EP111. Are beauty samples sustainable?

We all love getting something for free. How many times have you shopped for a new cosmetic product and been rewarded for your purchase with a bundle of free beauty samples? Some of the sachets popped into your bag or mailer box might have nothing at all to do with eye cream, cleanser or serum you just bought. But does it matter when we love receiving those little sachets of samples for free? This podcast episode focuses on these tiny beauty products which are in fact staggeringly wasteful. Each year, the beauty industry creates 122bn units of sample sachets, most of which have no clear-cut way of being recycled. In all likelihood, we consumers don’t need them, don’t use them and certainly wouldn’t like them if we knew that those free gifts have no happy end of life and go on to do untold harm to the planet. Joining Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier to tackle the topic of planet-toxic beauty samples is guest Mia Davis, VP Sustainability and Impact at Credo Beauty, which is the largest clean beauty retailer in the US. Mia, a committed, career environmentalist, created the Credo Clean Standard, including the retailer’s ambitious and forward-thinking Sustainable Packaging Guidelines. When Lorraine learned of Credo’s bold step last year of announcing it was no longer providing beauty samples, she knew that something seismic was happening in the industry. So who better to have on the podcast to talk about changing habits of the beauty industry’s lifetime than Mia Davis, who has set not just Credo but also the wider industry the challenge of culling samples for good?