“Clean beauty,” the idea of promoting healthy and environmentally friendly beauty products, is all the rage online and in big-box stores
Julie Thurgood-Burnett had no idea that her COVID-19 lockdown whim of starting a lavender patch on her husband’s family farm outside Toronto would turn into a small business. She had never been a farmer, but before long she had a bright purple field and a new hobby of creating lavender oil for her friends and family, who liked it so much she ran out.
And then she had a brand, Hereward Farms, which she wanted to be “authentically sustainable.” To her that meant avoiding plastic packaging, even though it would have been cheaper. It also meant sourcing as many raw ingredients from Canada as possible, which turned out to be much harder than she expected. She was able to get Canadian-made beeswax and sunflower oil, and work with a Canadian supplier, but not everything comes from Canada. Most of Hereward’s essential oils and all of its dried flowers (except lavender, of course) come from the United States.
“You go down this dark hole of trying to figure out where things are sourced from,” she said.
It’s a challenge for small brands with environmentally friendly values because the beauty industry, worth billions of dollars and dominated by a few major brands, has an uglier underbelly. It can be nearly impossible to trace some ingredients to their source, according to supply chain experts. The making and disposing of cosmetics contributes to planet-warming carbon emissions, deforestation, pollution and waste. Climate change in turn is exacerbating extreme weather events like heat, drought and flooding that disrupt production. And there’s little regulation governing beauty products in many countries. But despite the uphill battle, many business owners who care about being eco-friendly are trying their best to tackle these problems.
