In 2008, makeup artist Rose-Marie Swift’s decades-long health battle came to a head. She was losing her hair and her mind – she suffered from panic attacks, short term memory loss, hormonal imbalances, and full body candidiasis, a type of fungal infection. Extensive lab tests showed high levels of toxins in her blood. The lab tech's first question surprised her: do you work in the cosmetics industry?

Swift’s lab results illuminated one of the beauty industry’s biggest secrets. At that time, color cosmetics and skincare products were filled with cheap, filler ingredients lurking with heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, aluminum, barium, and mercury. Swift got her health back on track, but she couldn’t in good conscious go back to work and continue to use those same products that had slowly poisoned her on models and clients. 

In 2009 she created RMS Beauty, an all natural, oil-based beauty and skincare line made with organic ingredients. Made without silicone, paraben preservatives, or other chemical coatings, many experts consider it to be the first “clean” beauty brand. 

RMS Beauty pioneered clean beauty in a pre-Goop world. Over the last decade, the beauty industry has seen hundreds of brands, both new and established, place greater emphasis on "clean," "natural," and "non-toxic" ingredients than ever before. Companies like RMS Beauty, Tata Harper, and Drunk Elephant were founded by women on a mission to make their beauty products safer. It didn’t hurt that going green is good for business: The global natural cosmetics market is expected to reach a value of $48.04 billion by 2025, according to Bloomberg.

Clean beauty doesn’t have a long history, but ever since Rose-Marie Swift founded RMS Beauty in 2009, it’s been a movement rooted in feminism. This subset of the beauty industry is dominated by women in executive leadership positions in ways that the legacy beauty brands like Covergirl, Rimmel, and L’Oreal aren’t. The clean beauty industry was founded by and for women who weren’t afraid to ask questions about what was inside their beauty products and where those ingredients came from. When they didn’t like answers the traditional beauty industry provided, they searched for better, greener alternatives. Feminism has paved the way for many female-led beauty brands to skyrocket to success by riding on the coattails of the clean beauty trend, but doing so has often come at a great cost to the environment. 

As plant-based diets have become more popular, so has plant-based beauty. Many clean beauty brands also market themselves explicitly as vegan and cruelty-free, and even create cosmetic collections inspired by endangered species. This sets them apart from other cosmetic and skincare companies that use animal testing for their products or ingredients derived from enzymes found in animal products, including eggs and milk. Such byproducts come from the meat and dairy industries, which use up a majority of available farmland and produce vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. With concerns over climate change and its consequences rising every day, clean beauty offers a soothing escape into the beauty of the natural world, but that escape comes at the cost of the environment consumers are so passionately trying to save.

The clean beauty industry, like any industry, is built on profit, and brands are racing to discover the next natural “it” ingredient that is pure, safe, effective, and will ultimately drive more customers to their product lines. Right now, that ingredient is bakuchiol. 

Bakuchiol is an ingredient derived from the Psoralea corylifolia plant, and has been used in Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries due to its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial properties to treat skin conditions like vitiligo and psoriasis. According to a 2014 study in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science, these so-called “magical” healing properties have anti-aging effects similar to topical retinoids, which are the industry gold standard in reversing wrinkles and repairing sun damage. Retinoids are made from animal byproducts, whereas bakuchiol is considered vegan. Retinoids are vitamin A derivatives; they reduce fine lines and wrinkles by increasing the production of collagen. However, drinking from the fountain of youth comes at a price; possible side effects from using retinol include peeling, stinging or burning, and sensitivity.

Then in 2018 the British Journal of Dermatology published a clinical study that asserted for the first time that “bakuchiol is promising as a more tolerable alternative to retinol.” Bakuchiol could promote the same gene expressions as retinol but without the risk of side effects. Clean beauty companies began snatching up the ingredient—a "natural" and seemingly safer alternative to retinol—to use in anti-wrinkle serums and creams. Finally, vegan beauty consumers had something comparable, if not better, than the synthetic, lab-created solution. Mother Nature provides and prevails.

