Page 19 - Retail Pharmacy Assistants September 2020

GREEN
WHEN
BECOMES BEAUTIFUL
Looking after the environment and implementing sustainable practices is a growing trend in all industries, including the beauty business. Garnier, through its Green Beauty initiative, is one of the companies leading the way towards sustainable practices, and this month, Retail Pharmacy Assistants’ Margaret Mielczarek spoke with Garnier General Manager Consumer Products Division Geoff Bellingham to find out more about Garnier’s ‘Green Beauty’ initiative and its Sustainable Progress Report.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW 17
What is Green Beauty and how
did it come about? How is Garnier going greener?
Put simply, Green Beauty is our strategic approach to end-to-end sustainability
by 2025. It’s designed to enable us to transparently address the impact of
our business on the environment and implement direct action that will see us transform every stage of our value chain, across five key pillars:
natural and sustainable brand. This
was evident in 2005 when the brand pioneered the use of vegetable dyes
for all paper packaging and POS material, the weight of plastic in Fructis bottles was reduced by 25 per cent, saving
180 tonnes of plastic per year, and we reused and recycled 91 per cent of
our industrial waste. Fast forward to today and we’re proud to share our ambitious commitments. We’re thrilled that we’ve already transformed not only our products but also our practices in ingredient sourcing and packaging, as well as partnering with organisations that are aligned with our desire for a more sustainable future.
What is sustainable beauty? How is sustainability achieved with the
beauty industry?
Sustainable beauty for us is all about creating products that respect the environment and our natural resources, while also meeting the needs of our customer. To achieve sustainability across the beauty industry, we need to commit and work together, we need to share knowledge and best practices and we need to continue to invest in science and research. We hope the steps that we’ve taken to share Garnier’s Green Beauty initiative and publicly release our Sustainable Progress Report (available on the Garnier website) will inspire others to join us on a path to a more sustainable future.
What does sustainable sourcing mean, and why is this so important within the industry?
Sustainable sourcing is all about how we select our suppliers. [We] take into consideration ethical issues,
the environmental impact and social factors. We want our ingredients
to be produced and harvested in a responsible and sustainable way.
This includes the farmers, the land being used, farming practices, local communities, and many other aspects of sourcing. It’s vital for our industry, as renewable ingredients will only remain available if we continue to transform and improve our management practices. That’s why it’s so important for us to continue to develop our sourcing programs, which focus on areas such as growing and harvesting practices that protect biodiversity.
A great example of how we’ve implemented sustainable sourcing is
in Garnier’s newly launched Organics range where all of our hero ingredients, such as lavandin (sourced from France), are able to be regenerated each year.
We’ve set an ambitious target for all of our renewable ingredients to be sustainably sourced by 2022.
Why is it so important that brands such as Garnier make major
decisions on, and take steps towards, sustainability and sustainable beauty? It we don’t make a change now; natural resources will be depleted for future generations and entire ecosystems will become unstable. Brands that are not making sustainable changes are also becoming less relevant to consumers. Success will require change leadership
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More sustainable sourcing. More eco-friendly formulas. More sustainable factories. More recycled and
recyclable packaging.
Actions to fight plastic pollution.
With a preference for using natural ingredients, Garnier has respected the importance of sustainability, which has been embedded in the brand’s ethos since its inception in 1904. I personally believe industry has both a responsibility and opportunity to deliver real change. We’ve always worked to find innovative pathways to achieve a more sustainable future, but we’re now living in a state of climate emergency. Stronger action is needed and therefore we’ve committed to reduce or eradicate our environmental impact by 2025.
How did Garnier come to be involved in sustainability and Green Beauty? Garnier has always been at the forefront of formulating natural and naturally inspired products, a legacy which began when Garnier patented the first ever plant-based hair lotion back in 1904.
More recently, Garnier has made major steps towards becoming a more
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