More companies are raising their sustainability profiles as well as their transparency regarding their products. Cocokind, a beauty brand founded by Priscilla Tsai in 2015, is tackling these issues head on in a new initiative.
 
Today, the brand has announced that it will include sustainability facts printed directly on its packaging.

The information will come from a third-party assessment of each product’s five-stage lifecycle—from pre-manufacture through consumer use and end-of-life.  The packaging refresh will also showcase formulation information, according to the San Francisco company.
 
Cocokind—which is sold at Target, Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and online at Ulta.com—is embarking on the sustainability label one product at a time.
 
After all, sustainability isn’t a goal; it is always a work in progress.
 
“We created Sustainability Facts and Formula Facts labeling on our packaging—also accessible on our website—as the first step in our commitment to embrace transparency more fully, Tsai told Happi. “The entire beauty industry, including Cocokind, has been guilty of using claims like ‘clean,’ ‘sustainable,’ or ‘research-backed’ without transparency and we all need to evolve and be better. We are excited to roll out these labels with new, substantive information that empowers our consumers to make the best, most informed purchasing decisions.” 
 
In announcing its commitment to being a carbon neutral company, Tsai insisted there’s more to the move than just purchasing carbon offsets.
 
“We are, instead, taking a phased approach to sustainability. We felt that it was important to first do the work to accurately measure our current impact at a product and company level, and make this available publicly to hold ourselves accountable. The next step will be to take this information and reduce what we can and offset what we can’t. Our goal is to go beyond writing a check, but to create a higher standard for change for ourselves, and the beauty industry as a whole,” she said.
 
Because sustainability efforts are unique to every product and every company, Tsai said she wanted to spell out what was most important to the brand; i.e., the carbon emissions per lifecycle of a product, manufacturing information and how to recycle instructions. 
 
“While there was so much more that we could have included, in a limited amount of space, we felt that this information best represented our efforts,” she said.
 
“Cocokind was launched, ultimately, because I cared so much about creating a better underlying business and product than what currently existed. The things I cared about seemed unpopular: what was in the bottle (not the bottle itself), sustainability, affordability and making customers feel good. Making this commitment to transparency is an actionable step towards our goal to educate and empower consumers to make the most informed decisions.” 
 
According to Tsai, Cocokind has always been a conscious brand, “and we’re proud to transparently show you the work that we are doing to be better, even if it’s ongoing and  ‘unfinished.’ We will continuously commit to more and more, while bringing you along for the journey.”