Formula Botanica has this year made a £30,000 charity donation shared between two non-profits, Plantlife and TreeSisters, which are helping sequester carbon, promote biodiversity and build sustainable livelihoods for people across the world.
Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier says the school is bringing sustainability issues centre stage at every opportunity, both in its curriculum and across its public media platforms. “For far too long, we’ve seen the mainstream beauty industry fail to tackle some fundamentally unsustainable practices; chief among which is an economic model built on promoting the over consumption of beauty products to fuel the industry’s growth and profits. This has to change.
“The beauty industry is also one of the heaviest consumers of natural resources and responsible for monoculture ingredient crops that are detrimental to biodiversity. It is therefore only right that the industry, whether as educators, growers, cosmetic manufacturers, retailers and more, should not only work to reduce its own resource exploitation and consumption but also support entities such as Plantlife and TreeSisters who are helping to restore natural habitats and biodiversity.”
For far too long, we’ve seen the mainstream beauty industry fail to tackle some fundamentally unsustainable practices
To date, the natural cosmetic school has donated around £100,000 to charity and hit its target of funding 100K trees. As well as increasing its contributions year-on-year to reflect its own growth, Formula Botanica encourages its students to give to TreeSisters and Plantlife, and these voluntary pledges boost its corporate donations.
“With this latest donation of just over £15.5K, Formula Botanica has reached its own milestone of funding 100,000 trees to be planted in the tropics and is well on its way to reaching its goal of seeing its Formula Botanica Forest reach 250K trees by 2025,” says TreeSisters’ founder Claire Dubois. “We wish every growing company were as generous and climate-change focused.”
Formula Botanica partner manager Ken Hoellmann adds that the positive fieldwork of the school’s chosen charities was having immediate results: “Together, Plantlife, TreeSisters and Formula Botanica put out a strong educational message to our students and graduates about the need to focus clearly on sustainability. We are not only inspiring our students but also seeing them deliver indie beauty products to market that are making a clear change to the traditional, unsustainable, beauty industry model.”
Image credit: Lauriane Cayet-Boisrobert – with thanks to Eden (Mahajunga, Boeny Region) Madagascar
