Conscious Consumer Gift Pick - Sana Jardin

Have you heard about the term conscious consumerism? It’s when buying practices are driven by a commitment to making purchasing decisions that have a positive social, economic, and environmental impact. I appreciate what I’ve been seeing as I explore conscious brands as I get away from the clean and greenwashing of the beauty industry.

When I first find a new product I usually look them up on Instagram and sometimes I'll make it onto their website, but I’m glad I checked out Sana Jardin’s about section because I fell in love with her mission.

Our mission is to harness the power of commerce for social good. Sana Jardin is a socially conscious, luxury fragrance house. Our vision is to use clean and sustainable perfume as a vehicle for social impact and the economic empowerment of women. Sana Jardin is built on the principles of a circular economy - our alternative business model enables the women in our supply chain to become micro-entrepreneurs by up-cycling the waste products from perfume production.

We believe that if we’re innovative about the way we use commercial waste, we can recycle it for the benefit of the women at the beginning of our supply chain and help them to flourish and thrive.

At that point, I would get any fragrance from the site and hope for the best, but it gets better. She dives more into how she incorporates upcycling and circular economy principles to go beyond sustainability. As someone working on a similar project that I hold close to my heart, I hope this inspires more upcoming brands to think bigger on the impact they can have through their brand.

"The Problem: The female harvesters from the rural flower-growing region in Morocco, had limited access to work - just a few times a year, during the harvest. They also didn’t have opportunities for consistent employment due to their lack of skills training. In addition, 900 tonnes of natural and organic orange blossom waste by-product is created from the region.

The Solution: We aim to address these problems through our Beyond Sustainability™ model, which empowers the floral harvesters with the skills and materials they need to increase their wages through commerce, not charity. The model is based on “flower recycling” within a circular economy and illustrates that luxury business can be used to drive social change. We offer business skills training to the local women so they can develop and sell their own range of products; candles and orange blossom water - all of which came from the waste of perfume production. They receive 100% of the proceeds.

To facilitate this we partnered with Nest (a non-profit) and Les Aromes du Maroc, to establish a women’s cooperative in Morocco, where the women can produce and sell their products. 

If anyone married to me reading this is looking at what could be a great gift idea for Christmas, my birthday, or Valentine’s Day. . . look no further than this link to Savage Jasmine that I’m about to drop.

For everyone else, DM me on Instagram at @JasminePennamma and let me know if conscious consumerism is a principle you may have been practicing without knowing the term or if it’s something you would like to put into practice more now that you are aware of it. Can’t wait to chat with you! xx - Jasmine

How “Clean" Is Your Clean Beauty routine?

When I look at anything from skincare to hair to makeup - "clean" is the beauty buzzword of the moment. At a beauty summit last month, a takeaway was that all beauty should be clean beauty when looking forward at trends in 2020, but from experience in formulating a line, going to labs and getting a product made that is still considered to be "clean," can be frustrating when there are still no clear rules of how to define this and the word itself is unregulated. This means that I would have to work backward thinking about what retailer I'd want to position it for using that specific retailer's standard of "clean" to create my own definition of clean beauty in order to maintain the strictest standards of clean and sustainability practices I would want to uphold as a brand.

You may have noticed this variance in clean standards yourself when trying to shop for cleaner products because the definition of clean beauty changes depending on the retailer you purchase from. . . or what brand is putting its marketing spin on the message. For example, purchasing a product that is marked as "Clean at Sephora" doesn't exactly mean that it meets "The Credo Clean Standard" because they each have come up with their own guidelines since there aren't regulations about what makes a brand be able to label itself as clean. In fact, U.S. laws for cosmetics safety are virtually unchanged since they were created back in 1938 so if you want to really be more stringent with your brand, you search for labs that have experience in formulating products that are sold in the EU because the EU seems to be more ahead of the game since they ban thousands of more ingredients in products than we do in the US.

After having experience developing a skincare line, I've been keeping a close eye on the beauty industry, testing various clean products, learning more about natural brands, and expanding my knowledge on the topic as a whole. By 2024, the global “natural beauty” industry is predicted to reach $22 billion, with indie companies representing a sizable piece of the pie. Clean beauty, in particular, is becoming crowded, but if there is anything I know from being in the room with dozens of industry vets is that not many look like me which could be why products I think are the most obvious still haven't been made.

Being a newer category, education around clean beauty is still lacking. However, I see it as an incredible opportunity to be able to help you all understand why clean beauty and all it’s nuances down to ingredient transparency including the ingredient comes from and how it’s sourced. Bringing in a new decade is as good excuse as any to detoxing my beauty routine as I run out of products so I’m looking forward to exploring new clean beauty items in 2020.

Have you started to switch to clean beauty brands? I’d love to hear which ones as I’m testing new items. DM me on Instagram @jasminepennamma and let me know!

The Future of Diversity in Beauty Is Funding

A discussion at The Wing on Diversity in Beauty had me reflect with a guest on how major companies throw around the terms “diversity and inclusion” to drive sales and attention to their brands. In beauty, Fenty set off a foundation war with companies trying to outdo themselves and come out with the most shades who had more limited ranges prior to Fenty’s launch. Beyond that, @_foundla pointed out venture capitalist statistics yesterday that show we could have taken this conversation a step further because diversity and inclusion in venture capital might even matter most of all because the VCs that control where the money flows determines the diversity of entrepreneurs and ideas that get funded. Changing the dynamic of who sits at the investment table can have a long-term impact on the brands that have the privilege of entering our homes in the future.

As a woman of color, the statistics can sound defeating. An article I just read stated that in 2018, out of $85 Billion in VC funding, only 2.2% went to female founders with WOC getting less than 1% of total funding. 🤯 I believe a key to help close the gap is to have women not only “supporting” other women but FUNDING other women, but would love to hear your thoughts or experiences. #foodforthought