Beyond beauty

Peter Weinert: The personal care industry is going through a major transformation towards even more sustainable solutions. Especially in the European market, regulatory discussions, e.g. on microplastics, are accelerating this trend. At the same time, consumers have become more sophisticated and demanding. They are keen to know where their products are coming from and what they contain. Topics like transparency, traceability, and sustainable sourcing are increasingly important to retailers and consumers alike. This makes a more comprehensive approach to sustainability crucial for cosmetic companies to meet the regulatory standards and live up to consumer expectations.

Our new campaign “Beyond Beauty”, that we are launching during in-cosmetics, is focusing precisely on this transformation. We believe that the beauty of tomorrow goes far beyond colour, shape or form. It is an expression of a holistic, even more responsible, and transparent approach to consumption and life. Tomorrow’s beauty reflects people’s attitude towards a more sustainable way of living and well-being, achieved through health-conscious and life-long care. It is supposed to be simple and meant to underline authenticity while caring for the planet. For consumers, this means that they want to be able to make informed decisions and are seeking knowledge about the origins and sourcing of raw materials as well as a product’s environmental impact. In order to tackle societal challenges like climate change, resource shortages and preserving the world of tomorrow, we as an industry must recognise our responsibility and drive the transformation towards a more sustainable life. Therefore, our mission is to work hand in hand with partners and customers throughout the entire value chain to create sustainable, high-performing products that meet the evolving requirements of the industry as well as consumers’ changing values and priorities. For us as global and regional leading ingredient supplier in the personal care industry, this clearly means to deliver beyond “just” ingredients: we are taking an active role in enabling more sustainable, ethical, and ecologically conscious solutions that offer an even more transparent and comprehensive approach to beauty. 

The triad of sustainability, transparency and science is at the core of what we do. We offer a range of digital tools, that make it easier for our customers to develop sustainable personal care products with improved transparency for consumers. With our digital service D’lite, we support our customers in the complete product development process: from consumer and market understanding, concept creation, market strategy, formulation development up to the launch of the product. Users can expect even more features in the future.
Another highlight I would like to point out and that we will present at in-cosmetics for the first time is the visualisation of the unseen power of our active ingredients. Over the past decades, BASF has built up a strong expertise in selecting the right plants and harnessing their power for use in cosmetic actives through cutting-edge technologies. To verify their efficacy, we are using advanced 2D and 3D models that closely resemble real skin conditions. We have now expanded our expertise to reveal previously invisible modes of action, and to pave the way for new opportunities in bioactive development and substantiation methods. At in-cosmetics, we invite our customers on an immersive journey to experience this expertise first-hand: using VR headsets, they can explore the application of imagery for specific skin needs.
These are just two examples that underline our dedication to sustainable, transparent, and scientific solutions backed by digital services, and how we empower our customers with the right prerequisites to unlock new opportunities in a transforming personal care market

For us, climate protection is a key task and an essential part of our strategy. One of our main goals is to provide CO2 transparency on product level. Therefore, we integrated Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) into D’lite, enabling our customers to access PCF information for our personal care portfolio to calculate their overall emissions. We developed a proprietary digital solution to calculate cradle-to-gate PCF, encompassing processes from resource extraction to product delivery, as we want to live up to our responsibility for climate protection and become more efficient in our production and energy use. Furthermore, BASF has broken new ground with the broad implementation of the Biomass Balance process for the use of renewable raw materials in the chemical industry. This approach allows renewable raw materials to be used as feedstock at the very beginning of the production Verbund, and to be attributed to the respective sales products using a third party verified certification method. The certified products thus contribute to sustainable development by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving fossil resources. Customers can expect the same product quality and performance while contributing to environmental protection. These are just a few examples of how we empower customers to make informed decisions and reduce their environmental impact.

We have built our portfolio of ingredients based on natural and renewable feedstocks for decades and we recently put a strong focus on our biopolymer portfolio, especially for leave-on cosmetic products. Given their sustainability profile, natural biopolymers stand out as promising rheology modifiers for a variety of applications to satisfy consumer needs. At the same time, however, they present a unique challenge for cosmetic formulators as, to date, there is no one-to-one replacement for conventional synthetic polymers. With our new customised multi-biopolymer approach, we help our customers to overcome the limitations of individual biopolymers and to exploit their full potential. For that, our experts have studied various binary and ternary combinations of our biopolymer portfolio in aqueous systems and emulsions to identify the most appropriate biopolymer combination for each application. This shows, that bringing alternative ingredients to the market is only the first step; we also need to provide our full knowhow in formulation design to really deliver added value to our customers – beyond ingredients

This is definitely a challenge but also offers great opportunities. Let’s look for example at silicones: it is well known that volatile silicones are on the way out of the cosmetics industry. There are strict new regulations, and also the increasingly eco-conscious consumers are pushing towards renewable-based ingredients. Cosmetics manufacturers need to find alternatives to silicones such as cyclosiloxanes (“D4”, “D5” and “D6”). Instead of replacing them with other synthetic silicone variants such as dimethicones, the switch to biodegradable alternatives can empower manufacturers to stay ahead of the regulatory changes and at the same time meet consumers’ changing expectations for natural or sustainable beauty products. Furthermore, our digital service Emollient Maestro provides renewable-based and biodegradable solutions to replace synthetic emollients. It helps to improve efficiency and decision making for formulators who need to find sustainable alternatives to synthetic market benchmarks. This produces a nice side-effect: by using natural alternatives, cosmetic manufacturers can significantly reduce the Product Carbon Footprint of their formulations as silicones in particular are known as main emission drivers.

The transformation of the industry will continue to gather pace. For our customers, this can be a huge opportunity and selling point. By using ingredients that are increasingly sustainable, they can encourage consumers to choose products that not only do something good for themselves but also for the planet because all the ingredients in their favorite day cream or favorite shower gel, for example, are sustainable. We support them with our comprehensive sustainability approach – from sourcing to biodegradability – and plan to even go further on this path. Upcycling is an important key word here: today, BASF has one of the biggest circular portfolios in the industry, especially in the area of bioactives, but we are also working with other products that can generate more volumes. That is when you really start offsetting the carbon footprint because you are using volume raw material streams. Additionally, we see a lot of potential in researching high-performance ingredients that can have multi-benefits in order to reduce the number of ingredients in a formulation. Supply reliability will remain of crucial importance, so we will continue to invest in capabilities to secure supply for our customers. Our planned investment in the production of emollient specialties at our Düsseldorf site, for example, will enable us to meet the increasing demand for these speciality products. To shape the transformation of the industry and really make an impact, collaboration is key for us. We want to partner with our customers to make changes happen and unlock the future of the cosmetics industry together.