Kensing on how “responsible beauty” will take over clean beauty

Clean beauty has historically been defined by an absence of chemical ingredients, restricting the sector to what a product isn’t, rather than what it is. That foundation is phasing into a new trajectory: communicating the total environmental impact across a product’s lifecycle. 

Denis Bendejacq, SVP of Research & Innovation at Kensing, tells Personal Care Insights that the next phase of clean beauty is “responsible beauty.” This narrative furthers the category to depict how feedstocks are sourced, how ingredients are manufactured, and what carbon and resource costs they carry. These shifts, in combination with regulatory adjustments, leads Bendejacq to call greenwashing “clearly a thing of the past.”

Clean beauty positioning is inherently tied to natural ingredients — an intrinsic link that is not always matched, as natural does not always mean sustainable. However, if responsibility becomes the organizing principle, the old opposition between natural and synthetic would matter less. 

Bendejacq suggests that naturality being the go-to should be replaced by a more “useful” question for formulators and brands: how responsibly can the industry deliver the performance consumers expect? 

He unpacks what that transition means for ingredient innovation, sourcing, consumer trust, and the future of clean beauty with Personal Care Insights. 

How is Kensing defining “clean beauty,” and how has that definition evolved?

Bendejacq: I think the definition of clean beauty has evolved significantly over the last 20 years, and it continues to evolve today. If we go back to the early 2000s, clean beauty was largely a niche movement driven by consumers looking for more natural ingredients and questioning the safety of certain synthetic materials. At that time, many of the products associated with clean beauty sat outside the mainstream market. 

Over time, consumer expectations broadened. One example was the marked shift in product aesthetics. Consumers started associating transparency with simplicity and purity, pushing the industry’s move from pearlized formulations to clearer, more transparent ones. The visual language of beauty became part of the clean beauty conversation. 

We also saw growing scrutiny of specific ingredients and manufacturing by-products. Sulfate-free cleansing is a good illustration. Two to three decades ago, sulfate-free shampoos were considered niche and avant-garde. Today, they have become mainstream, and consumers have adapted their expectations around foam and cleansing performance. What was once disruptive has become normalized. 

More recently, the conversation has expanded beyond ingredient selection to ingredient transparency. Consumers increasingly want to understand what they are putting on their skin. This has driven efforts toward shorter ingredient lists, simpler formulations where possible, and clearer communication around ingredient function and purpose.Lifecycle impact is replacing ingredient exclusion lists as the clean beauty category’s benchmark. 

Perhaps the biggest evolution is that clean beauty is no longer solely about what is inside the bottle. The long-standing focus on natural ingredients has expanded into a broader environmental conversation. Sustainability, responsible sourcing, renewable feedstocks, biodegradability, carbon footprint, water use, packaging, and circularity are now becoming central elements of how consumers evaluate products. 

As a result, our view of clean beauty today is broader than a simple list of ingredients to include or exclude. It is about delivering safe, effective, transparent, and environmentally responsible products while giving consumers confidence in both the formulation and its broader impact throughout the lifecycle. In many ways, clean beauty has evolved from a formulation discussion into a trust discussion. 

What trends are you witnessing that are driving clean beauty launches? 

Bendejacq: Consumers have become more informed, more demanding, and more sophisticated in how they evaluate products. One of the strongest trends is the demand for transparency. Consumers increasingly want to understand what is in a product, why each ingredient is included, and how the product was made. 

While consumers continue to scrutinize certain ingredients, the conversation has matured. Rather than simply looking for ‘free-from’ claims, many consumers now want reassurance that a product is both safe and effective — and that it was made in a sustainable way. The expectation that sustainability should be built into the product rather than treated as an optional benefit is growing. When making purchasing decisions, consumers increasingly consider sustainability metrics — if clearly and credibly communicated. As consumers seek greater authenticity and evidence, claims are increasingly expected to be supported by data, whether that relates to efficacy, environmental impact, or ingredient sourcing.

Regulatory agencies are also following suit, pushing for appropriate claims substantiation to ensure that manufacturers hold themselves to clear, high standards — and consumers’ confidence is not betrayed. Greenwashing is now clearly a thing of the past.

What is clean beauty’s next phase? 

Bendejacq: If I had to describe the next wave of clean beauty in a single expression, I would call it ‘responsible beauty.’ 

I believe carbon footprint and resource efficiency will become increasingly important drivers of innovation over the next three to five years. AI has put knowledge at consumers’ fingertips. Consumers are becoming more aware not only of what ingredients are in a product, but also of where those ingredients come from, how they are manufactured, and what environmental impact they create. 

One area of particular interest is the upcycling of waste and side-stream feedstocks into higher-value ingredients. Increasingly, these streams are being viewed as valuable sources of carbon that can be transformed into useful personal care ingredients or into intermediates used to manufacture established workhorse ingredients, such as surfactants. Consumers increasingly expect sustainability claims backed by credible data. 

At the same time, we will see the continued emergence of entirely new classes of ingredients produced through biotechnology and fermentation. Biosurfactants are a good example. Beyond offering renewable sourcing, these technologies create opportunities to design ingredients with fundamentally different performance profiles and sustainability characteristics. As we saw with the transition from sulfate-based systems to sulfate-free formulations, the adoption of these new technologies will require some evolution in consumer expectations. New generations of ingredients may not always deliver the exact same sensorial signals that consumers have historically associated with performance. 

Another major trend will be the growing importance of multifunctional ingredients. Consumers will continue to favor shorter and simpler ingredient lists, yet they are unwilling to compromise on efficacy. Multifunctional technologies provide a pathway to maintain simplicity and transparency while preserving performance. 

Finally, biotechnology platforms will play an increasingly central role in ingredient innovation. Rather than selecting from a finite toolbox of existing materials, formulators may increasingly have access to purpose-built ingredients designed to satisfy multiple technical and sustainability objectives simultaneously. In that sense, the future of clean beauty may not be defined by natural versus synthetic. The companies that can combine efficacy, transparency, circularity, and measurable environmental benefits will be best positioned to lead the next generation of beauty innovation. 

Which ingredients or formulations are emerging as the most innovative in clean skin care?

Bendejacq: We see growing interest in biosurfactants and other technologies that can deliver effective performance while offering improved biodegradability, renewable sourcing, and gentler skin compatibility. 

Another important trend is the rise of biotechnology-derived ingredients. Fermentation and precision bioprocessing are enabling the production of ingredients with high purity, consistent quality, and potentially lower environmental impact. We are also seeing strong momentum behind upcycled ingredients. Agricultural side streams and other underutilized biomass streams, if transformed into high-value ingredients, offer the promise to align with clean beauty.

A fourth area of innovation is formulation simplification. Consumers are asking for greater transparency and a better understanding of what they are putting on their skin. Achieving the same performance with fewer ingredients often requires significant formulation expertise and increasingly depends on multifunctional ingredients. 

Finally, one of the most important innovations is not an ingredient at all, but the ability to substantiate environmental claims with credible data. Life cycle assessments, carbon footprint measurements, biodegradability data, and responsible sourcing programs are becoming as important as the ingredient itself.