EP73. Should beauty retailers boycott unsustainable brands?

Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

Sustainable beauty is sometimes seen as a subset of clean, green, natural beauty and more, however the single word sustainable hides a very complex set of questions and definitions. What is sustainable to one beauty brand, may not be for another.

So when a beauty retailer sets out to attract and sell only sustainable beauty brands, it challenges itself to define sustainability and sort out the pseudo sustainable from those beauty brands blazing a trail in the field.

Green Beauty Conversations podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Jazmin Alvarez, founder of New York-based clean beauty retailer Pretty Well Beauty about her drive to showcase the best sustainable, clean beauty indie brands about. Pretty Well Beauty already stocks one Formula Botanica graduate brand.

Rarely do you find a clean beauty brand that isn't passionate also about reducing its environmental footprint and in promoting sustainability. But just how do you go about vetting beauty brands' credentials and finding out about their journeys to sustainability?

This is the mission Jazmin set herself when she launched Pretty Well Beauty. And as a 14-year veteran of a parallel sector, fashion, before setting up her pioneering retail enterprise, Jazmin is well attuned to the issues of sustainability - or its lack - in the beauty world.

In this episode, Jazmin explains her views and definition of sustainability and talks about the mutual and beneficial relationship sustainable retailers can build with indie brands who together are dedicated to paying more than lip service to sustainability.