Sustainable beauty: A tailor-made, plant-based approach for tomorrow’s cosmetics

The revolution of “Sustainable beauty” has become a thriving market and has been booming for the past few years. In 2019, it was estimated at $39 billion and could reach $48 billion by 2024, growing at a rate of 5.7%. [1]

For final consumers, however, sustainability applied to the cosmetics sector is sometimes misunderstood. Therefore, it is necessary to define what sustainable beauty means and how key players in the industry are changing their approach.

Defining what is sustainable for a better understanding and awareness of consumers

The need for a more sustainable approach shared by the whole cosmetics industry, comes with the necessity for more clarity, in order to give consumers a better understanding of what they will apply on their skin.

“Consumers are looking to make more commitment to sustainability. What do they expect from us? To be more transparent, authentic, and responsible. As consumers also need to feel perfectly safe, they are looking for products with the right balance between nature and technology. This is our responsibility to meet the final consumers’ expectations for sustainable beauty and offer clean and safe ingredients while preserving our resources,” comments Ophélie Bourgon, Marketing Manager Europe and the Americas at Roquette Beauté.

At Roquette, sustainable beauty is empowered by more than 85 years of recognized experience in health and nutrition, now applying its expertise to beauty through sustainable, innovative and high performance plant-based raw materials.

For consumers, this statement is a guideline, communicating a desire to protect people’s skin, which represents a surface of 2 square meters per person, in the most natural way. In China, for example, 64% of females aged 18-49 perceive that naturally derived ingredients are more effective in maintaining skin health. [2]

Traceability, ingredients transparency, responsibility… for environmentally friendly cosmetics

As a global leader in plant-based ingredients, Roquette is committed to provide traceability of raw materials to offer high quality solutions for consumers.

For that purpose, Roquette has defined four sustainable development commitments: Innovating, Sourcing, Biorefining and Acting sustainably. The Innovating pillar aims to understand consumers’ needs and anticipate customers’ expectations. Thanks to a constant drive for innovation and a long-term vision, the group is committed to improving the well-being of millions of people all over the world while taking care of resources and territories.

In continuity with this, Roquette has set commitments for a Biorefining pillar, which leads Roquette to improve its energy consumption, by investing in projects like geothermal power and biomass, to be able to offer more environmentally friendly ingredients.

Since 2009, Roquette has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact, based on 10 principles about Human Rights, Labor, Environment and Anti-Corruption. This responsibility also applies to Roquette’s suppliers, who are asked to sign Roquette’s Code of Conduct for Suppliers. This is an approach defined by the Sourcing pillar, to build partnerships with plant breeders and farmers to select and use the most suitable agricultural resources. In line with its pledge to source sustainably, Roquette has joined the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform that supports global and local responsible sourcing and good agricultural practices.

Finally, bringing the best to Roquette’s consumers also means answering the needs of the company’s employees by protecting their social rights and reducing health and safety risks to a minimum, valuing diversity, inclusion and promoting the sharing of best practices in a multicultural network. These commitments, defined by the Acting pillar, are key for Roquette!

Enhancing the possibilities of beauty through plant-based ingredients

As a responsible company towards its consumers and final customers, Roquette Beauté has set a series of engagements that place the quality and the performance of their multifunctional solutions for personal care as its highest priority.

At Roquette Beauté, 90% of its ingredients are produced in France, with the remaining 10% produced in Europe and 100% are developed in respect of the ISO 16128 norm. Furthermore, its industrial sites are members of SEDEX (Supplier Ethical Data EXchange), an ethical data platform for exchange on responsible and sustainable business practices, based on regular on-site SMETA (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit) audits. Every year, ECOVADIS evaluates and benchmarks the sustainability performance of Roquette, which is made available on their data exchange platform.

Within a sector that is more than ever anticipating the demands of a continually more environmentally friendly industry, using raw materials such as corn, wheat, potatoes and peas coming exclusively from Europe and generating less than 0.5% of waste to produce innovative plant-based ingredients for cosmetics, is one of the best examples of sustainability for Roquette Beauté.

Roquette Beauté is committed to its motto “Sustainable beauty is all about Skin Health and Nutrition” and being the best partner to people’s skin, health and nutrition.