Are you sick of greenwashed cosmetics? Episode 129

Randy Schuller (0:00)

Randy Schuller from The Beauty Brains here, and I am thrilled to announce that we'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. But until then, you can listen and learn from this blast from the past. In today's Encore presentation, we explain how companies greenwash products. In other words, how they make cosmetics appear to be more natural than they really are.

Take it away, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:36)

Hello, and welcome to The Beauty Brains. I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me as always, my co-host.

Randy Schuller (0:43)

Randy Schuller. Hello, everybody, welcome to The Showgram.

Perry Romanowski (0:47)

The Showgram, I like that. I wonder if we could trademark that.

Randy Schuller (0:51)

I stole it from somebody else, so I doubt it.

Perry Romanowski (0:53)

Come on, in the history of entertainment, I'm sure Showgram has never been used. You know, it always reminds me that, like, there never really are any new ideas, are there?

Randy Schuller (1:03)

That's a depressing thought.

Perry Romanowski (1:05)

No, but I mean, the stuff we have now is cooler than the stuff they had a hundred years ago, right?

Randy Schuller (1:11)

So it's cooler, it's just not based on new ideas?

Perry Romanowski (1:15)

Right, the old ideas all get reinvented to create new ideas. That's how we can keep having new cosmetics every single year. Like, a ton of new cosmetics, even though there haven't been really any new ideas in cosmetics in years, right?

Randy Schuller (1:31)

Yeah, it's true, you know, I don't know if you actually read thebeautybrains.com, but we have a series called Vintage Cosmetic Video, and we go back in time and find old TV commercials for beauty products and talk about the beauty science behind those. And it's just amazing how many of those ideas just get recycled over and over again over the decades.

Perry Romanowski (1:55)

I love those old video ones. And of course, on occasion, I do read The Beauty Brains.

No, come on, I digest. It's in my RSS feed. I see every post that you've written.

Randy Schuller (2:07)

And I've read everything that you've written. So enough with the nerdy geek love.

What are we talking about today?

Perry Romanowski (2:13)

Today, remember our last episode where we talked about sustainability and everything?

Randy Schuller (2:17)

This is the follow-up to that cliffhanger from our last episode.

Perry Romanowski (2:23)

We had mentioned the term greenwashing. So I thought we would go about and talk about greenwashing and what it is and how it affects people and why, at least I believe, or we believe, as the formulators, that greenwashing isn't really going anywhere.

Randy Schuller (2:43)

That's a good point. Alright, so I'll bite. What is greenwashing?

Perry Romanowski (2:48)

Well, I was reminded of greenwashing because I saw an article in one of the feeds that I read about the cosmetic industry where they were saying that greenwashing is getting a lot harder in the natural cosmetic segment.

And so, to backtrack, greenwashing is sort of the practice of taking a regular old product, dropping in a few ingredients that would be considered natural by almost anybody, and then calling it a natural product. When the natural movement and the green movement sort of started back in the early 90s, this was a pretty common thing to do. In fact, I may have worked on a project where we took our regular product, we dumped in a few extracts, you know, cucumbers, strawberry, kiwi, and instead of it being a regular shampoo, it was now a natural shampoo. And we changed the color and the packaging and the labels, and made it natural. And, you know, the truth is, people bought the hell out of that product.

Randy Schuller (4:00)

Well, and I remember that product launch, and that was really a knockoff of an even more successful greenwashed product, which was the re-staged Herbal Essences hair care line.

Perry Romanowski (4:13)

Ah, the organic experience. Those commercials where the women would be in showers, and they would be really enjoying their shampoos.

Randy Schuller (4:22)

I don't know what you're talking about.

So, yeah, that product, like you said, it sold like crazy, and so we basically knocked off the idea and came out with our brand's version of a natural product. So you'd think that, you know, all these years later, things would be better, but they're really not so much better. You can still go on, you see this on amazon.com all the time if you look at beauty products, and you'll see something like, you know, our natural formula includes, and then you'll see several, you know, plant extracts listed.

And if you don't dig any further, you know, it would be easy for you to believe. I mean, how would you know any different? You'd think those are the only ingredients in the formula. Okay, it's got avocado oil and raspberry extract and marula oil. It's like, wow, that's a great natural product. Well, if you were to look at the full ingredient list, you would see most of the same ingredients you see in every other shampoo. But they're only calling out the natural ingredients. That's one way to greenwash.