World Environment Day: How Beauty Brands Are Making Sustainability the New Standard
The beauty industry is undergoing a green transformation, with leading brands redefining luxury through sustainability, ethical sourcing, and circular innovation.
Sustainability is having its well-deserved moment in the beauty world and this time, it's more than skin deep. Gone are the days when beauty was judged solely by glossy packaging and sensorial formulas. Today, the most forward-thinking brands are rewriting the playbook, proving that luxury and responsibility can and must coexist. This World Environment Day, as global attention turns to environmental accountability, beauty brands in India are not just pledging sustainability they're embodying it.
'At L'Occitane en Provence, beauty and sustainability go hand in hand," says Simi Dewan, Deputy General Manager, L'Occitane India. 'We responsibly source natural ingredients with full traceability, protect biodiversity, and support local communities." The brand's Big Little Things program encourages customers to return empties from any beauty brand for recycling. With eco-refills that cut plastic use by up to 85%, L'Occitane blends indulgence with intention—reminding us that every small action contributes to a larger ripple effect.
The Body Shop, a pioneer in ethical beauty, is leading with purpose on multiple fronts. 'Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do—from how we source our ingredients to how we package our products," shares Harmeet Singh, Chief Brand Officer, The Body Shop – South Asia. Their long-standing partnership with Plastics For Change has supported over 2,000 waste collectors in India, building a more inclusive and ethical waste management ecosystem. Meanwhile, their Return, Recycle, Repeat (RRR) program ensures packaging doesn't end up in landfills but gets a meaningful second life.
This deepening shift in values is becoming more than just an industry trend—it's an evolution. 'Sustainability in beauty is not just about keeping up with trends, it's about safeguarding the future," explains Vidushi Goyal, Chief Marketing Officer, Swiss Beauty. With a growing focus on vegan formulations and cruelty-free products, Swiss Beauty is part of a new wave redefining what glamour looks like in the age of environmental consciousness.
The sentiment is echoed by Saahil Nayar, Co-Founder and CEO, Mila Beauté, a skincare-infused makeup label, 'Modern beauty consumers are thoughtful and discerning. They care not just about how well a product works, but also about its ingredients, production process, and impact on the planet." Mila Beauté's clean, toxin-free approach underscores a rising demand for transparency and integrity—proof that innovation today is as much about ethics as aesthetics.
Haircare, too, is undergoing a green glow-up. Celebrity hairstylist Florian Hurel, founder of fhair, shares, 'Our commitment to sustainability starts at the core with clean formulations, recyclable packaging, and ethical sourcing. Sustainability isn't just a standard. With fhair, it's a promise." His label steers clear of harsh chemicals while embracing community-driven eco-awareness, proving hair health and planetary health can grow hand in hand.
Brands like O3+ are taking this further by rethinking salon operations. 'We consciously avoid the use of cartons, and our packaging materials are FSC-certified," says Vidur Kapur, Director, O3+. 'In salons, we replace disposable tissues with reusable sponges, and our facial kits use recyclable materials." These changes, though subtle, build toward a larger ecosystem of responsible consumption and low-waste luxury.
K-beauty brand Innisfree, known for its nature-powered formulations, is quietly cultivating change, too. 'We've introduced recyclable packaging across several lines and are expanding refillable options in India," says Mini Sood Banerjee, Assistant Director and Head of Marketing, Innisfree India. 'We minimize our environmental impact by using FSC-certified packaging instead of plastic, delivering effective beauty that's kind to the planet."
At the heart of this industry-wide awakening lies one shared belief: beauty must no longer come at the cost of the Earth. Whether it's reducing plastic waste, supporting fair trade, or embracing circular design, these brands are showing that sustainability is not a trend to chase, it's the foundation on which modern beauty must be built.
Because ultimately, the most beautiful glow is the one that comes with a clear conscience.
