EP122. Lab-grown skincare: the new normal?

Would you buy lab-grown skincare? While this might seem futuristic, biotech cosmetic ingredients are here now, and going to become more commonplace on our beauty shelves – and sooner than you think. In this Green Beauty Opinion, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier follows up on key takeouts from her interview with Dr Barbara Paldus, the founder of biotech company Codex Beauty Labs. In that episode, we heard how lab-grown ingredients derived efficiently and sustainably from single plant cells rather than from vast fields of crops will become the new normal in cosmetics. But, are we as consumers and natural formulators ready to embrace lab-grown ingredients? The scene seems set for biotech beauty to be the next naturals vs synthetics’ battleground. But, as always, the issues are nuanced. Lorraine proposes we approach biotech beauty with informed debate and open minds. There is likely to be a hybrid model in the cosmetics industry as plants have given us a sense of calm, grounding and well-being for millennia and are inherent in our cultures, rituals and rites. And for now, biotech cannot efficiently lab grow every ingredient. Lorraine’s challenges us to be receptive to the radical solutions required to sustain the industry and the planet and to look into the research from suppliers of biotech ingredients. How would we react if our favourite plants were threatened by climate change? The advent of biotech beauty brings with it searching questions, but ones we need to think of answers to now, not in decades to come.