#Weareallies

Introducing the #Weareallies movement – a coming-together of like-minded brands to promote responsible beauty purchasing. What we know is that the beauty industry is a high user of plastics – almost 70% of what we throw away ends up in landfill, so it makes sense to circumnavigate that if at all possible. WeAreAllies is movement that pushes consumers towards a particular kind of purchase that puts being mindful of packaging waste before brand loyalty. In a nutshell, they’re saying, if you don’t want to buy from us, please buy from other members of WeAreAllies instead.

One beauty brand can’t do it all but by combining forces with other like-minded beauties the voices and actions are louder and more impactful. Key commitments from WeAreAllies are to implement a common sustainability value and waste reduction pledge to produce fully planet-friendly packaging by 2025. Current ‘allies’ are REN, Youth To The People, Caudalie, Herbivore and Biossance, although I think it’s strange that weareallies.com redirects to REN.com. If all the traffic goes to REN from this group initiative then REN are clearly the main beneficiaries. I had expected to see a website that was more – well, allied, I suppose. It would be a shame if any particular brand took the lion’s share of exposure on this given it’s positioned as a share.

Each brand takes an active approach to their waste reduction – Caudalie, for example, has planted 8 million trees with a million more to be planted this year. I mean, that’s a lot of trees. They’re heading to be zero waste by 2022. Biossance has a good phrase – ‘a rising tide lifts all ships’ – which speaks to the idea of all brands taking a share of the responsibility. Being part of an allied group allows for tech and information sharing (and who wouldn’t want to tap into Unilever resources on that front) as well as the potential for buying power to make plant-friendly more financially viable on the basis that the more you buy, the less you pay per unit.  Actually, a lot of brands are paying more than lip service towards the cleaning up of plastic over-use … there is already a rising tide … but most are terrified by the thought that it costs more to make less. Bottom line is always the main beauty motivator and perhaps this is the example other brands need to see that costs may rise in the short term but pickings are richer the other side.

I would like to have seen, in the list of allies, a make-up brand, because make-up is a huge plastic user with multi-faceted componentry that’s hard to recycle. Hourglass would have been a good option for this, although I feel certain that other brands will want to be on board sooner rather than later so it will happen.