First Published:
June 05, 2025, 07:43 IST
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Hindustan Times
4 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Ring Roads: The allure and cost of asphalt loops
The Delhi government recently proposed a lofty solution to the city's chronic traffic woes: an elevated ring road stacked atop the existing 55-kilometre Ring Road, a plan now set for a feasibility study. But, Delhi is not the only city to rely on a ring road to keep traffic free-flowing. Hyderabad's 158-km Outer Ring Road, finished in 2018, sparked a real estate boom. (Shutterstock) Across India, cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Lucknow, Pune, and Chennai are all either building or have announced plans for new orbital roads, with names as layered as the roads themselves: ORR (Outer Ring Road), PRR (Peripheral Ring Road), and now RRR (Regional Ring Road), often in collaboration with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Once imagined as a way to connect fast-growing suburbs beyond the city core — not necessarily to decongest — these roads have since morphed into high-stakes mobility projects promising relief from the gridlock choking India's cities. Yet as these new loops of asphalt take shape — the existing ones already battling the very congestion they were meant to avoid — a pressing question looms: do ring roads really cure chronic traffic woes, or do they fuel unsustainable sprawl, quietly reshaping the geography and chemistry of the cities they were meant to unclog? Tracing the ring road's journey In the 1920s and 1930s, Europe pioneered highway ring roads. Berlin's AVUS (1921), Munich's Mittlerer Ring (planned in the 1930s), and London's North and South Circular Roads (1920s–1930s) were the early ring roads, built not to ease traffic jams — vehicle ownership was still low — but to enhance urban connectivity and organise growing cities by linking suburbs, radial roads, and industrial zones. After World War II, car ownership surged, prompting new rings like London's M25 and Berlin's A10 to tackle rising congestion. India's first ring road was built in Delhi. In the mid-1950s, still reeling from Partition and overcrowded with refugees, city planners prepared the Interim General Plan for Greater Delhi (1958–59) , a precursor to the Master Plan for Delhi (1962). This, said AK Jain, former commissioner (planning), Delhi Development Authority (DDA), envisioned three concentric road loops: an Inner Ring Road, a Ring Road and an Outer Ring Road. 'The aim, inspired partly by European models, was to spatially organise the growing city, linking new refugee colonies to the traditional core,' said Jain. 'So, connectivity — not decongestion — was the original plan.' In practice, only two continuous ring roads were built — Ring Road, completed in the 1960s, and Outer Ring Road, completed in the early 1980s. The central government, Jain added, encouraged state governments to prepare similar blueprints for ring roads for their capital cities. Other cities saw merit in the idea and began charting their own circular arteries. Chennai, for example, built its 25.2-km Inner Ring Road in the 1970s, followed by a 62-km Outer Ring Road completed in 2021, and is now working on a 132.87-km Peripheral Ring Road slated for completion by January 2026. Bengaluru's 60-km Outer Ring Road, built in the 1990s, is already congested, and land acquisition for a new 73-km Peripheral Ring Road is currently in progress. Ahmedabad completed its 76-km Sardar Patel Ring Road in 2004 and is now planning a third ring road. Hyderabad's 158-km Outer Ring Road, completed in 2018, sparked a real estate boom, with a 340-km Regional Ring Road now proposed. Nagpur's 64-km Outer Ring Road is nearing completion, while Pune's ambitious 170-km ring road, currently under construction, aims to ease traffic by 2027. The rationale of the ring road The appeal of a ring road, say experts, is pretty simple: divert traffic, unclog the city's core, and create 'growth corridors' for housing and business without overwhelming existing infrastructure. In theory, it's a win-win. In practice, though, ring roads in India have often fuelled unplanned sprawl. By opening up peripheral land, they encourage low-density, car-dependent development, weakening the case for public transport and deepening reliance on private vehicles. Hyderabad's ORR, designed for speed and seamless connectivity — linking several highways, and cutting airport commutes from the financial district to under 30 minutes — also unleashed a massive real estate boom. Today, more than 60% of Hyderabad's new commercial space lies within 10km of the ORR. Unsurprisingly, the road already strains under its own success. Junctions like Gachibowli and Nanakramguda face daily gridlocks as narrow service lanes choke during peak hours. The bypass designed for high-speed travel is, many say, being slowly swallowed by the very city it was meant to skirt. Bengaluru's experience is similarly instructive. 'Ring roads are seductive in their simplicity — build a bypass, move the traffic out, and free up the core. But Indian cities, particularly Bengaluru, defy that logic,' said city-based architect and urban designer Naresh Narasimhan. 