The bakuchiol boom exploded onto the clean beauty market just in the last year. Olehenriksen’s Goodnight Glow Retin-ALT Sleeping Crème, Herbivore’s Bakuchiol Retinol Alternative Smoothing Serum, and others launched amongst a chorus of cheers from the natural beauty junkies. Bakuchiol was a clean, green, wrinkle-fighting machine, but all along the clean beauty industry was keeping a dirty little secret about its all-natural darling. 

Bakuchiol can be found in the leaves and seeds of the plant Psoralea corylifolia, which is recognized as an endangered plant by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Its natural populations in the plains of Central and Eastern India have rapidly declined due to indiscriminate and illegal harvesting and the destruction of its habitats. As of 2019, the plant hasn’t been cultivated on a commercial scale anywhere, which means it must be harvested where the plant grows naturally in the wild, mostly in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the eastern districts of Punjab adjoining Uttar Pradesh. The seeds of the plant have a low germination rate and a reduced span of viability, making it difficult for the plant to spread and multiply on its own. Currently, 95 percent of all medicinal plant collection is from the wild. One group of researchers describes the raw-material supply situation as “shaky, unsustainable, and exploitative.”

The clean beauty craze isn’t the sole cause of the decline of the natural Psoralea corylifolia population. Bakuchiol had been widely used in products to treat skin disorders for years before the billion-dollar clean beauty industry got a hold of it. Scientists acknowledged a possible risk of extinction of the plant back in 2017 at which point bakuchiol had already been commercialized. 

India is well known for its high biodiversity, but medicinal plants found in this region are facing threats of overexploitation and biodiversity depletion. Clean beauty brands purchasing bakuchiol from India are contributing to the destruction of these lands. Their re-appropriation of the plant means it’s sold to the highest bidder, which will never be locals. Bakuchiol might be clean, but at present time, it’s not sustainable. Harvesting Psoralea corylifolia with wild abandon in order to keep up with the demand that the clean beauty industry has suddenly thrust upon this rare herb will eliminate it from the planet. That’s not clean or green.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) very loosely regulates cosmetics according to two laws: the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 (FPLA). According to these laws, the only ingredients the FDA approves in the cosmetic industry are color additives, and labels must clearly state the ingredients, who makes it, and the net quantity. The FPLA does not regulate terminology, which means that brands who label themselves as “clean” or “natural” don’t have to prove it to anyone, not even the FDA. The clean beauty industry takes full advantage of the minimal oversight the FDA has on the cosmetic industry as a whole. Without clear definitions and ethical guidelines, clean beauty remains a bit murky. What does clean really mean?

“The reality when using natural ingredients, is that sourcing them will always have some sort of environmental impact,” acknowledges ethnobotanist James Wong in Glamour, “particularly when these ingredients come from ecosystems such as the humid tropics or arid subtropics where the indigenous flora is already under threat.”

The example of bakuchiol proves that just because a natural ingredient works doesn’t mean that it can be considered clean. Environmental sustainability must also be considered when clean beauty brands are evaluating whether it’s ethical to source an ingredient for use in skincare products. When natural ingredients aren’t viable, synthetic alternatives should be rebranded as the more eco-friendly option for fighting wrinkles. The synthetic label doesn’t inherently mean “bad,” just as the “clean” label doesn’t inherently mean “good.”

Scientists have been extensively studying retinoids for decades, and they are proven to be safe and effective time and time again. It’s not natural (as in, comes from a plant), but neither is a wrinkle-free forehead at 40. In the case of anti-aging, the use of synthetic Vitamin A in the form of retinoids is actually more sustainable, more effective, and therefore cleaner than the use of bakuchiol.

Clean beauty companies have an obligation to consider the effects that blindly chasing and harvesting the next “it” ingredient are having on the environment. Consumers of clean beauty must face the reality that natural alternatives might be effective, but using them goes against the very ethics of conscious consumerism. If they really want to get rid of wrinkles, synthetics are the clear clean best choice. 

The other option? Embrace the wrinkles. Growing old is the most natural part of life.

Image credit: Psoralea corylifolia, photo by Biswarup Ganguly, Photographs at The Agri-Horticultural Society of India, Alipore in Kolkata, 2013 (Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 3.0).