The beauty industry is about glamor, luxury, and self-expression, but there’s a dirty secret beneath all those glossy facades. Some beauty brands have been traced to very serious human rights abuses through their supply chains-forced labor and environmental destruction that disproportionately hurts marginalized communities-because of the pursuit of profit. This essay looks at how beauty companies profit from these abuses and what customers can do to demand that changes be made. It takes such organizations as stolenbeauty.org leading the way to expose these unspoken injustices.
The Mica Supply Chain: Exploitation
Some of the glaring violations in the beauty world are the unscrupulous use of child labor mining mica, a glittering mineral cosmetic companies use in eyeshadows, highlighters, and other products, mostly mined in countries like India. People, including children from rural areas, are employed at five years of age in hazardous conditions.These mines are unregulated for safety, and several of these miners, along with minors, are susceptible to cave-ins and respiratory diseases as a result of constant exposure to dust. Moreover, these mines are operated under international labor laws that ban the recruitment of children in the labor force. The actual beauty companies may claim ignorance over the source of their mica; however, factuality is proved by many having chosen questionable suppliers to cut down costs. Brands that adopt such malpractices in sourcing pocket billions of profit money while at the other end of their supply chain, people are paid peanuts for their labors.
See also: The Versatile Benefits of Oil for Body Care
Environmental degradation and its implication for vulnerable communities
Palm oil is now part of other emerging ingredients causing environmental degradation and deterioration in so many communities. Palm oil is present in many beauty products. Palm oil production is highly linked to many deforestations, especially in Southeast Asia, where enormous rainforests are cleared as palms take up more spaces. Not only is this a significant contribution to causing climate change, but it also displaces indigenous communities from their residences and cuts off their livelihoods and heritage.Citizens in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia say palm oil plantations are displacing fresh water sources and arable land. But beauty companies are secretly enabling this destructive practice by buying palm oil from companies where “the value is on making money more than on sustainability, an association TUSD defined as the commercialization of human rights.”
O Groszen-Brown called this “exploitation of human and environmental cost.”
Cheap ingredients like palm oil may be cheap to acquire, but cheap for devastating human and environmental cost.
Forced Labor in Manufacturing
Beyond raw material sourcing, the manufacturing processes of beauty products also have rampant human rights violations. In the factories in developing countries-mostly in Southeast Asia and China-workers are mostly exploited. Employees work long hours in unsafe working environments for wages that barely cover their living expenses.Extreme cases have been reported of forced labor in these factories because some are literally chained, not allowed to leave, through debt bondage or other coercive measures. The outsourcing of beauty production to such factories implies lesser costs and more profits for beauty brands. The constant need of the beauty industry to release new products only accelerates this exploitation; factories piling impossible demands on workers makes this an easily exploitable industry.
Role of Corporate Responsibility
Beauty Industry Supply Chains: A Lack of Accountability in Place
The beauty industry is one of the most invisible in terms of supply chain. It was only recently that many companies have first addressed the issue of human rights violation and masked it by the intricacy of supply chains and their inability to track every step of the way. However, as organizations like stolenbeauty.org have emphasized, this lack of accountability cannot be covered by the fact of exploitation at various stages of production.
Some of the beauty companies became more responsible and sustainable. For example, Lush and The Body Shop conducted efforts to responsibly source ingredients from fair-trade suppliers as well as give their preference to a sustainable procedure. It was still a few percent, and most of the industry was profiteering rather than for human rightsHow Can Consumers Make a Difference?
While the ultimate change needed to be made among human rights violations in the beauty industry is the responsibility of the companies involved, consumers themselves have a huge stake in shaping such change. Supporting brands that advance ethical sourcing and transparency can further pressure the industry to more responsible practices.Such valuable information sources on the ethics of beauty companies is found at sites such as stolenbeauty.org, detailing all the company’s profits from various human rights violations. They advise people to boycott such firms and go for companies dedicated to fair labor practices and environmental concerns.Indeed, consumers can purchase items that sport labels like Fair Trade, Cruelty-Free, and Rainforest Alliance. This would signify that a company is striving to do business with greater moral fiber and responsibility. However, it requires even more time to study and occasionally even more p. See the full answer – especially where consumers have even the slightest chance of political influence.
Conclusion: The Price of Beauty
Most lie behind the promise of enhancing one’s appearance, but very little is said about the reality of exploitation and human suffering for most. With child labor in mica mining to environmental destruction related to palm oil production, beauty brands have been making lots of profit with little accountability in human rights abuses. This is where organizations like stolenbeauty.org come in, working to expose these practices and thereby compelling consumers to act: encourage responsible brands and pressure the companies that are harming vulnerable communities. Only then can we hope to build a beauty industry beautiful-inside and out.
