18/03/2026
Global Recycling Day is often framed around waste.
But what if the real challenge isn’t waste at all… it’s systems?
At the recent Sustainable Cosmetics & Beauty Forum, Marc Desmarais from Origin by Ocean unpacked a powerful idea: the beauty industry isn’t lacking sustainable solutions. It’s suffering from “green fragmentation.”
🔹 Bio-based alternatives exist
🔹 Upcycled ingredients are scaling
🔹 Circular innovations are emerging
And yet, impact remains limited.
Why?
Because the system is fragmented:
– Supply chains are disconnected
– Sustainability is measured inconsistently
– Solutions compete instead of aligning
Even well-intentioned innovations can cancel each other out. A waterless formula may reduce packaging, but rely on resource-intensive crops. A biotech ingredient may lower land use, but increase packaging emissions.
So the question becomes:
👉 Are we optimizing for less harm… or real impact?
We need to move beyond “sustainability” as a label and toward measurable, systemic impact.
That means:
♻️ Designing circular systems, not isolated solutions
🤝 Building shared infrastructure across the value chain
📊 Aligning on how we measure environmental impact
🌍 Collaborating instead of competing for “green” claims
A great example of this shift is the Circular Cosmetic Collective, a collaboration of impact-driven innovators working to transform waste and side streams into high-performance ingredients for the beauty industry.
At Origin by Ocean, this is exactly the thinking behind turning invasive algae into scalable, high-value ingredients, transforming an environmental problem into industrial opportunity.
Because recycling is not just about what we throw away.
It’s about what we choose to build next.
