In the wake of the European Green Deal and the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainable Development, which is one of its components, essentiality or essential use is becoming a criterion for the acceptability of a substance or even a product. And this concept worries the industry, especially when it comes to proving that a cosmetic use is really essential to society. The Cosmetics Europe Annual Conference, held on June 15-16, 2022, made it one of its themes, and it was John Chave, its Director General, who presented the details of a recent survey… essential.
“We often hear that cosmetics are superficial or unnecessary… We in the cosmetics industry do not believe this to be true. And this is an increasingly central issue, not only in terms of perception, but also in terms of treatment and approach by stakeholders and legislators, notably with the concept of essentiality developed by the European Commission,” introduced John Chave.
And it is to measure how essential cosmetic products can be that Cosmetics Europe commissioned the international market research firm IFOP to conduct a survey on how consumers perceive cosmetic products.
The study was conducted in March 2022 via online questionnaires with a sample of 6033 consumers over 18 years of age, representative of the age and gender distribution of the population, in 10 countries across Europe (Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria).
A very wide use of cosmetics
The first finding of the study is that cosmetics are used by all consumers, at a rate of more than 7 different products per day (32% of respondents even use 8 or more) and nearly 13 per week (19% 15 or more). These figures rise to 9 and 15 respectively for women, while 18-24 year olds have …
