Podcast 266: When sustainability reports to marketing – beauty’s uncomfortable truth

Is your favourite beauty brand walking the talk on sustainability, or just selling a story?

Last week on the podcast, Lorraine Dallmeier – Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist and CEO of Formula Botanica – talked to Carly Snider of the Pact Collective, and Carly dropped a truth bomb: in many beauty brands, sustainability sits under the marketing department. Not operations. Not product development. Not supply chain. Marketing.

In this week’s episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine unpacks why this matters more than you realise and how it impacts every conscious consumer and ethical beauty entrepreneur.

Because when sustainability reports to marketing, it stops being about impact and starts being about image. And that uncomfortable truth raises serious questions about whether beauty brands are truly committed to change, or just crafting clever campaigns.

If you care about where the beauty industry is headed and want to spot the difference between greenwashing and real change, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.

“It’s no longer enough for sustainability to sound good. It has to be good – even when no one is looking.” — Lorraine Dallmeier

Key takeaways:

• When marketing owns sustainability, it’s about image, not impact. Sustainability often gets reduced to messaging and branding rather than being embedded in how products are developed, packaged, or sourced. This risks turning sustainability into a marketing angle, and customers are left with feel-good stories instead of real change.
• Marketing is powerful, but it’s not enough. Lorraine makes it clear: marketing can connect, educate, and inspire, but it shouldn’t be where sustainability starts or ends. Without systems behind the storytelling, even the most beautiful brand narrative is just that –  a story.
• Real commitment comes from the top. Brands that are serious about sustainability have leadership that understands the big picture. When founders are truly values-driven, sustainability becomes integral, not a seasonal campaign or another Earth Day initiative.
• Sustainability must live in systems, not just slides. From R&D and procurement to packaging and logistics, true sustainability shows up in the hard decisions. It challenges norms, changes processes, and refuses to be limited to what’s easy to sell.
• Start with one question. Lorraine leaves listeners with a challenge: Is sustainability guiding real decisions behind the scenes in the brands you support (or your own beauty brand), or is it just part of the message? And if it’s the latter, what conversation could you start to change that?

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please share, subscribe and review this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Youtube so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook and Instagram.

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Lorraine Dallmeier

Lorraine Dallmeier is a Biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and the CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic cosmetic science school. Read more about Lorraine and the Formula Botanica Team.