ChemFORWARD and Sephora Work Together to Discover Safer Beauty Ingredients
ChemFORWARD and Sephora Work Together to Discover Safer Beauty Ingredients
ChemFORWARD is thrilled to announce that Sephora has joined its collaborative effort as a Codesign Partner. Sephora joins leaders from diverse industries which share a commitment to creating a marketplace where chemistry is safer and the potential of circular design is fully realized.
As the first major prestige beauty retailer to establish a public-facing chemicals policy to proactively strengthen ingredient safety and transparency, Sephora is also investing in identifying safer alternatives and making those alternatives widely available to its supply chain and beyond. ChemFORWARD has also added Sephora’s restricted-substances list to its free MaterialWise screening tool, allowing anyone to screen their products for chemicals to avoid in beauty products.
Building on its continuing focus on safety and sustainability, Sephora’s participation further establishes its goal of reducing the use of chemicals identified as high priority in the products it sells and a commitment to work with suppliers to replace these ingredients with safer alternatives. The 2019 policy applies to all formulated beauty products sold online and in stores, including both private label and third-party brands.
ChemFORWARD will identify and analyze alternatives to problematic preservatives, benzophenones and other chemicals on Sephora’s public Chemicals Policy, offering the beauty retailer’s suppliers valuable information about safer substitutes that may be used in their products. These alternatives will also be posted on the ChemFORWARD platform to allow access via subscription by a broader audience.
“We applaud Sephora’s leadership in establishing a baseline with their restricted substances list while also investing in identifying safer alternatives in cosmetics and skincare products,” said Stacy Glass, ChemFORWARD’s executive director. “Sephora’s partnership will accelerate the creation of alternatives portfolios, empowering the entire industry to make safer, healthier products.”
These portfolios will become a part of ChemFORWARD’s unique, globally harmonized repository of chemical hazard assessments and alternatives, advancing the capability of formulators and designers to create safer, better personal care products. ChemForward creates dynamic, actionable data by posting the assessments on its cloud-based platform and including multiple styles of data summary to facilitate decision-making by various users in the supply chain. The assessors who created the portfolios also agree to maintain the data over time, ensuring that a current, updated chemical profile is always available.
Sephora joins ChemFORWARD co-design partners including Google, Target, Nike, H&M, Levis, Method, Steelcase, the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, the Healthy Building Network, and the Environmental Defense Fund.
