Gregg Renfrew, founder and CEO of Beautycounter is behind the coalition: “Beautycounter has led the charge to transform our nation's outdated cosmetic safety laws since we were founded,” she says in a press release announcing the new group.
“We know we can't do it alone, and are proud to work alongside other leaders in the rapidly growing safer and natural personal care industry to demand change in Washington, DC”
Who’s who
The Counteract Coalition is made up of leaders from these 15 brands: Beautycounter, Annamarie Skin Care, Biossance (the brand made by the biotech firm Amyris), côte, Goddess Garden, Follain, Josie Maran, OSEA, Peet Rivko, Rahua (a startup recently featured on this site’s Indie Beauty Profile), Seventh Generation (which has for a year now been owned by Unilever), Silk Therapeutics, SW Basics, tenoverten, Vapour Organic Beauty, and Vintner's Daughter.
And every executive and brand involved is passionate about what they call clean beauty. As Mary Lennon, founder of côte nail shop explains in the press release circulated by the Counteract Coaliton: "côte is honored and excited to be participating in this historic beauty coalition. From its beginning, côte has stood for safe and performance-driven nail products. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to join forces with like-minded companies to focus attention on the cleaner safer beauty movement."
In DC this week the group is meeting with national lawmakers and asking for a hearing on the Personal Care Products Safety Act.
If you build it
“Legislative change that will truly protect American families from harmful chemicals in personal care products will happen when the safer and natural beauty industry shows it is possible,” Renfrew tells the press.
Some personal care and cosmetics brands have been working toward that reality for years, California Baby is a good example (that company has been in the natural products business since 1995). Many other brands passionate about ingredient, formulation, and application safety in the industry are relatively recent indie startups. And still others are brands owned by multinational personal care brands (as illustrated by the inclusion of Seventh Generation on the above list of coalition members).