Biossance Doubles Down On 'Free Of' Marketing With Ingredient Blacklist

Biossance, the personal-care division of integrated renewable products company Amyris, has unveiled a blacklist of more than 2,000 cosmetic ingredients it "refuses to use" due to safety and environmental concerns. The company discusses its rationale for the move and the controls it has in place in a litigious environment where "free of" claims are under increasing attack.

Biossance's newly announced blacklist of "2,000+ potentially harmful cosmetic ingredients it refuses to use" could be a bold move that grows its fan base and sales, while also potentially giving plaintiffs a couple thousand opportunities to sue the company for false advertising.

"The regulatory environment in the US affords cosmetic brands the opportunity to use potentially harmful ingredients in cosmetic products," asserts Biossance, a division of renewable products company Amyris, Inc., in a May 6 release. "Biossance has created higher standards by adopting rigorous ingredient selection guidelines and omitting ingredients that are potentially harmful to you or the planet."

That list includes the more than 1,300 ingredients banned from use in cosmetics in Europe, as well as "conflict minerals," parabens and broad-spectrum UV filter oxybenzone, which Biossance says has been linked to "mass die-offs in coral."

The Personal Care Products Council notes on its CosmeticsInfo.org site that the EU's banned ingredient inventory includes chemicals that are not used and never have been used in cosmetics, such as jet aircraft fuel. The trade group also has been critical of research concerning oxybenzone's impact on marine life (Also see "In Brief: Anti-Coral Oxybenzone? Truth In Advertising Goes After Jeunesse" - HBW Insight, 23 Oct, 2015.).

From Biossance's perspective, however, regulations in the US are too permissive to ensure cosmetic ingredient use that is safe for both consumers and the environment.

“Currently, the US has low standards for ingredients formulated into beauty products, and we have the opportunity to set the bar higher and also to continue demonstrating that our brand can do well by doing good," says Amyris' Caroline Hadfield, senior vice president for personal care.

“We don’t accept the status quo. We are leading the charge in the movement towards clean beauty by setting our standards high and supporting efforts for change," she adds, noting that the company is a supporter of the proposed – and to date highly divisive – Personal Care Products Safety Act (Also see "PCPSA's 'No Harm' Standard Would Set High Bar For FDA Ingredient Review" - HBW Insight, 13 Apr, 2016.).

According to Biossance, the launch of its blacklist promises skin-care products that are not only high-performing but also ecologically sound and non-toxic – free of synthetic fragrances and phthalates, for example, among other substances the company characterizes as potentially hazardous.

"Free of" marketing is certainly nothing new in the cosmetics sector, where companies have long been touting product formulations as devoid of questionable, controversial or simply unfashionable chemicals.

Some market watchers have suggested that the tactic has backfired as free-of claims have proliferated, reinforcing consumer biases toward substances with safety profiles backed by reliable science and even contributing to more stringent chemical regulation.

But the biggest threat to "free of" marketers in the current climate may be lawsuits alleging false advertising, consumer fraud and the like.

Myriad suits of that nature have been filed against companies employing "natural" claims to market cosmetics and other consumer products (Also see "Much At Stake For Industry In Pending 'Natural' Class-Action Appeals" - HBW Insight, 24 Sep, 2015.). Free-of claims, which often dovetail with natural positioning, have emerged as another target.

"Natural, healthy" pet-food manufacturer Blue Buffalo Co., Ltd., entered into a $32m settlement agreement in late 2015 to resolve a number of consolidated suits challenging the authenticity of its "True Blue Promise," with plaintiffs contending that lab analysis identified poultry byproducts and other ingredients in Blue Buffalo offerings that the company claims to avoid (Also see "Class-Action Clock May Be Ticking For Ava Anderson Non Toxic" - HBW Insight, 2 Feb, 2016.).

Nestle S.A.'s Purina pet-care division, which remains embroiled in its own litigation against Blue Buffalo on similar grounds, conducted the testing cited by consumer plaintiffs.

