Petrochemicals in Beauty - our hopes for the future!

Fear sells. It's why you'll often see beauty products with big long lists of ingredients NOT contained in them.

 

For example, 'No Petrochemicals'!

 

We're 'guilty' of this one... but here's the full story.

 

Petrochemicals are the bi-product of fossil fuel extraction. They are used in multiple cosmetic products, with many petrochemical ingredients having limited to no significant scientific evidence of harm to your health.

 

From an environmental perspective, it is often argued they are bi-products and would otherwise go to waste. They will continue to be made as long as our systems rely on oil as our main fuel source - so why not use them?! It's a compelling argument. 

 

Further to this, and comparatively, natural ingredients can cause significant environmental damage, from the cultivation of the land to fuels emitted for extraction, plus water and other resource use during farming. In addition to the removal of native habitat and stripping of indigenous land owner rights and homes.  

 

With the urgent call to move away from the burning of fossil fuels in the next 9 years, as we inch closer to 1.5 degrees of warming, the future of beauty must consider alternatives to both resource intensive agriculture and petrochemical ingredients.

 

For Desert Island Essentials, this looks like - small batch, locally grown and sourced Australian ingredients, which use minimal to no irrigation, are organic or don't use inorganic pesticides and fertilisers. We also consider opportunities to formulate with circular natural ingredients, like our Strawberry Seed Oil sourced from the waste of jam and juice manufacturing.

 

We proactively seek native title information and status too, an unfortunately complicated legal matter in Australia. We partner with a Sandalwood Oil distillery that is half Aboriginal owned - a business model awarded the United Nations Development Program Equator Prize in 2019. We pay acknowledgement to the traditional owners, the Turrbal and Yugara people on the land on which we work and live. 

 

As we expand and grow our range, we also aim to utilize the technology of bio-engineering, delivering all of the science backed cosmeceutical benefits minus the negative environmental impacts.

 

With ambition and tenacity the future will be brighter than your vitamin C serum.