FRAGRANCE & COSMETICS Virginia has years of well rounded experience across the beauty board. She began her career working for a fragrance oil company, traveling down the path to become a perfumer. This is where she was first introduced to sustainability, through her background in chemistry in a laboratory and manufacturing setting. “We were part of the chemical industry, and the chemical industry was always concerned with sustainability,” Virginia explained. She went on to describe how their sustainable
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focus was on chemical sourcing, disposal process, and water
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usage. Companies implement sustainable strategies at many levels, and Virginia feels that “today’s fragrance companies are extraordinarily sustainable.” “In their annual reports, cosmetic companies have
PA C K A G I N G & RECYCLING Packaging is an area of the beauty industry that is married
enormous agendas in sustainability,” Virginia explains,
to sustainability. Virginia notices that many companies are
discussing how these companies produce products with
opting for refillable and recyclable packaging. She also
innovative sustainability practices incorporated at each
recalls that for years the beauty industry did not use recy-
stage. She assures us that “the beauty industry is ahead of
cled board because they couldn’t print on it as nicely as they
the curve with it’s strong sustainable agenda, because we
could on virgin board, but since they solved that problem
realize that we cannot maintain these businesses unless
they’ve turned to recycled materials. Companies are initi-
we are sustainable.”
ating recycling programs, and encouraging customers to
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return their containers and utilize refillable options.
INGREDIENTS & SOURCING Companies are now really concerned with where they are sourcing their raw materials from, how they’re made and how they’re processed. It’s a linear sustainable effort because they want to source locally where they can and want to only use ingredients that are from renewable resources. Many new ingredients being created are coming from sustainable resources. The industry push is to move away from Petroleum based ingredients. “Through biochemistry, a lot of raw materials are being created from renewable resources like sugar and corn,” Virginia acknowledges. She is assured that for anything the industry has yet to find a sustainable way of producing or a sustainable alternative, it is only a matter of time before a replacement is found.
Illustration of Virginia Bonofiglio by Amy Geller Illustrations of objects by Gabrielle Chang