The Honest Company is facing a proposed nationwide class action after the Wall Street Journal commissioned independent lab testing of the company's liquid laundry detergent that identified sodium lauryl sulfate reportedly at levels above trace amounts, contrary to the firm's "Honestly Made Without" messaging (Also see "Honest Company's SLS-Free Claims At Core Of Nationwide Class Action" - HBW Insight, 28 Mar, 2016.).

Honest maintains that it uses sodium coco sulfate, a distinct chemical that is "less processed" and has less potential for skin irritation, while a number of scientists and ingredient suppliers consulted on the matter have said that SCS typically contains SLS.

Asked whether current litigation trends weighed in Biossance's creation of an ingredient blacklist, a company spokesperson acknowledged in a May 11 email that the phenomenon is indeed a concern "as it should be for anyone in the space."

"Our view is that while companies cannot prevent opportunistic plaintiffs from attempting legal challenges – even those that are frivolous or without merit – they can minimize the risk of challenges being filed or of challenges succeeding simply by utilizing best practices to ensure their claims are, in fact, correct and by being as transparent as possible in communicating those practices outside the company."

The rep added: "We are a science-based company, and as such we conduct our due diligence thoroughly to ensure what we claim is correct. Our formulations are well vetted and we have stringent controls in place to ensure these ingredients are not used in our formulations."

'Free Of' Not Without Marketing Clout

The ready availability of testing services to assess the authenticity of "free of" claims and the complex technical issues raised in trying to defend such claims in both federal courts and the court of public opinion are enough to give many companies pause (Also see "'Free Of' Marketing: Honestly, Why Bother?" - HBW Insight, 11 Mar, 2016.).

But it can't be denied that free-of claims command power with consumers and continue to resonate despite their growing ubiquity.

On the food side, a Mintel survey at the heart of its May 2015 Free-from Food Trends-US report found that 84% of Americans who purchase foods purportedly free of trans fat, GMO content and other controversial substances do so because they believe them to be more natural or less processed, while 43% consider them healthier overall.

Millennials and Gen-Xers are most inclined to worry about potentially harmful ingredients in foods, according to Mintel.

Trends in "natural" marketing – along with many of the associated legal woes – migrated from the food sector to the cosmetics space, and the movement has given rise to thriving businesses with the free-of doctrine deeply woven in their DNA.

The Honest Company is a prime example of a startup now feeling a backlash from the same sort of marketing that drove its explosive growth in recent years. By promising to hold itself to a higher standard than "mainstream" industry players in terms of ingredient use, environmental stewardship and social responsibility, Honest – valued at $1.7bn last year after launching in 2011 – set itself up for scrutiny.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based personal-care and home-goods marketer is now defending its natural and free-of claims against proposed class actions in multiple states. Its battle in the courts and on the PR front could be complicating the company's rumored exploration of an initial public offering (Also see "The Honest Company Now Defending 'Natural' Claims On Both Coasts" - HBW Insight, 23 Feb, 2016.).

Honest's meteoric rise was also a product of star power, founded as it was by actress Jessica Alba, who serves as chief creative officer. The company was co-founded by Chief Product Officer Christopher Gavigan, previously CEO of Healthy Child Healthy World, a nonprofit that merged with the Environmental Working Group in late 2014.

Blacklist Builds On Sustainability Cornerstone

Biossance is an animal of a different order. The brand launched in June 2015 from Amyris, a biotech firm that develops renewable specialty chemicals with applications that include fuel products, lubricants and biopharmaceuticals, leveraging a technology that puts microorganisms to work building tailored molecules from plant-based sugars.

Amyris' core aim is to provide innovative alternatives to petroleum-derived products. Its Consumer Care division supplies customers with sustainably produced natural oils and aroma chemicals for use in flavors and fragrances, as well as cosmetic emollients, namely Neossance squalene and hemisqualane.

According to its website, Biossance is "dedicated to using science to make the scarce abundant, the rarified accessible, and the natural sustainable."

