The Body Shop announces its 100% vegan achievement, making it the world’s first global beauty brand* to offer 100% vegan product formulations certified by The Vegan Society**across all ranges including skincare, body care, haircare, makeup and fragrance. The trailblazing beauty retailer has reached the ambitious target it set for itself in 2021, when 60% of its products already carried The Vegan Society trademark.
The Body Shop was founded with a fundamental belief that animals should not be harmed in the pursuit of beauty, and in 1989 became the first beauty retailer to campaign against animal testing in cosmetics. Just last June, the activist retailer celebrated a historic win in Canada with the federal government’s commitment to prohibit cosmetic animal testing, the sale of cosmetics that rely on new animal testing data to establish product safety and the printing of false or misleading labelling pertaining to cosmetic animal testing nationwide. While the fight continues for a worldwide ban on animal testing in cosmetics, for The Body Shop, a fully vegan product portfolio is the next milestone in cruelty-free beauty.
Throughout 2024, the brand will further expand its breadth of vegan offerings, with new products hitting the shelves as early as January, starting with an addition to its Full Flowers premium fragrance range: Full Magnolia, which will be available for purchase in-store and online on January 15. Fans of the Peppermint range will be pleased to learn the collection is expanding beyond foot-care to include two new body care products too: Peppermint Shower Gel and Peppermint Body Lotion, both of which will be available for purchase in-store and online on February 12.
“This accomplishment is an expression of our changemaking ethos, and goes back to our roots of championing animal welfare,” said Hilary Lloyd, VP of Brand and Activism, The Body Shop North America. “Offering a 100% vegan certified product portfolio is an achievement we have been working towards for years, and is not one we take lightly. Our hope is that more global beauty brands follow suit and realise the ways in which natural-origin, vegan, cruelty-free beauty can benefit our people and our planet without compromising product efficacy.”
The vegan cosmetics industry is predicted to grow with 6.31% compound annual growth rate between 2023-28 and reach $24 billion by 20281. With over one in ten young people saying that ‘vegan’ is an important factor in their health and beauty purchase decisions2, this move from The Body Shop also responds to growing customer demands.
Director of Business Development at The Vegan Society, Chantelle Adkins, comments: “Today we are extending a massive congratulations to The Body Shop for achieving 100% of their product formulations being vegan and certified with The Vegan Society’s Vegan Trademark. This has been a massive project for them and showcases their commitment and dedication to vegan beauty. We hope that this significant step sets a global standard for other beauty brands to follow and inspires further change to reduce animal use and exploitation across the industry.”
The Vegan Society represents the global gold standard in vegan certification across multiple industries, providing a trusted trademark for The Body Shop products. The certification process is thorough, with a meticulous assessment of every supplier and manufacturer of raw materials within the product catalogue. For The Body Shop, this meant over 4000 ingredients had to be validated for over 1000 products to carry the stamp.
