21 March 2015
Beauty and the beast — Shark in our beauty creams
21 March 2015
In 2012, BLOOM carried out a worldwide study on the use of shark squalane, a substance extracted from the livers of sharks, especially deepwater shark species which are especially vulnerable to overfishing and often endangered. The study revealed that the cosmetics sector was the main consumer of animal squalane, even though plant substitutes derived from sugar cane or olive were available. The report pointed to the urgency for corporations to take their environmental responsibility seriously and to modify their supply chain in order to exclusively use plant squalane.
Two years later, in 2014, BLOOM proceeded to carry out the largest test ever made on commercial creams to identify the presence of shark squalane in them. In total, BLOOM tested 72 moisturizing creams whose list of ingredients mentioned “squalane”.
Read our report on the use of shark squalane in cosmetics
Results
Labels did not specify whether the squalane was animal-based (shark) or plant-based (olive or sugarcane). Ten creams out of 72 did not contain a sufficient volume of squalane altogether to identify its origin, but results were robust for 62 of the products tested. As a conclusion, one moisturizing cream out of five contains shark squalane. It appears that a high proportion of Asian brands still use shark squalane while Western brands, although still massively concerned by this issue in 2012, have globally shifted away from using shark substances. The fact that Asian brands lag behind with regards to adopting shark-free environmental standards for the composition of their cosmetics products points to the need of raising awareness in Asia on this issue and targeting communication efforts towards the Asian market, which has not been done up to now.