The Eco Well podcast

In this episode, I spoke with Dennis Abbeduto, Personal Care Business Manager at Colonial Chemical with a long career history as a chemist in the cosmetics industry. This conversation was mostly focused on surfactants, although we spent a lot of time talking about sustainability pertaining to some of the industry trends at the moment.

In this episode I spoke with Britt Hermes, previously a naturopath who’s now come full circle with her views on natural medicine. In our conversation, we talked about her experiences working in as a young naturopath, evidence required for therapeutic products and why that’s important, important things everyone should know about natural medicine, how this all relates to cosmetics, and more.

A couple of Saturdays ago, we launched a flagship event in Toronto called a Green Beauty Night. What is green beauty? This term is thrown around so flippantly, but what makes a product truly sustainable? Featured on the panel was Christian Euler from Phycus Biotechnologies, Jenise Lee from CertClean, Dayna Stein from Bare Market and myself.

In this episode, I spoke with Inke van der Sluijs, Head of European Operations for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. In light of the huge movement against palm oil, I wanted to take the time to connect with the RSPO to go through this challenging topic. Can palm oil be sustainable? If you’re someone who thinks that it can’t be, and that we should just switch to another oil, I would just urge you to listen to our conversation.

A panel presentation at Laurier University about waste reduction, featuring Robyn Hobbs, Ellin Park, Kathleen Barsoum and Sabine Weber. We talked waste… why we’re all passionate about the topic, issues we see in our own industries, waste management, waste reduction, and lots more.

In this episode, I spoke with Hayley Rutherford and Kate Pearce from the Waterloo Global Science Initiative (WGSI). Our conversation was mostly focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an acronym that you may have already heard of. We talked about what they are, why they’re a good overall outlook on sustainability, SDG action here in Canada, and how we can use the SDGs to make more sustainable decisions. What is sustainable beauty? The SDGs help answer that.

Guests for this conversation included Perry Romanowski, US based cosmetic chemist from Chemist Corner and the Beauty Brains Podcast, and Belinda Carli, Australian based cosmetic chemist and director of the Institute of Personal Care Sciences. In this episode, we talked about sources for misinformation, common misconceptions, certifications including ‘cruelty free’, free-from claims, and lots more.

In this episode, I had the chance to speak with Cara Santa Maria, who has been my personal science communication idol. I thought it would be fitting to talk with Cara about science communication - why is it important, what are some of the biases we have when receiving new information, and why we should all work to develop our critical thinking skills, including what we have against us through all the misinformation campaigns online and in marketing.

In this episode, I spoke with Valerie George, an American cosmetic chemist with expertise in hair care and hair color. This conversation was a Q&A episode - you guys submitted your hair care questions and Valerie answered them. Some of the topics covered included sulfates in shampoos, how product pH affects your hair, color protectant shampoos, silicones in hair care, heat protection, and so much more.

In this episode, I spoke with Nicole McCallum, co-founder at the Waterloo Region Environment Network (WREN), current PhD candidate at Laurier, and professor, previously at the University of Guelph and now at Laurier University. In our conversation, we spoke about information bias, emotional decision making, human nature and our propensity towards certain ideologies, the Dunning Kruger effect, and steps we can all take to be better decision makers.

In this episode, I spoke with Belinda Carli, an international speaker on cosmetic science and director of the Australian Institute of Personal Care Sciences. This conversation was focused on fear mongering in the industry, why that’s probably not the best approach, especially considering new regulations coming into place by the end of 2019 in the EU, misinformation and steps moving forward.

In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Phil Loring, Arrell Chair in Food, Policy and Society at the University of Guelph. While we spent a lot of our time talking about sustainability in food systems and food security, there’s so much applicability for raw ingredients used in cosmetics. In our conversation, we talked about Phil’s research on food security, sustainability in our food systems, science and pseudoscience, steps moving forward, and lots more.

In this episode, I spoke with Damien Perriman, Senior Vice President, Specialty Chemicals at Genomatica. In our conversation, we broke down the word ‘sustainability’, including what it means and how we can apply metrics for greener materials, current popular ‘natural’ and ‘eco’ certifications, challenges when trying to certify a product or material as ‘green’, whether ‘natural’ is synonymous with ‘sustainable’, challenges Genomatica has experienced with certifications, and more.

In this episode, I had the opportunity to speak with Deanna Utroske, editor at Cosmetics Design North America, now for the second time for this podcast. In our conversation, we talked about trends from 2018, especially in the ‘green’ space, what you can expect to be popular this 2019, advice few new beauty brands entering the industry this year, and lots more. Overall take home from the conversation, green beauty is here to stay.

We’ve been off for the holidays, but excited to get back into the swing of things, kicking off 2019 with my interview with Dr. Pratish Gawand from a Toronto based bio-tech startup called Adra Bio. In our conversation together, we talked about the raw ingredients Adra Bio produces and how they do it, why Pratish decided to hone in on those ingredients to be produced via biotech, sustainability in raw materials and how biotech can make certain ingredients viable and sustainable into the future, and lots mor