Retailer compliance can be a minefield, so let Coptis smooth the way

In the USA, especially, where consumers are calling for more government regulation on ingredients used in products, just under half of clean beauty and personal care users have stopped using a product in the past year due to an ingredient safety concern.  

Amid this environment, beauty stores are helping to limit skepticism and make consumer decisions easier by setting up their own environmental programs and seals. It is a trend that makes customers’ lives easier, but adds an extra level of potential complication for manufacturers who wish to position their brands as ‘conscious.’  

One of the first retailers to launch their own initiative was French multinational Sephora with Clean at Sephora, unveiled in 2018 and featuring products formulated without sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), sodium laureth sulfate (SLES), parabens, formaldehyde, phthalates, and mineral oils, among other ingredients. The category originally encompassed 50 brands and 2,000 SKUs, and Sephora also launched a clean landing page for customers to shop online. 

A year later, it updated its ‘formulated without’ list to include more than 50 ingredients, up from 13 in 2018. Added ingredients included butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), mercury and mercury compounds, aluminum salts, and lead, among others. 

In 2024, Sephora brought out a dedicated Clean at Sephora seal – and, at launch, 133 brands worldwide met the Clean at Sephora ingredient list, including Drunk Elephant, Fenty Skin, Gisou, Haus Lab, Ilia, Kosas, K18, and The 7 Virtues. 

Today, Sephora’s list of prohibited ingredients for Clean at Sephora is: acetaldehyde, acetonitrile, acetone, acrylates, aluminum salts, benzophenones and related compounds, bisphenol A (BPA), butoxyethanol, BHA, coal tar, ethanolamines, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, formaldehyde releasing agents, hydroquinone, lead and lead acetate, mercury and mercury compounds, methoxyethanol or methyl cellosolve, methylene chloride, methylchloroisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone, parabens, phthalates, resorcinol, retinyl palmitate, styrene, sulfates, toluene, triclosan and triclocarban, 1,4 dioxane, octinoxate, PFAS compounds, nitromusks and polycyclic musks, cyclic silicones, EDTA and derivatives, benzene, octocrylene, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), and mineral oil and derivatives.  

Restrictions, meanwhile, apply to acrylamide and polyacrylamide, benzalkonium chloride, phenoxyethanol, talc, fragrance, synthetic fragrance, other heavy metals, nanomaterials, and carbon black or black 2 (nanomaterial). 

Banned or restricted packaging materials – added December 31, 2025 – include halogenous compounds, bisphenols, silver salts, and mineral oils.   

When Sephora issued the Clean at Sephora seal in 2024, it also launched a second seal for greater consumer transparency, called Planet Aware at Sephora. To qualify for the Planet Aware at Sephora seal, brands must meet a minimum of 32 specific criteria across ingredient sourcing and formulation, packaging, corporate, and consumer transparency, as follows: 

• Brands must sustainably source certain ingredients and develop formulas with the product’s lifecycle and environmental impact in mind, including by not intentionally adding phthalates and chemical UV filters; 

• Brands must reduce packaging waste where possible, aim to incorporate refillable, recyclable, and compostable packaging, and prioritize the use of recycled materials;  

• Brands must make efforts related to their environmental impact, including measuring and tracking their footprint, and aspiring to reduce their environmental impact; and 

• Brands must provide information related to products’ environmental impacts to help customers make informed choices, for example, how best to sort and recycle product packaging.   

Initially, 40 brands worldwide met the Planet Aware at Sephora criteria. At the same time, the retailer introduced a combined seal, Clean + Planet Aware at Sephora, for brands meeting all requirements. Here, upon launch, 39 brands worldwide – including Amika, Biossance, Briogeo, By Rosie Jane, Glow Recipe, Skinfix, and Unbottled – met the combined criteria.  

But Sephora is not the only retailer with its own green beauty criteria. In 2019, US retailer Target expanded the use of its Target Clean icon – first rolled out for household and baby care – to its beauty and personal care line-up. At the time, nearly 4,000 beauty and personal care products qualified for Target Clean, encompassing those from labels like Harry’s, Pacifica, S.W. Basics, Up & Up, Versed, Yuni, and more. Products carrying Target’s seal are formulated without commonly unwanted chemicals, including phthalates, propylparabens, butylparabens, and SLES, among other ingredients. 

Three years later, the retailer introduced Target Zero: a curated collection of products aiming to replace single-use packaging, with the assortment initially covering products across Target’s beauty and personal care roster, as well as its household essentials category. Products carrying the Target Zero logo signal that both the products themselves and their packaging are designed to be refillable, reusable, or compostable, made from recycled content, or made from materials that reduce the use of plastic. 

Ulta Beauty likewise introduced Conscious Beauty at Ulta Beauty across its stores and online in 2020 – a holistic initiative to deliver transparency and inspire more informed, conscious product choices. Brands involved upon launch included Tula, Beekman 1802, Pacifica, Juice Beauty, KVD Beauty, Fekkai, Tarte, Mad Hippie, Kreyol Essence, and Ulta Beauty Collection, certified within the program’s five pillars, namely: 

• Clean Ingredients: Excludes parabens, phthalates, and other ingredients on Ulta Beauty’s Made Without List. 

• Cruelty Free: Accepts Peta, Leaping Bunny, or Choose Cruelty Free certifications for brands that do not conduct animal testing. 

• Vegan: Created without animal products, by-products or derivatives. 

• Sustainable Packaging: To qualify, at least 50% of a brand’s packaging must be made from bio-sourced or recycled materials, or be recyclable or refillable, contributing towards Ulta Beauty’s pledge to ensure at least 50% of all packaging sold will be sustainable by 2025. 

• Positive Impact: Highlights brands that have giving back at their core. 

The launch coincided with the publication of Ulta Beauty’s Made Without List, an ingredient standard used to certify brands under the retailer’s Clean Ingredients pillar. 

For beauty brands positioned as clean and environmentally conscious, who wish to be part of a program like Sephora’s or Ulta’s, a Digital R&D Platform, like Coptis’ version, makes all the difference.  

Cosmetic Product Development Platform can automate document generation, complex calculations, including impurities and traces, INCI lists, and allergen declarations, and non-conformity checks to help formulators save time and streamline their workflow. Product Development Software also manages blacklisted substances and can also issue regulatory alerts to instantly check whether the proposed formula is compliant with target markets. 

To discover more about Coptis and how its Cosmetic Formulation & Compliance solution can help you create products that not only comply with your target geographical region, but also your target retailers’ most exacting certification standards, contact our teams to request a demo.