How the Beauty Industry Can Go All-In on Climate Action: A Q&A with Melanie Bender

Beauty company executive Melanie Bender is deeply concerned about climate change and sustainability. In college, she majored in global environmental science. Since then, she’s shown her flair for business and marketing. She launched Versed, a line of beauty products that prizes both sustainability and accessibility in terms of price and availability.

Photo courtesy of: Melanie Bender

She has also chosen to make philanthropy part of her family’s spending plan, giving every month to nonprofits like EESI working on issues important to the family—including climate change.

Melanie and Versed are also playing a leading role in the beauty industry’s first-ever coordinated grassroots campaign for climate action: #CodeRed4Climate. In a first for the beauty industry, on Tuesday, September 21, 2021, Versed and other beauty companies are running a grassroots advocacy campaign, urging federal action on climate.

EESI’s Susan Williams sat down with Melanie to discuss her commitment to progress on climate change in her life, her business, and in her family’s philanthropy.

Susan: How do you go about choosing the nonprofits that you and your family support, and why do you give to EESI?

Melanie: My husband and I like to have those conversations with the family, including our daughter.

For us, it's a very solutions-oriented approach. It's not about “giving to give.” It's about seeing change where it is needed. And we hone in on what we think is important, where our funds will have the greatest impact.

Certainly, we feel strongly about the environment and sustainability—particularly climate change. The climate crisis leads us to focus on systemic energy policies and infrastructure.

And that led us to look at organizations, including EESI, that are focusing on clean energy, renewable energy, and taking a more systemic approach. I also love to look within Charity Navigator because it does a good job of bringing more visibility and transparency to how organizations are operating.

Susan: Some people are also concerned about the climate crisis, but they think “this is just too big.” What would you say to others who might be daunted by the admittedly large scale of the issue?

Melanie: I think the scope of the action that’s needed is honestly what's made it one of the most difficult issues to solve. I think for every individual, it's looking at where you are uniquely positioned to have an impact. For every person, it will look a little bit different.

If you look at the scientific consensus around how catastrophic an issue climate is, we're talking about a big issue like the COVID-19 pandemic. And you look at all the different things it took to get us as far as we are now with pandemic relief. It was government action. It was individual action. It was action by businesses, discussions within families.

One other instance that I think is really relevant is how we dealt with the ozone hole. There was quick action. There was consensus around what we were measuring. There was a unified approach to the changes that needed to be made outlawing certain chemicals for use in production. And we were decisive and swift. And today, you know, the ozone is as healthy as it's been since that hole was first detected in the 70s. So, similarly, we can slow climate change—but we need to act. We need to hold ourselves accountable, and we especially need to hold our government and representatives accountable.

Susan. What does sustainability mean to you? And how have you incorporated it in your beauty products company, Versed?

Melanie: To me, it is very much a science-first approach. Sustainability is the ability to do something indefinitely without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

One pitfall that I see specifically in the beauty industry is the hyper-focus on waste. We love talking about waste and what material each component is made of. [When this interview was conducted in June 2021], there had been very little conversation around climate in the beauty industry, when in reality climate is without doubt the greatest environmental issue that we face. So that was a conversation that we had as a team at Versed. How do we balance what the consumer thinks they want with what we believe to be the most important? How do we also use that as a point of education to get more people into the science and data that we're looking at?

We really try to use the most accurate numbers that we can get to be very credible in saying this decision is the better decision and always trying to quantify those impacts. And that's led to things like partnering with Climate Neutral to measure our emissions and set targets for reduction. This is not an incremental situation. We need to be ambitious in the change that we want to see—specifically halving climate emissions over the next decade.

Susan: And why do you think pairing beauty or skincare with sustainability and then also price point accessibility is important?

Melanie: Zero waste is not one person doing it perfectly. It's many, many people doing it imperfectly. And I feel the same way about how we approach sustainability. It's about getting millions of people in on it, doing it imperfectly but pretty darn well.

