From "low-impact formulas" to "carbon-neutral packaging," beauty brands love a sustainability claim—but what are those claims really based on?

In this episode of Demystifying Cosmetics, we sit down with Evan Peters, founder of Fairglo, to unpack the promise and pitfalls of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) in the cosmetics industry. We go beyond the buzzwords to explore how system boundaries, data gaps, and marketing spin can shape—and sometimes distort—what LCAs actually reveal about a product's environmental footprint.

Evan shares his insights on cradle-to-gate vs. cradle-to-grave approaches, why end-of-life impacts are often left out, and how LCAs can be used to legitimize greenwashing when taken out of context. We also zoom out to consider what LCAs miss entirely—like biodiversity loss, microplastic pollution, and social equity—and why a more holistic toolkit is needed to evaluate sustainability in beauty and personal care.

Takeaways:

• LCAs Are Only as Good as Their Boundaries: Deciding how far back (and forward) to track product impact is crucial—and highly variable.

• Cradle-to-Gate vs. Cradle-to-Grave: Many brands stop tracking environmental impact once the product leaves the factory, missing key downstream data.

• Fairglow’s Value Proposition: The platform democratizes LCAs by reducing cost, increasing transparency, and enabling quick scenario testing.

• Green Claims Need Rigor: Publishing LCA data should include third-party verification, especially for comparative or marketing claims.

• What LCAs Miss: Emerging sustainability issues—like biodiversity, microplastics, and forced labor—are often outside LCA scope.

• Natural ≠ Sustainable: Synthetic ingredients can often have lower carbon footprints than “natural” ones like rose oil.

• Data Is Power—If Organized: Brands must digitize operations to track formulations, packaging, and logistics to get an accurate environmental picture.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Start
00:34 – Overview of LCAs in cosmetics and their current limitations
01:02 – Meet Evan Peters and the story behind Fairglow
02:26 – From hazardous waste tech to beauty industry carbon analysis
03:24 – Why carbon accounting today is often inaccurate
04:14 – The importance of defining system boundaries
05:11 – Where Fairglow draws the line: ingredients, packaging, and beyond
06:09 – How consumer use is factored into LCA modeling
07:29 – Use case: how formulators, marketers, and ESG teams use Fairglow
09:27 – LCAs as decision-making tools: scenario testing for carbon goals
10:24 – Cradle-to-gate vs. cradle-to-grave: misleading boundaries
12:21 – What consumers can actually do to reduce their environmental impact
13:40 – Why so few brands publish LCA data (and how Fairglow changes that)
15:07 – Making sustainability data useful and practical
16:32 – What happens when results aren’t flattering
17:01 – Real-time impact changes and the user experience in Fairglow
18:11 – Role of third-party verification in claim validity
20:38 – ISO standards and category-specific LCA rules (or lack thereof in beauty)
22:31 – Why Fairglow avoids trying to “boil the ocean” in sustainability
23:29 – LCAs vs. social responsibility: labor ethics, sourcing concerns
25:27 – Microplastics and other “invisible” impacts LCAs struggle to track
27:50 – “Natural” ingredients can have worse footprints than synthetics
29:15 – Building an emission database for 30,000+ cosmetic ingredients
31:11 – What other tools brands need alongside LCA
32:35 – Digitization, ERPs, and the need for better supply chain transparency
33:02 – Where to find Fairglow and wrap-up

If you work in product development, sustainability, or just want to understand what’s behind the claims, this 30-minute episode will give you the clarity (and caution) you need to read between the carbon lines.