Aveda has always been committed to clean and sustainable beauty. To ring in 2021, the beloved brand has announced a new milestone in its sustainability journey: all Aveda hair care, hair color, body care, makeup and aroma products are now 100% vegan.

Eliminating Animal Ingredients

Vegan products are defined as those that are created without any animal or animal-derived ingredients. Many such ingredients are used in beauty including beeswax and honey, as well as silk, keratin, glycerin, non-vegetal squalene, lanolin, collagen and carmine. Aveda has been cruelty-free since the brand was founded in 1978 and was largely vegan except for some products that contained honey, beeswax and beeswax-derived ingredients.

“Removing beeswax was one of the biggest challenges for Aveda formulators because it helps to create texture, structure, color payoff, and smoothness,” says Christine Hall, Aveda’s VP of Research and Development. “One common alternative to beeswax for lip products specifically is synthetic beeswax, a wax that is petroleum derived. But at Aveda, because we are committed to maximizing our use of naturally derived ingredients, we opted instead to create a unique blend of plant-based butters and waxes that are strong enough for application, but also feel good on your lips.”

Decades in the Making

In accordance with Aveda’s founding mission to care for the world we live in, the brand has pioneered new benchmarks of environmental responsibility in beauty for decades. Aveda was the first company to sign the Ceres Principles for corporate responsibility, which calls for the safeguarding of the Earth and its inhabitants. While this was in 1989, Aveda’s commitment remains strong; protecting the Earth’s inhabitants by eliminating animal and animal-derived ingredients from its products was vitally important to the brand.

Barbara De Laere, Aveda Global Brand President said, “Behind the Aveda brand is a team of people that are passionate and energized by our mission to care for the world we live in, and our transition to 100% vegan formulations is a testament to the hard work of this team as they embarked on reformulating and repackaging our products. This work has been in progress for more than three years and it is a big milestone for us: it is part of our brand promise to create high-performance products that are 90% naturally derived (on average) and formulated with our mission of sustainability in mind. We believe in no-compromise formulas at Aveda: there is no reason why we can’t have sustainable, animal-friendly products that work for all hair types and textures!”

A More Sustainable Future

In September 2020, Aveda launched its Carbon Offset Shipping program, which offsets 100% of carbon emissions generated by shipping products purchased on Aveda.com and shipped to U.S. guests at no cost to the guest.

Additionally, Aveda “flipped the switch” on a new 3.6 acre, 900kW ground-mounted solar array at its headquarters in June 2020. The solar panels collect sunlight throughout the day, converting the light into electricity and supplying it to the manufacturing facility on campus, sending excess energy back to the grid. The new array is part of the brand’s vision to be a renewable energy generator.

To learn more about Aveda’s sustainability initiatives, visit aveda.com/sustainablefuture.