While Biossance sprang from markedly different bedrock compared with companies like Honest, its parent company's focus on "green," sustainable solutions lends itself to the brand's good-for-you-and-the-earth positioning, as well as the newly devised blacklist.

"Amyris was founded on core principles including sustainability and creating replacements for petroleum-derived and unsustainably sourced ingredients across multiple industries," the spokesperson noted. "The blacklist goes hand-in-hand with our parent company mission and the Biossance brand mission to empower and educate consumers."

Biossance notes on its website that "every drop" of the moisturizing squalane in its offerings is derived from sugarcane, as opposed to shark liver, the historical and still major source of the material, according to the brand.

"We’ve designed our line of squalane-based products to empower and inform you, so you can trust that what you are putting on your skin is safe. We won’t compromise, so we hand-select the most effective ingredients and avoid those that are potentially harmful to you or the planet," Biossance says.

The unit's flagship product, The Revitalizer – priced at $58 and touted as a weightless, "non-toxic" moisturizer designed for head-to-toe daily use – recently earned the Environmental Working Group's "EWG Verified" status. License to carry the NGO's logo is awarded to applicants whose products score well on its Skin Deep hazard scale, among other criteria (Also see "'EWG Verified' Personal-Care Safety Seal Builds On 'Skin Deep' Platform" - HBW Insight, 4 Nov, 2015.).

Biossance's squalane and hemisqualane are both Ecocert-approved and USDA certified as 100% biobased, while the latter also is certified to the Natural Products Association's natural standard for personal care.

Upon The Revitalizer's debut, which occurred in tandem with the Biossance brand's introduction, Amyris President and CEO John Melo stated: "Biossance is designed with our biological fingerprint in mind and demonstrates that nature knows best when it comes to nurturing what’s in one’s own biology.”

Other offerings from the brand include The Purifier ($30), a "soothing cleansing oil," and The Nourisher ($72), described as "a luxurious face oil blended with an elixir of roses."

Blacklist 'Not A Ploy'

The top 30 ingredients that Biossance is "proud to omit" from its products – which also include formaldehyde and formaldehyde releasers, preservative methylisothiazolinone, retinyl palmitate, triclosan and both SLS and sodium laureth sulfate – can be viewed on the brand's website.

The Biossance rep emphasized that its blacklist is "not a marketing ploy." Rather, "we are doing this because we whole-heartedly believe in sustainability and safety, including sustainable and safe cosmetics, and we choose ingredients based on these precautionary principles."

At the same time, she acknowledged that doing the "right thing" can leave a company subject to inquiry and challenge in the current legal climate.

It remains to be seen what level of attention Biossance's blacklist brings to the company, whether from new customers seeking worry-free personal-care products or would-be plaintiffs looking to contest the company's claims, particularly as its business grows.

In February, the brand launched to live content retailer HSN, generating "better-than-expected sales metrics, leading to increased number of shows planned for 2016," according to Amyris's fiscal 2015 fourth-quarter and full-year financial report issued in March.

Amyris also noted that it saw record squalane shipments in the fourth quarter and that hemisqualane has been received positively by distributors and formulators, "with rapid growth expected for 2016."

The firm announced April 27 that it has entered into a five-year agreement to supply an unnamed global nutraceuticals company with its Biofene hydrocarbon building-block molecule, expecting total revenue from the five-year deal to be more than $100m, with roughly $40m in annual revenue projected thereafter.

"We are experiencing significant growth in demand for our Biofene and Biofene-derivative applications from large markets such as tires, industrial lubricants, solvents and nutraceuticals," Melo notes in the release. "This demand growth is accelerating our mission to make renewable products mainstream while making our company sustainable.”

The firm's Q4 product sales marked its third consecutive quarter of double-digit percentage growth, according to Amyris' release. Overall GAAP revenues for fiscal 2015 totaled $34.2m, down from $43.3m the year before due to an initial large shipment in 2014 and the delay of a comparable shipment previously expected to register in the fiscal 2015 fourth quarter, the company said.