How to pursue a green supply chain in personal care
25 Jan 2022 --- Sustainability is an increasingly important factor influencing the decisions taken by today’s personal care shoppers. The brand and product consumers choose can be based on the company’s conscious actions to contribute to a planetary health and environmental consciousness.
Far from just relating to just the contents of the end-product, consumers want to understand the entire lifecycle of their preferred personal care products. Therefore, brands in the sector need to be aware of how consumers deem products to be sustainable. From zero-waste and reducing overall product consumption, creating products made from renewable resources, preventing environmental damage and protecting biodiversity, to upholding ethical values such as giving back to charitable causes and ensuring people in the supply chain are treated fairly, sustainability in personal care covers an array of mindful actions that strive to produce a positive impact for individuals, communities and the planet.
Click to EnlargeConsumers show increased concern on environmental issues when weighing up what to buy. As a result, brands need to consider what sustainability truly means. With a mission based on the belief that we can all make a difference, Nature Crops focuses on the ‘Three Ps’: planet, process and products. Commenting on what a green supply chain in personal care looks like at Natures Crops, CEO Andrew Hebard highlights its ‘soil to oil’ natural product ingredient supply chain. Its approach has three separate but integrated parts to the Natralipid brand: Grow, Make and Sell.
‘Grow’ describes Nature Crops' raw material production. In 2021, it developed and released Natralipid. The platform focuses on functional ingredients in specialty oils that appeal to consumer demands for natural and clean-label ingredients in cosmetics and skin care. Following its launch, Nature Crops has committed to growing all of its crops under contract directly with trained and qualified farmers who commit to using regenerative agricultural practices with exclusively plant-derived ingredients.
Explaining the importance and particular relevancy of regenerative practices for producing environmentally-conscious personal care supply chains, Hebard shares: “For those not familiar with regenerative agriculture, it goes significantly beyond sustainability, focusing on enhancing the ecosystem in which the crop is grown.” The ‘Grow’ element of Nature Crops’ model also requires full traceability and transparency of the raw material, including where and how it was grown. “For example, no GMO material or banned synthetic substances can enter the supply chain,” says Hebard.
The ‘Make’ component refers to processing raw materials into functional ingredients. In manufacturing its products, Nature Crops only uses cold pressing and avoids using organic solvents or processing chemicals to ensure its products are natural and non-chemically modified.
“We crush our own seeds using ‘cold press’ technology and we refine our own oils using mechanical versus chemical processes,” details Hebard. “Again, this delivers the purest and freshest products to our customers.”
The ‘Sell’ part of the process refers to packaging and logistics. “Our objective is to use minimal packaging and minimal handling,” Hebard relays.
Click to EnlargeAndrew Hebard sees collaboration as a route to sustainability. Source: Nature Crops.
As it aims to advocate making more mindful choices that collectively yield positive results, Nature Crops hopes its approach to producing a green supply chain serves as guidance and inspiration for other personal care brands hoping to be conscious players in improving the sector’s sustainability. Sharing best practices that personal care brands can follow to achieve a green supply chain, Hebard highlights: “You could write a book on this, but in summary, it is about embracing the principles of traceability, sustainability, purity, minimal usage of materials and of course using natural, renewable and regenerative inputs.”
To achieve greener supply chains in personal care, Hebard believes: “This will be consumer driven, through education and awareness. Of course, we rely on regulation to ban harmful materials from the supply chain, but that isn’t exclusively a green issue; it’s a safety issue. Consumers have so much influence because they are so much more aware; they are actively voting with their wallets.”
Commenting on what the biggest barriers to achieving a green supply chain in personal care are, Hebard simply states: “Economics.” Nature Crops’ CEO provides the example of how using petroleum-based solvents such as hexane to extract bioactives from plant materials is significantly cheaper than carbon dioxide (CO2), for example, but brings an environmental cost. “Unfortunately, the trade-off is often one of cost versus values and quality,” Hebard details.
Developments are taking place in 2022 to help increase the sustainability of supply chains in personal care. “There is a growing trend towards using regeneratively grown plant ingredients and there is an increasing trend towards avoiding petroleum-derived chemicals such as hexane in the manufacture of ingredients,” Hebard explains. “Blockchain technology is allowing greater traceability and enhanced testing is allowing greater confidence of purity and authenticity.”
To progress the sustainability of supply chains in personal care in 2022, Hebard hopes to see:
- More use of regenerative practices
- More transparency around ingredients, their sourcing and their carbon footprint
- More involvement from brands that look back up the supply chain and hold their suppliers to greater account about where and how their products are derived
By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Journalist
