Upcycled beauty claims: Why credibility, certification and consumer trust matter

Marking World Upcycling Day, the second webinar in the Upcycled Beauty series brought together a chemist, a standards body and a raw-material manufacturer to interrogate a claim that is everywhere in the sustainability zone yet still lacks a legal definition in cosmetics. 

I opened the session by setting out why the term matters and where it risks failing.

Fortune Business Insights projects the upcycled cosmetic ingredients market to nearly double within a decade, driven largely by skincare and reinforced by regulatory pressure from the EU CSRD and the Nature Restoration Regulation. But I cautioned that the consumer case is not yet won. Market research shared by Richard Cope from Ecovox shows only around a 50% conversion rate on upcycled food, pointing to a significant education gap.

Borrowing the Upcycled Food Association's five-criteria framework (waste-derived, value-added, safe, transparent, traceable), I argued that cosmetics needs its own expanded definition, one that moves beyond simple waste reuse to demonstrable added value, performance and supply-chain transparency.

Yuan Gao, COO of Lignopure, grounded that principle in a single material. His central argument was that upcycling is "value creation, not material reuse": origin alone is never enough, because a side stream only becomes credible when it is functionally upgraded into something measurable and useful.

Using lignin, the plant polymer separated as a low-value by-product of the pulp and paper industry and traditionally burned for energy recovery, he showed how its aromatic, phenolic structure delivers genuine cosmetic functions, including UV protection (in vivo SPF boosts of 10–12 points at 1% inclusion), antioxidant activity, oil absorption and soft-focus effects.

Gao distilled credibility into four steps; define, validate, standardise, communicate. He also warned against the language of "waste," which consumers can misread as low quality. His preferred narrative reframes the journey as plant-based origin, circular sourcing, scientific upgrade and proven cosmetic performance.

Laurent Millet, General Manager at COSMOS-standard AISBL, brought the certification perspective and the regulatory lens. His message was blunt: "upcycled" is one of beauty's best words, but it only matters if you can back it up. In the absence of any standard definition, honest food-industry leftovers and relabelled cheap feedstocks carry the same claim.

That latitude is closing with Directive (EU) 2024/825, the "Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition" directive, nicknamed EmpCo. Adopted in February 2024 and applying from 27 September 2026, it will ban vague green wording unless backed by independently verified certification.

Millet's practical test reduces any upcycled claim to three questions: what is it really, where does it come from, and who checked it? He stressed that COSMOS issues no standalone "upcycled badge"; instead, every ingredient, upcycled or not, is sorted into one of five categories and traced end to end. His refrain: no trail, no claim.

Anna Crovetto of The Upcycle Beauty Company offered the most provocative framings of the discussion: the idea that the upcycled claim should eventually disappear altogether.

As a B Corp raw-material manufacturer, her vision is a circular cosmetics economy in which circular design becomes the baseline, not a marketing differentiator.

She noted that many legacy ingredients, including tallow, lanolin and mineral oil, already originate as by-products. The same is of several trending 2025 actives identified via Spate data, including collagen, curcumin, rice and PDRN from salmon. But origin alone does not make them an upcycled ingredient.

Poll results from France, Spain and Switzerland reinforced this point, with most respondents insisting on traceable and ethical supply-chain validation, especially for animal-derived materials.

With no cosmetics-specific standard available, her company adapted the Upcycled Food Association certification and drafted its own working definition requiring a demonstrable net-positive planetary impact.

Underpinning it all is a stark figure: up to 40% of the world's food is never eaten, making food-waste reduction, per Project Drawdown, a leading climate solution.

The panel converged on a clear consensus, despite coming at the topic from different vantage points.

Origin is the starting point, not the proof. Value must be created through functional transformation, and the strongest by-product supply chains are the large, consistent, industrial ones, such as food, paper and forestry, which can support scale and reliability.

Traceability and independent third-party verification are what separate a genuine claim from a story. With the incoming EmpCo directive, the verification will become a market requirement, not just a mark of best practice.

The panel also agreed "waste" is the wrong word for consumers. A better framing is an underutilised, or previously hidden, valuable resource.

Finally, communication should lead with performance and benefit: the efficacy hook. Consumers increasingly shop for what an ingredient does, not only what sustainability story sits behind it.

The shared endpoint was striking. As circular design becomes the baseline of raw-material production, the upcycled claim itself may eventually become redundant. The panellists suggested that would be a sign of success, not failure.

Watch the full webinar to hear the discussion in full and learn how upcycling is evolving across beauty ingredients, standards and circular innovation.

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