Natural cosmetics study says: “The desire for sustainability is here to stay – this is not a short-term trend.”

This is what expert Stephan Telschow says about the cosmetics industry in an interview with Handelsblatt. According to a study that will soon be published by , only one in five consumers consider the cosmetics industry to be sustainable. According to 74 percent of thousands of respondents, there is still a lot of room for improvement. While large consumer goods companies are only just starting to implement these issues, other companies are already ahead of the game. Our CSE pioneers from the natural cosmetics sector(Annemarie Börlind, SODASAN, Sonett, Farfalla, SAFEAS) are right at the forefront. With the CSE standard, they not only demonstrate the sustainability of their products, but also a business model that is consistently geared towards sustainability. It is hardly surprising that there is a great deal of confusion among customers when it comes to labels and there is no consensus as to what actually constitutes a sustainable product. “It would make perfect sense for the industry to agree on an appropriate industry standard,” says Telschow, Managing Director of the Gesellschaft für innovative Marktforschung. Even if many conventional companies are unable to meet the CSE standard’s benchmark for sustainability (for example, companies that only serve the natural cosmetics segment as a niche are unable to comply with the standard), it is foreseeable that consumers will increasingly demand a clear and credible seal of sustainability. In the long term, this is not just a trend in the natural cosmetics sector, but a social movement. With the CSE standard, the Society for Applied Business Ethics stands for a demanding and credible, because certified, sustainability promise.