L’Oréal Groupe is on the hunt for its next sustainability partner.
“We’ve been working on transforming [the sustainability of] our business, our ecosystem, for decades now,” Ezgi Barcenas, L’Oréal Group’s chief corporate responsibility officer, told Glossy. “[Today] we’re reflecting on our learnings and looking for new ways and new partnerships to catalyze and accelerate our efforts.”
The conglomerate has partnered with the U.K.’s prestigious University of Cambridge to oversee L’Oréal’s new Sustainable Innovation Accelerator. The program is funded by $133 million from L’Oréal Group and is set to run over five years.
Cambridge’s role is to scout, identify, pilot and scale disruptive solutions to the beauty industry’s biggest sustainability challenges through an open-call application process that closes on Tuesday.
“This really is a golden ticket for a small company or startup team,” said James Cole, chief innovation officer of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. “One of the really powerful things about this program is its focus on startups, ventures and small-to-medium enterprises that [must be] ready to partner with a global player like L’Oréal [right now].”
Cole is looking for companies that are commercially ready to scale through investments from a piece of the $133 million pie. Cambridge’s extended network, which includes 40,000 of the world’s top sustainability innovators and experts, will help to select each 12-month cohort. The number of companies accepted may vary by year and response.
Specifically, L’Oréal is looking for partners who create alternative ingredients and materials; those with sustainable and inclusive business models; companies with circularity and resource management expertise; those with innovation in eliminating fossil plastic use and plastic waste; and this with general solutions around water, carbon and energy use.
The accelerator’s open call launched in June and will accept applications online until Tuesday. Cole told Glossy that they’ve received around 300 applications as of Thursday and expect a rush ahead of Tuesday’s deadline.
Cole believes that many of these solutions could come from outside the beauty industry.
“There are phenomenal companies out there, like L’Oréal, that have got really sophisticated and well-honed innovation and R&D processes,” Cole said. “But sustainability actually means drawing in technologies and solutions from adjacent industries or other areas that aren’t part of the value chain.”
L’Oréal’s Barcenas and Cambridge’s Cole spoke at New York City Climate Week last week to promote the opportunity. Cole believes that L’Oréal’s accelerator has an advantage over similar programs Cambridge has run in the past across sectors like heavy industry and real estate.
“The sustainability movement, and those people who have historically worked to support business in sustainability, have not really tapped into the full power of industries like beauty,” he said. “[The] beauty industry has got a particular importance … because of the way that they can help to shape culture and behavior.”
For Cole, the forthcoming cohort’s biggest opportunity lies in alternative materials and circularity — specifically, ways in which brands can innovate through biotechnology and better accept and shoulder the concept of producer responsibility for the second life of packaging, respectively.
“Time and time again, we see surveys that say that people really do care about this kind of thing, [but they] don’t expect to do all the work,” Cole said. “They want those trusted brands to have done that work for them; that’s part of maintaining that [brand] trust.”
The new accelerator program launches just in time to help L’Oréal reach the goals it laid out in its 2020 ‘L’Oreal for the future’ program. Now halfway through the 10-year roadmap, the program seeks to steward climate transition, safeguard nature, drive circularity and support disenfranchised communities. Results since the 2020 kickoff are promising: 97% of L’Oréal’s sites are now powered by renewable energy, while 53% of the water used for industrial processes came from reused or recycled water, Barcenas said.
When it comes to packaging, the company has increased its reusable options 17-fold over the past five years including the rollout of new refillable products from YSL Beauty, Kiehl’s, L’Oréal Paris, La Roche Posay, Kérastase and Lancôme.
L’Oréal Group is the largest beauty conglomerate in the world based on revenue and currently has 37 global brands in its roster that could benefit from the $133 million investment. The company reported 1.6% sales growth during the first half of the year to reach $25.94 billion in global sales.
