The beauty and wellness company has announced it is joining the global working party developing an industry-wide environmental impact assessment and scoring system for cosmetics products. Nu Skin joins more than 40 other cosmetics brands in the Consortium that has set out to measure the environmental impact of products in a uniform manner with the goal of using the prototype by the end of this year.
"An increasing number of shoppers are basing their purchasing decisions on the environmental impact of products," said Ruth Todd, senior vice president and chief reputation officer at Nu Skin. "It’s time to provide customers with even more clarity and transparency into the environmental impact of their beauty products. We look forward to partnering with other industry leaders and developing a globally recognized system that allows consumers to make informed decisions."
Other members of the EcoBeautyScore Consortium include Colgate-Palmolive, Coty, The Estée Lauder Companies, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., L’Oréal Groupe, P&G, Shiseido and Unilever.
The Consortium is working with the experienced sustainability consultancy Quantis to help ensure a robust and scientific approach to co-build an assessment methodology and scoring system that are guided by:
– A common method for measuring environmental impacts throughout the lifecycle of products, backed by the principles of the "Product Environmental Footprint" (the European Union’s PEF scientific method based on life cycle assessment (LCA) for quantifying the environmental footprint of products).
– A common database of environmental impact of standard ingredients and raw materials used in formulas and packaging, as well as during product usage.
– A common tool that enables the assessment of the environmental impact of individual products, usable by non-experts.
– A harmonized scoring system that enables companies, on a voluntary basis, to inform consumers about the environmental footprint of their cosmetic products, using a methodology, data base, tool and scoring system that can be verified by independent parties.
In 2019, Nu Skindeveloped its own internal scoring system to improve the customer sustainability journey. Nu Skin plans to bring key learnings from this implementation as an active participant in the development of a globally recognized standard.
