Group work
Transparency in the beauty industry is good for our health— and our hair.
HERBAL ESSENCES has upped the ante on its commitment to using clean and effective ingredients. The hair- care behemoth sought out recommendations from the Environmental Working Group and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, earning seals of approval from both organizations on its new sulphate-free shampoos and conditioners. To be clear: This is a big deal. It’s the first time products from a mass hair-care brand will bear the EWG Verified mark, which required Herbal Essences to turn over its entire ingredient list to the U.S.based non-profit for approval against its stringent list of unacceptable ingredients. Allowing access to this highly confidential trade-secret information is a bit like bringing up politics at the dinner table—a decidedly high-stakes conversation. Over at London’s Kew Gardens, home to the most biologically diverse collection of plants in the world, botanists combed through the brand’s various botanical extracts, verifying their purity, potency and sustainability. It was a meeting of (what we imagine to be) Sheldon Cooper-like minds that Rachel Zipperian, principal scientist for Herbal Essences, called “magic.” “Kew is the authority when it comes to recording botanical information,” she says. “But they’ve never looked through their databases asking ‘What can I get for hair?’” It turns out that sharing really is caring, particularly when it comes to your hair.