New summit highlights need for greater sustainability commitment

The two-day Sustainable Cosmetics Summit drew to a successful close in Frankfurt on November 17, 2009. Organised by Organic Monitor, the summit brought together some of the leading organisations involved in sustainability in the beauty industry, with participants coming from Europe, North and Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific. The summit focused on various facets of sustainability, including eco-labels and standards, ethical sourcing, fairtrade concepts, biodiversity and green formulations. The opening address by George Korres, founder and CEO of Korres Natural Products, outlined the importance of commitment from the beauty industry. Mr Korres shared his sustainability strategy which involves organic cultivation projects, reducing product packaging and setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
 

Many questions were posed to Betty Santonnat, Development Director of CosmeBio, who gave details of the new Cosmos standard. With much anticipation of this new initiative, the audience questioned the amount of organic ingredients in the organic standard and the process of measuring green chemistry. NaTrue presented its case for a unifying standard by highlighting its equivalence agreements with leading North American certification agencies. Boots, a leading retailer and manufacturer of cosmetic products, stated it was supportive of eco-labels but decided to develop its own standard because of the confusion in the marketplace. Other papers in the CSR & Sustainability Best-Practices session focused on ethical sourcing, investing in developing countries and biodiversity protection. Dr. Bernhard Bauske, head of corporate strategy at WWF, outlined ways the beauty industry could reduce its ecological footprint. The Union for Ethical BioTrade highlighted the threat of biopiracy, and how its standard was developed to mitigate this environmental threat. Fairtrade was also extensively covered in the summit, with details given of the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO) and Ecocert schemes. Developing Green Formulations was the theme of the final summit session.
 

The first-day of the summit comprised two interactive workshops, which also had full attendance. The North American edition of the Sustainable Cosmetics Summit will take place in New York on March 25 and 26, 2010. The summit will have dedicated sessions on sustainability initiatives, marketing best-practices, sustainability standards & eco-labels, and green formulations. The proceedings of the European summit are now available for a small fee.

Sustainable Cosmetics Summit