EP54. What is Blue Beauty?

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 Conversations podcast (or should we say 'blue' beauty conversations?) today brings you the low-down on blue beauty, how it differs to green beauty and why beauty brands should be thinking about their environmental footprint and giving back to the environment. In this latest podcast episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier interviews Jeannie Jarnot, who is on a mission to deliver beauty you can trust, one Hero product at a time and wants to make clean beauty the rule rather than the exception. The complexity of navigating cosmetic ingredients only fueled her passion to make it simple to discover safe, effective and luxurious skincare. Today, as the founder of Beauty Heroes, Jeannie brings a lifetime of beauty, wellness and ritual to her company and her customers, delivering healthy beauty through the thrill of discovery. What is Blue Beauty? As you'll learn in this podcast episode, Jeannie has defined blue beauty as "green beauty with benefits". Blue beauty brands are those who aim to have an environmental benefit - not simply offsetting their impacts, or donating to charities that align with their ethos, but actually doing the hard work and looking at how they themselves can put back resources into the environment. Of course achieving that lofty goal will be challenging for any beauty brand, because it will involve looking very closely at a brand’s ingredient sourcing strategy, packaging choices, manufacturing processes and the rest of their supply chain. The only way to have a positive environmental impact is either through putting back into the environment, perhaps by sequestering carbon through the ingredients farmed for your formulations, or through offsetting, which as we discussed in our recent podcast on whether beauty brands can ever be carbon neutral, is not a panacea as it is simply a component of your overall environmental strategy and it ultimately isn’t the answer. Nonetheless, regardless of whether we call it blue beauty, green beauty, teal beauty, or verdant beauty, we hope you’ll agree that it’s refreshing to hear tales of beauty brands around the world who aim to have an environmental benefit. Listen to Lorraine and Jeannie as they discuss the topic of blue beauty.  In this podcast, you will: Find out how Beauty Heroes and Jeannie Jarnot define blue beauty as part of their Project Blue Beauty Learn how the concept of blue beauty goes beyond brands who aim to make sustainable formulations that don't impact our oceans and waterways Hear examples of indie beauty brands around the world undertaking environmental initiatives Learn how indie beauty brands should incorporate sustainability reporting into their communications strategy Key takeaways include: Consumers are setting the bar higher now and expect beauty brands to embrace environmental sustainability. Being an environmentally sustainable indie beauty brand is challenging, as it involves small brands telling their story and delving deep into who they are and how they operate. Reporting on your sustainability initiatives involves having a two-way conversation and trying to change your customers' hearts and minds. Simply paying to offset your environmental impacts is not enough. Beauty brands need to go much deeper. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.