Green Beauty Live Panel
This past Saturday, we launched a flagship event in Toronto, in collaboration with The Eco Well called a Green Beauty Night. What is green beauty? This term is thrown around so flippantly, but what makes a product truly sustainable? Is natural synonymous with ‘green’? Should we be looking to certifications and non-governmental organizations for insights about our products? What are some of the metrics we should be looking to when calling a product green? Featured on the panel was Christian Euler from Phycus Biotechnologies, Jenise Lee from CertClean, Dayna Stein from Bare Market and our very own Jen Novakovich, who also works as a cosmetic chemist and directs The Eco Well.
Alas we had some pretty big technical challenges on this recording - our primary recording was corrupt and we ended up taking the audio from our camera recording. Unfortunately we lost some parts of the conversation, but we were able to salvage a good amount of the discussion to publish a podcast. I absolutely loved how this panel presentation turned out, and I’m really sad not to have the full conversation with you. With that said, this isn’t going to be the only green beauty night - we plan to launch the event in other cities, as well as again in Toronto. Stay tuned.
Dayna Stein is the founder of Bare Market - Toronto's one-stop shop for package-free goods. Dayna has a Bachelor of Science in sustainable food systems and food security and an Masters of Science in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability. Prior to starting Bare Market, Dayna was a consultant working with clients across sectors on sustainable food systems and social enterprise development. Now she spends her days making refillable body, home care (and eventually bulk food) options, as well as, "reduced waste" lifestyle items more physically and financially accessible to the everyday consumer. In 2018, Dayna was recognized as Notable Life's Eco-Warrior of the Year.
Jenise Lee is the Founder of CertClean, North America's certification for safer skincare. You can find thousands of beauty and personal care products globally with the CertClean certification. In 2017, Jenise was honoured as one of Canada's top sustainability leader, named Canada's Top 100 health influencers alongside Wayne Gretzky and Sophie Trudeau, and nominated for the Governor General's Innovation Award. Jenise has a Chemical Engineering degree (University of Waterloo), and a MBA (Schulich School of Business). Prior to starting her MBA, Jenise worked as an environmental engineering consultant where she led environmental impact studies and feasibility studies on leading edge renewable energy from biomethanation plants to solar projects to waste-to-energy facilities.
Christian Euler is a metabolic engineer, and cofounder and the director of strain engineering at Phycus Biotechnologies, a Toronto-based biotech startup making green ingredients for cosmetics. This incredible company produces glycolic acid, a very popular AHA ingredient used across cosmetics. Did you know that glycolic acid is typically produced using formaldehyde as a starting material, as well as petrol? Using cutting edge science, Phycus Bio has developed their own glycolic acid, via renewable resources (carbon dioxide, a win-win minimizing their carbon impact while producing the material at a lower cost). Christian is passionate about finding technical solutions to environmental problems and making green products accessible to consumers
This panel was moderated by our very own, Jen Novakovich