Big Brands Back Organic Standard For Beauty Industry

March 6, 2008

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The first organic standard for the U.S. beauty and personal care market has launched with the support of 30 founding members including Aveda, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, and Origins, according to the Organic And Sustainable Industry Standards, or OASIS.”The beauty of OASIS is that as an industry consensus standard its members range from large, global brands such as Estee Lauder Companies and L’Oreal to third party and private label manufactures to smaller, specialist brands such as Perfect Organics and Juice Beauty,” says, Gay Timmons, Chairperson of OASIS and Founder, Oh, Oh Organics.

Specifically created for the beauty and personal care industry, ECOCERT is the current prevailing European standard and certification is predicated on a minimum of 10 percent certified organic content. At launch time, OASIS will require 85 percent certified organic content – which will likely increase as “green chemistry” continues to evolve.

The move comes at a time when mainstream companies are eager to have some sort of organic product line. Recently, , beauty giant L’Oreal bought The Body Shop, in addition to organic manufacturer Laboratoire Sanoflore, Tom’s of Maine was acquired by Colgate-Palmolive, and the Clorox Company, in the biggest deal in the market, acquired Burt’s Bees for $950 million.

Although it’s different than the organic tag, last year, Burt’s Bees proposed its own definition of “natural” for the industry. A survey last summer found that 83 percent of American women think there should be one meaning for a personal care product labeled “natural.”

The Organic Standard is the first of several standards, packaging might be next, that OASIS plans to create within the field of sustainability.

There have been a slew of eco-labels launched recently.

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Reader Comments

There is already a standard for Organic, it is USDA certified organic, this is a food standard organic and there are companies that make these sorts of products that are meeting this standard already. Like ONE Group (Miessence certified organic) in Australia and Terressentials in the US.

This is just a way for the big companies to degrade the organic standard because they are unable to meet the food standard for their beauty and personal care products.

So they will create a degraded organic standard that they can meet for their products. This is not in the best interest of consumers, it’s in the best interest of the be corporations.

There already is a standard, they just are unable to meet it.

Erin Ely | March 7th, 2008