And it encompasses our price point of retailing everything for under $25. It encompasses how we distribute through the retailers that you're already shopping at, like Target. So you don't have to make a special trip. But it also really encompasses education. And, let's not talk about it like it's rocket science. Make it easy to understand and easy to figure out. How do you apply that to the actions you take in your own life?

Susan: It's interesting that you mentioned that the beauty industry is more focused on waste vs. climate change impact. What have you done to bring climate into the conversation? Have you seen people marrying those topics? For example, we know that a pound of plastic not produced is petroleum that's not used. Has that been a way to get the waste conversation more into the climate conversation?

Melanie: Absolutely. And I think the reason why brands have focused on waste is because that's typically where the consumer has been focused—and particularly recyclability.

Consumers like that because it feels like something within our control, something that we can do to feel good about our actions. Climate change is a much more complex, fractured, significant issue to be solving. So I get why consumers as a whole feel less confident taking a stance on it.

At Versed, one way we try to draw our customers into the issue is by measuring and communicating our climate footprint. We say this is where our emissions are coming from: 90 percent from our manufacturing, three percent from our transportation. And then we follow that with just being open about how we think about reductions versus offsetting, recognizing that offsetting alone cannot get us there to talking about how we prioritize areas for reductions.

One other thing I love is that we are open-sourcing 100 percent of our methodology so that other brands that want to take climate action but haven't had the right resources or know-how can copy and paste what we're doing and easily make an impact from their own position. It's really, really important that we share these solutions to these problems so that we're all making leaps and bounds forward versus trying to recreate the wheel individually from our own spots.

Susan: Have you found that other companies are copying some of your actions? And have you also learned from other companies?

Melanie: Yes, and yes! I think the openness around sustainability is unlike anything I've seen, certainly within our industry. Founders want to get together, share vendors, share partners, share initiatives and discuss how we're all thinking about it. It really is incredible, in an area where we most certainly need collaboration over competition—and I think represents the future of our industry and hopefully other industries.

Susan: Where do you see that the beauty or skincare industry, and even Versed perhaps, needs to grow in regard to sustainability?

Melanie: I think to date, the industry has been part of the problem of overconsumption and even misinformation. But I also see that the industry has the potential to be part of the solution.

So, I'm certainly pushing hard and talking to other founders and brands about how we can get together to take this from individual and company-based action to something that is industry-wide, specifically within climate as well as within waste.

Last year, from 2019 to 2020, we at Versed were able to reduce our per-product emissions by about 25 percent. The goal for this year is reducing greenhouse emissions by 10 percent. But we still have certainly a lot more to do. And the bulk of our emissions are tied up with our supply chain. So those are more difficult solutions to find because they're not under our direct control.

So, certainly, pushing our manufacturing partners for greater energy efficiency and identifying opportunities to switch over to clean energy is a big goal of mine. And then we are continuing to really increase our percentages of recycled material; the goal for this year is an average of 50 percent across our products. But, certainly, as manufacturing abilities advance, we want to be continuing to increase that number up to 80 to 90 percent post-consumer recycled content.

Susan: What does an ideal future of the beauty industry look like to you?

Melanie: Transparency and accountability. I think the number one thing that we need to be doing most is measuring our emissions, tracking our footprint, and sharing that publicly. And that's in line with the legislation that has now been passed in the U.K. which makes climate emissions disclosures mandatory for large businesses. It's in line with what the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has now put out for comment.

And then it comes back to ambition. We don't get there by setting goals that are not materializing until 2035 or 2050, which is what some of the largest players in beauty have said. We need to align our goals with science-based targets that are put out there by the experts who know best how to avoid the most catastrophic of impacts.

And honestly, that's what's missing from a science-based industry. We're chemists. We know you would never crowdsource what goes into your formula or skip testing around safety. However, we have chosen to look at sustainability as a marketing field rather than one that's integral to our operations. We should be managing our environmental footprint in the same way we manage financial accounting. Having both financial and environmental prudence is incredibly important for the longevity of our business.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Author: Susan Williams