Campaign Phases Out Safe Cosmetics Compact; Fresh Program In The Works

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics plans to sunset its personal-care product safety and transparency pledge, or "Compact," and introduce a program that will offer “more meaningful engagement” for firms.

“We felt the time was ripe” to make changes, Lisa Archer, director of the Campaign and the Breast Cancer Fund said in a Jan. 31 interview with “The Rose Sheet.” “It’s time for an evolution, a new way of engaging with responsible companies who are paving the way towards making safer cosmetics.”

The new program – “still a work in progress” – will be launched later in the year.

In the meantime, The Campaign’s Compact for Safe Cosmetics has been closed to new companies. Those currently signed on have until June 30 to fully comply with its guidelines.

Firms that sign the Compact are expected to comply with the European Cosmetics Directive, disclose and substantiate the safety of all ingredients, "publish and regularly update product information" in the Environmental Working Group's "Skin Deep" database and "substitute ingredients of concern with safer alternatives," among other requirements.

Archer says she has been "amazed" by the approximately 1,500 companies that have signed the compact. The organization acknowledges on its website that with such a response, "it has been challenging … to manage the volume of data and communication required to publicly reflect company efforts to meet this pledge."

It adds: "Closing the Compact will actually free up more Campaign time for research and report-writing, education and outreach, and working closely with businesses committed to safety and sustainability."

The Campaign also is optimistic that setting an end-date for the Compact will motivate companies to fulfill the program's agreed-upon terms.

Archer noted that a significant number have honored their pledge and “moved toward transparency and safer production.”

Once the Compact officially closes at the end of June, a catalog of fully compliant signers will be available to consumers through the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website and EWG's Skin Deep database.

By excluding companies unwilling or unable to fulfill the Compact's obligations, the program's sunset is a way of rewarding those signers that have achieved compliance and highlighting "leaders" in the cosmetics safety race, according to the Campaign.

Ex-Signers Claim "Rules Changed Mid-Game"

Statements online from frustrated and one-time Campaign signers suggest that there may have been pressures that contributed to the Compact's phase-out other than administrative challenges and lags in compliance.

The Compact's sixth broad requirement is that signers "participate in the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics," which seems to imply an ideological oneness and shared sense of mission between signers and the advocacy group.

However, some signers have been displeased with the direction the Campaign has taken in its lobbying and policy work.

Lisa M. Rodgers, creator of Cactus & Ivy natural bath and body products and co-founder of PersonalCareTruth.com, notes on the site that she was formerly a signer of the Campaign's Compact, but "when the FDA Globalization Act of 2008 rolled around, I was very unhappy with the political approach the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics was taking. ... I felt the petition they were asking their signers and supporters to sign would have harmed my small cosmetics business."

Rodgers and fellow PersonalCareTruth founder Kristen Fraser Cotte – who owns and operates the Grapeseed Company, selling "premium eco-friendly vinotherapy spa and skin care" – have claimed the Campaign "treats Compact signers unfairly," affording them little control over how their company and products are represented in EWG's "Skin Deep" database.

They also say it can be difficult to get one's name removed from the Campaign's lists, citing the case of another unhappy Compact signer and small cosmetics business owner, Lauren Sheahan of LaurEss Mineral Cosmetics, who felt that she was "at [the Campaign's] mercy with regard to how her business [was] portrayed."

"This is a situation where special interest groups attracted small businesses to sign on to a cause we all agree with – safe cosmetics – and then proceeded to change the rules mid-game and pull the rug out from under them. No notice. No opportunity to be heard. No chance to appeal," says PersonalCareTruth.

Archer maintained that the Compact is voluntary and companies are “welcome to come and go as they see fit.”

“We are an advocacy organization, and we’re advocating for safe cosmetics and for public transparency,” she said. The Compact “is about the company itself and their commitment to these same principles. If there’s alignment that relates to transparency and safe production, we definitely welcome companies to be part of the Compact and to maintain their Compact membership, but they’re always free to leave if they disagree with those principles.”

Industry Data-Sharing To Be Emphasized

Transparency is a key aspect of the Campaign's new program, and the Campaign will promote data-sharing as a way of providing consumers with a clearer picture. Sharing safety studies and making them publicly available could help to fill data gaps for a number of ingredients and assist consumers in their decision-making, Archer said.

“That’s one of the challenges we face in the cosmetics industry, is that companies aren’t required to publicly substantiate the safety of their products or to share [safety] data,” the exec asserted. In the absence of regulations mandating safety tests and data sharing, the Campaign supports companies that voluntarily offer up their safety findings.

“Our biggest hope is that these companies will be spokespeople for safer production,” Archer said. “We would also like to see more collaboration across industry in terms of finding solutions to some of the bigger formulation challenges.”

For example, preserving products to protect consumers and prolong shelf life – without introducing collateral risks – continues to pose a challenge to formulators, she noted.

“The more ingredients are studied and studies are shared across the industry – particularly the more peer-reviewed studies we can get of ingredients – the better choices companies are going to make and also the more accountable they’ll be held by the public and by watchdog groups,” Archer suggested.

According to the Campaign director, the new program also aims to make tools available that can assist firms in reaching full ingredient transparency.

“Consumers are just going to want more and more information, and the more forthcoming companies can be to a specific consumer about what’s in their products, we think the more successful they’re going to be in the long term,” she said.

It is possible that green chemistry will also be built into the Campaign's new program, as the practice favors ingredients that have a benign impact during the chemicals’ lifecycle, as well as those ingredients “for which we do have good information about their safety,” according to Archer.

The Campaign says it is working not only with industry members but also with retailers, spas, buyers and other stakeholders as it develops its new program.

Group Has Not Lost Sight Of Legislative Goals

On top of the new program, the Campaign will continue its push for greater regulation of the cosmetics market. One of its top priorities for 2011 is backing the re-introduction of the Safe Cosmetics Act (Also see "Campaign For Safe Cosmetics Looks To Maintain Momentum In 2011" - HBW Insight, 3 Jan, 2011.).

The activist group has been “listening to a lot of the concerns” small businesses have about the bill as introduced last year – among other requirements, it mandated product testing and extensive data reporting – and plans to share those concerns with legislators.

“We believe the bill as it stands is a good bill … but like any piece of legislation it can always be made more workable and responsive to the needs of companies which are really working to make safer products a reality,” Archer said.

By Lauren Nardella