Barbara Olioso

The pandemic is affecting sustainability in cosmetics in a variety of ways, in different parts of the world, including disruption to the supply chains. Despite the disruption there are growing sustainability related trends in finished products and initiatives by retailers to help conscious consumers navigating…

Nature is full of wonders, yet only a small fraction of its plants are suitable for human consumption. In a society living far from nature, there is a real longing for naturals, often with the accompanying romantic idea that everything natural is safe, and even…

Following the famous Irish song, we can close our eyes and picture a vast forest of cosmetic products on the market, a wooded landscape made up of many shades of green. Which one is the greenest? The answer depends on many factors such as the…

Organic beauty is growing in popularity and gradually becoming more mainstream. However, despite this popularity and consumers’ somewhat romantic vision of ‘organic’, in the cosmetic formulator’s laboratory it is a different story: quite far from romance and closer to a drama, although always enjoyable. After…

Cosmetic preservation has become one of the key challenges in the industry today, triggering a great interest for alternative preservation systems that are widely antimicrobial, dermatologically and toxicologically safe and that have ‘consumer friendly’ INCI names, such as botanical names. Very few of these multifunctional…

Cosmetic ecolabels are super trendy because consumers desire for natural and organic cosmetics is growing. However there are a lot of grey areas in relation to green cosmetics claims and consumers do not have the skills to distinguish what is really natural and what is…