clean beauty, but have you ever heard of blue beauty? In the last 12 months, the beauty industry has started to talk more about environmental sustainability and one of the new terms that has emerged during this period is blue beauty. Formula Botanica aims to bring you the latest topics and conversations in the beauty industry, so our Green Beauty Conve...

The latest industry buzzword to emerge as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is safe beauty. The thinking behind the term ' safe beauty' is that consumers are now more willing to accept preservatives and synthetic ingredients to ensure they don't experience product contamination and expiration. In fact, some industry players are now claiming that the arrival of COVID-19 will further push the notion...

Indie beauty brands are taking over the beauty sector. With tens of thousands of small brands globally, there is simply no doubt that they are swallowing up a percentage of the global beauty sector which traditionally might have gone to the mainstream giants. Shoppers are increasingly looking to support small, local businesses and often place a greater degree of trust in a founder-led brand. Howev...

Is the cosmetics industry ready for disability friendly beauty? We've been pondering this question for a while and decided to convene an expert panel to discuss the topic of disability friendly beauty in our latest Green Beauty Conversations podcast episode. It feels as if disabled beauty shoppers are sometimes (often? mostly?) overlooked, but it's important to remember that 1 billion people, or 1...