Is real transparency possible? L’Oréal exclusive interview
As part of this week's Cosmetics Europe Annual conference, we caught up with Poulsen, who will be speaking at the event. This is the second part of the interview, the first can be found here.
The Cosmetics Europe Annual Conference, 13-14 June 2018, is a leading event in the European beauty industry calendar, and gathers expert speakers and industry professionals for a crucial knowledge-sharing opportunity.
Full details of the conference, which closed today, be found here.
Is real transparency across the supply chain realistic, and how can we work towards this?
Transparency across the supply chain is not only realistic, it is necessary if we want the consumers’ confidence to increase.
When we buy meat or fruits, we want to know where they come from. Our consumers have the right to get this information on our products.
That’s what our program Sharing Beauty With All (SBWA) also includes.
What are the major challenges and opportunities for L’Oréal in leading on environmental safety moving forward?
As worldwide cosmetic leader, L’Oréal needs to have an exemplary behaviour in terms of environmental safety.
We act within Cosmetic Professional Associations by promoting a more realistic exposure assessment of our ingredients according to their uses (e.g. leave on vs rinse off products, sunscreens), develop proactive actions to increase our scientific knowledge of environmental impacts of cosmetic products, better communicate on our actions, …
We also work on a daily basis within scientific communities (e.g. SETAC, ECETOC, Universities) to contribute to increased scientific knowledge and develop tools that are or will be used in the risk assessment in the next future.
All the actions mentioned above contribute to innovation, as observed at L’Oréal with those internally initiated during the last 25 years.
It provides an opportunity to our teams (chemists, formulators, toxicologists, and ecotoxicologists) to work together and find solutions increasing human and environmental safety, and sustainability, simultaneously to efficiency of our products.
Thanks to this collaborative work, our chemists were able to develop active ingredients and formulations that fulfilled all our quality, efficacy, and safety criteria.
At last, what remains very important is to work together and communicate among scientists, coming from industry and other stakeholders such as academics and regulators.
This is how we could rebuild public trust in science and industry, as it is one of the major challenges we have to face.
