Beauty’s blueprint for sustainable solutions: Cross-industry collaboration builds trust and transparency

The growing personal care industry is pushing for more responsible ingredient sourcing. From surfactants to emollients, brands are moving to reduce carbon footprints, prevent deforestation, and ensure that raw materials come from renewable and traceable origins.

For ingredient manufacturers, this means rethinking how products are designed, produced, and scaled — without compromising performance or profitability.

Personal Care Insights sits down with experts from Future Origins, Univar Solutions, and TriNutra to explore how different links in the beauty supply chain can build more responsible, transparent, and performance-driven skin care solutions.

“As large and as successful as [the personal care] industry is, we know manufacturers face a mounting challenge in terms of sourcing sustainable ingredients,” a Future Origins spokesperson tells us.

The company views this challenge as a catalyst for change. It says technology and innovation are helping to reshape the way the industry sources and produces environmentally friendly ingredients.

“Sustainability can mean a lot of things depending on your perspective or business imperative and where you are on the sustainability journey,” says Morgane Ezanno, commercial sustainability lead, EMEA, at Univar Solutions.

“We all want to meet the moment, safeguarding people and the planet, while keeping businesses successful and profitable.”

As companies work to balance these ambitions with practical realities, scaling sustainable production remains one of the sector’s biggest hurdles.

“It is very important that the necessary infrastructure is available to manufacture the products that can make a meaningful impact.”

Powering progress

Achieving large-scale sustainability requires support. Partnerships enable collaboration between formulators, suppliers, and brand owners to align on data, standards, and outcomes.

“Partnerships are essential for advancing innovation across the personal care industry, particularly when working together toward shared goals of efficacy, transparency, and environmental responsibility,” says Liki von Oppen-Bezalel, business development director at TriNutra.

Local agricultural partnerships support the responsible cultivation of beauty ingredients.Von Oppen-Bezalel says TriNutra’s research aims to understand how ingredients work and what specific compositions improve performance and effectiveness over others. “This knowledge enables us to refine our cultivation and extraction methods, minimizing waste and preserving biodiversity.”

She says partnerships with brands then further help translate findings into finished products that are effective and aligned with consumer demands for natural, traceable, and responsibly sourced ingredients.

A Future Origins representative tells us the company was established through a partnership between biotechnology company Geno and major beauty brands Unilever, Kao, and L’Oréal. Future Origins develops Nalo, a drop-in replacement for conventional palm-derived ingredients commonly used in surfactants for products such as face wash.

Geno helps produce Nalo by giving its expertise in scalable fermentation-based process technologies. Future Origins’ collaboration with the brand owners has helped it validate the product and create clear market demand.

These collaborations provide commercial validation and financial and infrastructural support.

“All of these partnerships are necessary to build the alternative value chain we need to commercialize the technology. To date, Geno and the brand owners have also invested in developing and scaling up the technology,” the Future Origins representative explains.

At the distributor level, Univar Solutions uses partnerships to build accountability through shared frameworks and measurable goals. “Our Supplier ESG Collaboration Program began in 2021 with the implementation of our Supplier Code of Conduct,” Ezanno explains.

Univar has also developed programs like EcoScope, which seeks supplier partners’ greenhouse gas emissions data and supports decarbonization initiatives.

Credibility through transparency

As sustainability claims become more complex, traceability is becoming a regulatory requirement and a consumer expectation.

For ingredient producer TriNutra, traceability begins at the field level. “We have developed a unique breeding program for Nigella sativa to produce our proprietary black seed oil, branded as B’utyQuin,” explains von Oppen-Bezalel.

“Because of this, we only work with local farmers, which gives us full traceability from cultivation to the finished product and, in turn, we can support the local economy in a region that suffers from economic, climatic, and political disadvantages.”

Full visibility from farm to formulation is becoming essential in sustainable ingredient sourcing.TriNutra’s model integrates waste management and upcycling into the same value chain. “We repurpose any leftover ‘waste’ from our black seed oil production to create new, upcycled raw materials and active ingredients.”

“Any additional waste can then be used as fertilizer or animal feed. TriNutra also incorporates its spent water for irrigation, further helping the local economy and agriculture,” continues von Oppen-Bezalel.

Future Origins underscores the importance of early-stage traceability integration. “We recognize that traceability is critical for businesses and consumers alike, so we are taking this into account during our development process.”

“We are ensuring that our raw materials for Nalo are sourced from traceable, plant-based, renewable feedstocks by working closely with the raw material providers.”

As links in the supply chain increasingly hold one another accountable, the focus is shifting toward verifiable data and shared responsibility across every production stage.

“Our Sustainable Sourcing goal helps drive improved sustainability performance and minimum standards across our diverse supplier base,” says Univar’s Ezanno.

“Univar Solutions’ targets include issuing all of our new and active suppliers our global Supplier Code of Conduct by 2023 and assessing 80% of our suppliers (measured by spend) on their sustainability performance by 2025.”

Tech knows best

Technological innovation helps bolster ecological beauty solutions, such as green chemistry and circular product design, and shapes how sustainability translates into tangible solutions. Across the board, companies point to biotechnology, upcycling, and process efficiency as key enablers of the next era of responsible beauty.

“At Future Origins, we believe in the power of technology, especially biotechnology, to shape the next generation of sustainable skin care solutions,” the company states.

Biotechnology enables high-performing skin care ingredients made from renewable feedstocks.“We are at a moment in time where the innovation in biotechnology is already meeting the demand for sustainable alternatives by delivering on performance and impact.”

TriNutra sees progress coming from agricultural precision and cleaner extraction. “We’re seeing major potential in precision agriculture, green extraction technologies, and analytical ingredient testing to ensure each batch’s composition and efficacy are consistent,” von Oppen-Bezalel shares.

“Advancements in cold-press and solvent-free extraction methods allow us to preserve the full spectrum of actives in black seed oil while minimizing waste and energy consumption.”

Univar Solutions, meanwhile, ties these developments into a broader systems approach. “The future of sustainable skin care will be driven by the convergence of biotechnology, upcycling, and circular design,” says Monika Ruiz-Golcher, senior technical specialist for Beauty and Personal Care, EMEA.

“Biotechnology is reshaping ingredient development, enabling high-performance materials from renewable feedstocks through cleaner, more efficient processes.”

She adds that the key challenge will be data consistency and credibility to ensure that sustainability claims remain measurable and credible. 

“Traceability, cost competitiveness, and the balance between sustainability, efficacy, and sensorial experience will help shape how the industry continues to evolve toward more responsible beauty.”