'The ORR was never just a ring road for long. It quickly became a spine for speculative real estate, tech parks, and gated communities. What was meant to divert traffic ended up attracting it.' He warned the city's proposed PRR risks repeating the pattern 'unless we completely rethink what we mean by a ring road'. S Velmurugan, chief scientist and head of the traffic engineering and safety division at the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), points out that Bengaluru and Chennai are further constrained by limited road networks — about 8,500km and 7,000km respectively — compared to Delhi's 33,000km, which has an extensive radial road network that ensures better traffic flow. 'Ring roads in these cities got congested within a few years as urban growth outpaced road capacity. Instead of serving long-distance travel, they began handling short intra-city trips,' he said. 'I don't think Delhi's plan to build an elevated ring road over the existing one will solve anything. It will only promote car use. Ring roads have become part of the problem — not the solution.' Rewiring the city For Hitesh Vaidya, urban expert and former director, National Institute of Urban Affairs ( NIUA), the sprawl triggered by ring roads is more than a spatial issue — it chips away at governance, social cohesion, and the very identity of cities. 'There's a limit to how far we can 'metropolitanise' in the name of economic growth and connectivity. Cities cannot expand indefinitely — we need to define their carrying capacity,' he said. Vaidya noted that cities once had a clear distinction between a dense core and a looser periphery. But as ring roads push boundaries outward, that distinction blurs. 'The core keeps expanding until the idea of a periphery disappears altogether. This leads to unplanned, fragmented growth that dilutes the essential character and form of a city.' Governance also becomes more complex. Peripheral areas eventually have to be pulled into the urban fold and brought under municipal corporations, straining administration. 'You end up either creating mega-municipal bodies that are impossible to manage — or breaking them into smaller corporations, which isn't ideal either,' he said. The environmental costs are equally troubling, added Delhi-based architect and urban designer Manit Rastogi: loss of green cover, disruption of natural water systems, and displacement of communities. 'In the name of easing traffic, we often weaken a city's ecological resilience and disrupt long-standing social networks,' he said. Vaidya argued that India should invest in satellite towns and small to medium-sized cities rather than concentrating economic activity on the fringes of megacities. 'We haven't had a comprehensive national study of India's urbanisation patterns since the National Commission on Urbanisation was set up in 1984, which analysed migration, sprawl, and infrastructure gaps following the 1981 Census,' he said. 'It's time to revisit our planning principles — not just to ease congestion, but to preserve what makes a city livable and legible.' OP Agarwal, retired IAS officer and former CEO of World Resources Institute (India), who was the lead author of the National Urban Transport Policy 2006, said, 'An elevated corridor running from point A to point B might be more effective than ring roads. At least it wouldn't trigger sprawl.' Citing Beijing as a cautionary tale, he added,'Beijing has five ring roads and sprawls across 5,000 square kilometres — over three times Delhi's 1,600 square kilometres.' As Tim Miller writes in his book China's Urban Billion, ring roads increase 'the potential area for urban development in one stroke, as all land within an orbital will quickly become fair game for development'. The road ahead As India pours billions into new ring roads, the question remains: can they deliver the free-flowing cities they promise? Experts argue the answer lies not in more asphalt, but in rethinking urban mobility itself. Cities, they say, need to prioritise mobility over mere movement — investing in bus networks, cycle lanes, and pedestrian infrastructure. Velmurugan stressed that in cities such as Chennai and Bengaluru, the only real solution is a robust expansion of public transport, particularly metro rail, since there's little space left for new road infrastructure. Mobility expert Shreya Gadepalli, based in Chennai, said that ring roads often fail due to poor land-use planning around them. 'If ring roads are to serve their original purpose, governments must regulate development along both sides through strict land-use controls,' she said. 'There should be limited access points, heavy tolls, and other disincentives for local traffic to use them.' But, she acknowledged a more likely future. 'Governments are increasingly treating ring roads as tools of urban economic growth, not just traffic solutions. That means they'll inevitably morph into arterial urban roads. If that's the case, we might as well plan them that way — make them inclusive, multimodal corridors with dedicated lanes for buses, safe pedestrian infrastructure, and protected cycling tracks.' Narasimhan agreed. 'If Bengaluru's upcoming PRR is to serve the city's future, it cannot be built only for car owners. 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6 days ago
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Hans India
06-08-2025
- Hans India
Komatireddy calls on Nitin Gadkari; gives him wishlist with key demands
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