Product Spotlight: Maybelline’s Green Edition Collection
Maybelline has been a stalwart in the beauty industry since its inception in 1913 when Maybel Williams combined petroleum jelly with carbon dust to create mascara and won back her boyfriend. Regarded as an innovator in beauty products with over 200 unique SKUs and counting, Maybelline has now expanded its trail-setting approach to include earth-forward packaging.
Launching in March 2022, Maybelline’s Green Edition is a holistic approach to creating a collection with a conscious mindset. It is the first collection to launch within Maybelline's global sustainability platform, Conscious Together. The Green Edition collection’s four pillars include:
- Use of ingredients with a minimum of 70% natural origin
- Use of packaging that mixes new and recycled materials
- Implementation of vegan formulas
- Clean formulas that are free of BHT, petrolatum, or silicones
Their debut collection will launch with three core products: Superdrop Tinted Oil, Balmy Lip Brush and Mega Mouse Mascara.
Cradle To Cradle Certified
Cradle To Cradle certification is one of the world’s leading tools for the sustainability assessment of products. It examines a product's full lifecycle from raw materials and production to formula and packaging to assess a bottom-line measure of the total impact of a product.
In order for the Maybelline Green Collection to receive they were assessed across social and environmental performance in five categories:
- Material Health
- Product Circularity
- Clean Air and Climate Protection
- Water and Soil Stewardship
- Social Fairness.
Certification from third-party Cradle to Cradle is an important step in giving validity to a brand's efforts and reinforcing common sustainability benchmarks that beauty brands can aim to meet.
The Impact
While only the use of only partially recycled materials in the Maybelline Green Edition collection’s primary packaging isn’t optimal it absolutely makes a positive impact.
Maybelline had 5 of the top 10 selling mascara SKUs in the United States in 2019. This equated to 27.8 million units of mascara sales in that category alone. If Maybelline can show a proof of concept with this collection, they will hopefully extend it across categories. At scale, even small changes can add up to a big impact.
