Aveda Is Now 100% Vegan & Announces New Global Ambassador

Aveda Makes Huge Sustainability Progress & Announces New Global Ambassador Arizona Muse

Aveda is now 100 percent vegan, a new milestone in the brand’s sustainability journey. That means every Aveda product—hair care, hair color, body care, makeup and aroma—is now made with zero animal-derived ingredients. And if that wasn’t big enough, the brand just announced a new global ambassador. Keep reading for more deets!

Why is going 100 percent vegan so important to Aveda? “Choosing and using vegan products helps lower the demand of animal-derived ingredients, which can help save animals, reduce the exploitation of natural resources and protect the planet from excess CO2 emissions, said Aveda Global Brand President Barbara De Laere during a sneak peek media event in late 2020.

The brand also made a major announcement—its first-ever global ambassador is model and climate activist Arizona Muse! After realizing that, as a model, she didn’t know where the clothes she was wearing and helping to sell came from, Arizona delved deep into self-education about the climate crisis we face. Now Arizona works as a sustainability consultant, helping fashion brands transition into a regenerative future.

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As part of her role with Aveda, Arizona will educate around sustainable choices that individuals can make to help foster change; lead conversations with other thought leaders that are passionate about climate change and share sustainability news on behalf of the Aveda brand.

How To Go Vegan

To make sure the brand could be completely vegan, Christine Hall, Aveda’s VP of Research and Development, and her team had to evaluate more than 900 ingredients over three years to be sure there were zero animal-derived ingredients. Surprisingly, many “vegan” products can be processed with animal-derived ingredients, making the end result non-vegan. For example, squalene can be extracted from shark liver oil (non-vegan) or olives (vegan).

Aveda has always been cruelty-free since its founding in 1978 and was almost completely vegan already. However, some products contained honey, beeswax and beeswax-derived ingredients. To be completely vegan, the brand’s products must have no animal or animal-derived ingredients, and removing honey and beeswax-derived ingredients wasn’t easy.

“Removing beeswax was one of the biggest challenges for Aveda formulators because it helps to create texture, structure, color payoff, and smoothness,” explained Christine. “One common alternative to beeswax for lip products specifically is synthetic beeswax, a wax that is petroleum derived. But at Aveda, because we are committed to maximizing our use of naturally-derived ingredients, we opted instead to create a unique blend of plant-based butters and waxes that are strong enough for application, but also feel good on your lips.”

Beeswax can also have an impact on aroma and is often found in products containing fragrance. Kate Rosso, Aveda’s Principle Perfumer explained, “we used an ingredient called beeswax absolute in some of our aromas. It is extracted from honeycomb or from cakes of beeswax. It provided a sweet, warm, complex note and helped increase its ‘staying power.’ We have worked hard to recreate these formulas using only non-animal derived ingredients to ensure that our iconic aromas would not be affected.”

“This work has been in progress for more than three years and it is a big milestone for us: it is part of our brand promise to create high-performance products that are 90 percent naturally-derived (on average) and formulated with our mission of sustainability in mind,” said Barbara. “We believe in no-compromise formulas at Aveda: there is no reason why we can’t have sustainable, animal-friendly products that work for all hair types and textures!”

 Continued Commitment To Sustainability

Aveda’s 58-acre campus in Blaine, Minnesota includes honeybee colonies, an employee-curated vegetable garden, electric vehicle charging stations and miles of running trails. The land is National Wildlife Federation Certified, and if you visit, you may see wildlife including turkeys, deer, turtles and groundhogs. More than 80 percent of the waste at the Aveda Headquarters is reused or recycled.

In September 2020, Aveda launched its Carbon Offset Shipping Program, which offsets 100% of carbon emissions generated by shipping products purchased on Aveda.com and shipped to U.S. guests at no cost to the guest. This year, the brand also launched its online Ingredient Glossary, which details what the brand’s key ingredients do and what they are sourced from.

And this summer, Aveda “flipped the switch” on a new 3.6 acre, 900kW ground-mounted solar array at its headquarters. The solar panels collect sunlight throughout the day, converting the light into electricity and supplying it to the manufacturing facility on campus, sending excess energy back to the grid. The new array is part of the brand’s vision to be a renewable energy generator.

“Behind the Aveda brand is a team of people that are passionate and energized by our mission to care for the world we live in, and our transition to 100 percent vegan formulations is a testament to the hard work of this team as they embarked on reformulating and repackaging our products,” said Barbara.