How beauty brands can avoid greenwashing and take real steps to becoming clean, sustainable and good for the environment
- Korean skincare brand Innisfree was exposed in April 2021 for labelling one of its products as an ‘eco-friendly paper bottle’ when it was made of plastic
- Being a clean brand goes beyond ingredients and packaging – consumers now want companies to have sustainability values that aren’t just for marketing purposes
For the past decade in beauty, words like clean, organic, natural and chemical-free have been marketed in such a way that they’ve lost all meaning. While a handful of brands are making efforts to actually become more “green”, others are using these words to appear cleaner than they are – a phenomenon known as greenwashing.
One customer cut the bottle open to see how it looked inside and found, to her surprise, that the packaging was simply a plastic bottle wrapped in paper.
When questioned about it, the brand recognised it may have been misleading. “We used the term ‘paper bottle’ to explain the role of the paper label surrounding the bottle,” a representative said in an apology. Was it really an act of naivety or did it try to take advantage of environment-friendly terminology to attract new customers?
There’s no official definition or regulation of what these words mean in the beauty realm. Any brand can advertise themselves as sustainable, which usually tricks people into thinking they’re making a healthy, smart choice.