Why The Body Shop Is Helping Monkeys Find Love

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Why The Body Shop Is Helping Monkeys Find Love It's all part of the eco-­‐chic cosme2c chain's environmentalist overhaul. 02/10/2016 05:47 pm ET | Updated 4 hours ago
Alexander C. Kaufman Business Editor, The Huffington Post ROBERTO MACHADO NOA VIA GETTY IMAGES AWer losing its edge to rivals the Body Shop is aYemp2ng a comeback. To once again be the go-­‐to cosme2c store for environmentalists, the Body Shop needed more than buYery moisturizers made with ethically-­‐sourced ingredients and a history of poli2cal ac2vism. It needed to become, in part, an animal da2ng service. The 40-­‐year-­‐old chain on Wednesday announced the first phase of a sweeping plan to overhaul the L’Oreal-­‐
owned company into an environmental powerhouse, harkening back to its heyday when it led the charge to get animal tes2ng banned across Europe. That includes buying up swathes of land in biodiverse regions to connect natural habitats severed by deforesta2on. In forthcoming promo2onal materials, the company plans to tell the story of a red-­‐shanked douc named Reggie who finds a mate only aWer the Body Shop and its local nonprofit partner help bridge two islands of jungle in Vietnam where the monkeys live. Con2nued on next page... CHANGE – EVENT PACK
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From previous page… THE BODY SHOP A sample of the marke2ng materials the store plans to distribute. “The key thing for the Bio-­‐Bridge project is to regenerate and protect the land,” said Chris Davis, who heads corporate responsibility and campaigning at the Body Shop, referring to the plan to buy up to 75 million square meters of blighted land. “You find reseYlement and you find the gene2c pool of the animals enriching because these separated communi2es are able to live and interact.” That’s one part of the plan. The Body Shop also sent teams of scien2sts to tropical locales to iden2fy at-­‐risk plants that it could use to make a new cosme2c product due out next year, therefore incen2vizing farmers to keep growing the species. It’s doubling the number of ingredients -­‐-­‐ from 19 to 40 -­‐-­‐ that it sources from its long-­‐standing network of indigenous farmers in developing countries who use eco-­‐friendly growing methods, bringing in roughly 40,000 “economically vulnerable” workers. The company is also slashing its carbon footprint by reducing energy use in its roughly 2,500 stores and plans to power all of them with renewable energy or energy with a carbon-­‐neutral footprint. It's also developing plas2c packaging that, rather than producing air pollu2on in its manufacturing process, is produced from air pollu2on. It’s all part of an epiphany CEO Jeremy Schwartz had on the banks of the Amazon River last February, during a trip to Peru to scout new ingredients and farming communi2es. For the last two years, the execu2ve, who took charge of the company in 2013, had been strategizing a way to bring the Body Shop back to its ac2vist roots. The idea that came to him boiled down into the company’s new three-­‐word marke2ng mantra -­‐-­‐ “enrich, not exploit.” Under the 26-­‐year stewardship of founder Anita Roddick, a Bri2sh socialite and environmentalist, the Body Shop flourished as the leading company “retailing with a conscience” on a huge scale. The company sourced its ingredients mostly to farmers who use eco-­‐friendly growing methods. In 1993, the retailer banned all products tested on animals. Three years later, it gathered 4 million signatures on a pe22on to end cosme2c tes2ng on animals in the European Union. By 1998, the ban passed in the United Kingdom. By 2004, it went into effect across Europe. Con2nued on next page… CHANGE – EVENT PACK
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From previous page… But by the early 2000s, the company had lost its edge. Bigger, deeper-­‐pocketed rivals jumped on the natural products bandwagon and gobbled up the Body Shop’s share of the market. Roddick and her co-­‐founder husband ceded control over the company to its new chief execu2ve Patrick Gournay, who quickly cowed to profit-­‐hungry investors. The store, which once offered products you could feel good about buying, suddenly was focused more on products its new leaders thought people were more likely to purchase -­‐-­‐ ingredients be damned. The announcement of the company’s new “commitment,” as the firm is calling it, is meant to mark a return to its earlier values. That, in part, means ramping up old pledges. By 2020, the company plans for 100 percent of its ingredients to be traceable and sustainably sourced -­‐-­‐ up from about 40 percent today. It plans to be transparent, publishing informa2on about all of its ingredients and providing regular reports on the biodegradability and water footprint of its products. Plus, like many companies, it’s weaning itself off carbon. Using new plas2cs -­‐-­‐ such as body buYer containers and boYle lids made from methane gas captured from farms -­‐-­‐ the company wants to ensure that 70 percent of product packaging is not produced by burning fossil fuels. The next phase will be premiering a new poli2cal campaign, like the one used to ban animal tes2ng. The company declined to comment on what the campaign will focus on, but said it expects to start organizing ac2vists some2me next year. “We are small, but we lead,” Schwartz said in a statement. “For us, being truly sustainable means shaping our business to work in line with the planet’s natural systems so they can replenish and restore themselves.” THE BODY SHOP Here's a helpful infographic, put together by the Body Shop, to explain its commitment. CHANGE – EVENT PACK
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