Besides the terrible humanitarian crisis unfolding in Ukraine, many commentators have noted its underlying short and long-term fossil fuel market consequences.

Many countries, as in 1974, are (re)discovering their over-reliance on oil and gas, for energy (including transportation) and industrial uses. For democracies, the issue is even worse when they have to buy from authoritarian and/or warmongering countries.

For brands willing to show their “social responsibility”, the issue is similar when buying petrol-derived raw materials.

The only way to solve this economic, moral and geopolitical conundrum is to drastically lower the consumption of petrol, gas, and their derivatives - or “de-carbonate”. De-carbonating our societies’ energy needs for heating and transportation is going to take time and political will, as it requires immense investments. But it is also time to de-carbonate other aspects of our lifestyles and consumption, including skincare products.

Oil and gas are massively used in both formulas and packaging across the most industrialised segments of the beauty industry, representing around 95% of the market.

• Formulas: it is not uncommon to have the majority of a cream or lip balm formula being petrol derivatives!
  They are not too difficult to spot: PEG; EDTA; ingredients ending with “-eth” or containing “methyl”, "ethyl", "butyl", “propyl”, or “polymer”; paraffin; petroleum, vaseline and fragrances.
  Quick reminder: by law, ingredient lists are listed by decreasing importance, so often the first 3 or 4 ingredients will represent 50 to 75% of the product itself. It makes it quite easy to identify heavily petrol-derived formulas.

• Packaging: they are even easier to find, as plastic is everywhere. There are alternatives, like aluminium, which are non-toxic for the environment and infinitely recyclable with almost no additional energy requirement.
  Usually, plastic packaging is chosen for its unbeatable low prices, in order to increase margins. Aluminium is indeed a bit more expensive – but Cosmydor believes decarbonating and depolluting are definitely worth a slightly lower margin…

Cosmydor is trying to show the way in becoming a completely de-carbonised brand:

• Our artisanal manufacturing is CO2 neutral, even CO2 negative if the plantation of hundreds of trees around our laboratory in Vierzon (France) is taken into account.

• 99.5% of our packaging are plastic-free and sourced in Europe. The only exceptions are some lids and pumps, which we are desperately trying to get rid of.

Decarbonating our lifestyle can even be synonymous with higher quality, higher efficiency, lower toxicity for our bodies and for our planet. This is definitely the case across the beauty industry.
Let us use this tragic wake-up call for some good.