How biotech is winning the beauty contest

Beauty and personal care products are full of chemicals, some of them harmful. But consumer demand is driving a new era in chemical innovation — and manufacturers and retailers are responding.

It was while working for a pharmaceutical company which used mushroom fibers in a treatment for wound healing, that David Brown first got the idea.

“I knew the fibers had antimicrobial properties which would make them a great preservative,” the 27-year old chemist recalls. “I wondered how far we could take that.”

Brown and partners began to experiment.

“We started testing the tech and discovered that by controlling the extraction of the fiber from the white button mushroom we could adapt the preservative to act on different bacteria, yeasts and molds,” he said. “We created the world’s first healthy and natural preservative with the ability to be customized.”

Two years later, Brown’s company, Chinova Bioworks, based out of New Brunswick, Canada, has achieved FDA approval to sell their product, Chiber, as a shelf-life extending ingredient for beverages in the U.S. They have secured $2.5 million in start up funding from the investment arm of the multinational food and pharmaceuticals giant, DSM, and begun work with a major manufacturer testing Chiber for use in beauty and personal care products.

The call for non-toxic ingredients is undeniable. The global clean label ingredient market is expected to value $47.5 billion by 2023. One global survey found 85% of consumers think products “made with no harsh chemicals or toxins” is very important or important for household products. That figure rose to 87% when talking about beauty and personal care products.

“Today’s consumers demand greater transparency and ingredient safety,” says Brown’s business partner and Chinova Bioworks co-founder Natasha Dhayagude. “That puts huge pressure on producers to find safe and effective preservatives.”

And yet in beauty and personal care products particularly, U.S. regulation lags behind. For nearly a century, America’s $1 billion cosmetics industry has been governed by an outdated legal framework which has failed to keep pace with the influx of new chemicals. Today, the U.S. FDA regulates only 11 types of chemicals in beauty and personal care products, compared to more than 1,300 in Europe. Among the chemicals that color, preserve and perfume today’s make-ups, soaps and lotions are well known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors and allergens.

In spite of these regulatory lapses, some of the country’s biggest retailers have responded to consumer demand and pledged to voluntarily remove toxic chemicals from products on their shelves. Walmart, with the help of EDF, has set the bar high by removing 23.8 million pounds of key toxic chemicals from over 90,000 cleaning, personal care and beauty products. Chemicals include toluene, a brain damaging chemical found in nail polish and butylparaben, a hormone-disrupting preservative.

Preservatives are particularly concerning. They perform a critical function in beauty and personal care products by preventing the growth of bacteria, yeast and mold. But an EDF report revealed that among common preservatives on the market today, are allergens and at least one carcinogen. The report also uncovered a worrying lack of data on other possible hazards.

Manufacturers looking for safe alternatives to toxic preservatives are faced with a fundamental challenge: what to use instead?

“History is full of examples where replacement chemicals are found to similarly present harms like the original,” says EDF health scientist Jennifer McPartland.

To drive transparency and innovation, EDF has now established a baseline guide by which industry can judge preservative safety. And last year we advised on a year-long competition, led by the Green Chemistry and Commerce Council, to jump-start the development of new preservatives. The challenge, supported by industry giants Johnson & Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive and others, uncovered seven innovative new preservatives with potential applications in cleaning and personal care products poised to enter the market.

Breakthrough innovations like these drive confidence when big companies set their own goals for safer chemicals. In recent years, the U.S.’s three largest drug stores — CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens — and online behemoth Amazon, all followed Walmart’s example and set their own safer products goals.

And the market transformations don’t stop there. Last year, a group representing 50 percent of the U.S. beauty and personal care market — including CVS, Walgreens, Sephora, Target and Walmart — published the first industry consensus on rating the sustainability of beauty products. EDF, the group’s only nonprofit partner, compiled the list of toxic chemicals which the group agreed to tackle.

“The market demand for safer products is now incontrovertible, harmonized and will transform the entire beauty market,” say EDF’s Boma Brown-West.

All this spells good news for companies like Chinova Bioworks.

“Being a start-up that has grown and gained a lot of attention very quickly has been intense,” says Brown of Chinova Bioworks. “There have been lots of highs and a few lows. With the increasing awareness of the ingredients in the products we consume, we’re confident this is a market that’s just going to continue to grow.”

We are entering a new era of environmental innovation that is driving better alignment between technology and environmental goals — and results. #FourthWave