As 2023 comes to a close, many start to consider their accomplishments for the year and how many resolutions they crossed off their list. In Beautycounter’s case, they have a lot to be proud of. As part of their mission to advocate for safety and transparency in the beauty industry, the brand helped pass four laws this year.

“It was always about the mission of getting safer products into the hands of everyone,” says Gregg Renfrew, Founder of Beautycounter. “I started Beautycounter because I learned that there were all these chemicals of concern being used in the products that we were putting on our bodies every day. Those chemicals were linking to serious health impacts, whether it was cancer, reproductive toxicity, neurotoxicity, et cetera. I started the business with the intention of changing an industry, to change the laws to protect the health and safety of people. The ability to put an issue on the map with members of Congress and fight hard for 10 years to come up with the first update in a major way to federal laws since 1938 means a lot to me, because we have spent an inordinate amount of time as a company and as a community focusing on this issue.”

Beautycounter has been instrumental in passing 15 pieces of legislation over the last 10 years. They’ve spearheaded a community effort to send 236,000 emails, make over 16,000 calls and hold over 2,200 meetings with members of Congress for change.

“We played a critical role in The Washington State Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act that was passed in May, Oregon’s Toxic Free Cosmetics Act and the California Assembly Bill 496,” Renfrew says. “California is my home state and that was a big one because it was taking a significant stand for the first time in a long time.” Additionally, they helped pass their first federal bill in Canada, The Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act (Bill S-5). “That represents the first significant update to Canada and the Environmental Protection Act, so it’s been a long time. It’s been several decades in the making. We started our advocacy efforts in the States, but we’ve been working in the Canadian market as well.”

One of Beautycounter’s crowning achievements is helping to pass the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA), which was the first significant update to federal cosmetics laws since 1938. To celebrate the one year anniversary of its passage, as well as the passage of four laws this year, Beautycounter produced “We Matter,” a video that tells the story of the history and events that lead to the bill’s passage.

“We wanted to take a moment to celebrate and drive awareness for this huge step forward for consumer safety in the United States,” Renfrew says. “When I started Beautycounter, the statistic was something like only 10% of Americans know that there are chemicals of concern in the products that they use every day. We take for granted that people know that there are harmful ingredients in beauty products. But the reality is that most Americans still don’t understand the fact that if something says natural, or it’s an aloe-based product or an oatmeal-based product, that it may not even have aloe or oatmeal in it. They may not understand that fragrance and some of the really harmful chemicals like phthalates that bind to your skin is harmful to their health. For the first time, we’ve taken some measures to protect them. We wanted to make sure that people were aware of what’s going on out there.”

But “We Matter” is about more than raising awareness. “We wanted to celebrate the win for our community and thank our clients, community of independent advocates, our investors, our team at HQ and everyone that’s helped participate in this, and also our allies in the industry,” Renfrew says. “We’ve worked with other companies and we’ve had other people get involved over the years. We wanted to make sure that everyone, including Congress, knows that we’re thankful that they took this initiative seriously, or the bill wouldn’t have passed. I’ve been focused on the power of storytelling and the people who powered up this mission and this movement all along and showing that ordinary people can do extraordinary work when they use their collective voice.”

The video will be posted on Beautycounter’s site and social media channels. “I would love this video to go viral,” Renfrew says. “I’m hoping it shows up all over the place because the facts are scary. We’re going to use the power of our community of independent advocates and their ability to amplify messaging. It’s about trying to get people to share and pass this along so that everyone understands what’s really going on out there. This video connects you back to the fact that it’s about each and every one of us. Our health matters and everyone counts. Everyone’s impacted by this. It’s a powerful video and everyone that watches it feels very emotionally connected to the work that was done.”

By showing the passage of time, “We Matter” illustrates how the beauty industry has evolved, but the laws surrounding it have not kept up. “For a very brief moment in time, Americans were protected under the federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act passed by FDR,” Renfrew says. “But post World War II, you have this industrial revolution, and all the plastics come in. We’ve introduced many tens of thousands of chemicals into commerce since World War II, but those haven’t necessarily been tested for safety on human health. And so it’s helping people understand that while there were laws that protected our health at one moment in time, there haven’t been for a really long period of time. As much as I’m thrilled about MoCRA, we have so much more work to do, because we’re still not where we need to be. This is a great first step. But it’s not the only step that we’re going to take. This is just the beginning of the mountain that we need to climb to really tackle toxic chemicals and the products we’re all using on our bodies every day.”

For 2024, Beautycounter’s goal is to continue to lead the movement to disrupt the industry and advocate for better beauty to make sure that safer products are accessible to all through continuing to update legislation. “That takes a lot of voices to be around the table talking about this,” Renfrew says. “We’re going to be focusing on continuing to educate the consumer because information is power. We’re going to DC again with hundreds of our advocates to meet with members of Congress. We do that every couple of years and that’s an important part of the work that we do, in both Canada to Parliament and in the US Congress, to talk about what else needs to happen. We still don’t have a determination from the FDA as to which ingredients are safe or unsafe, and so there are loopholes in the supply chain and supply chain transparency. This year we’re going to continue to fight hard on both the state and federal level to bring awareness to where else we need to go with this movement.”

However, a trip to Washington, DC isn’t required for the average consumer to take a step in improving sustainability and health in the beauty industry. “Educate yourself,” Renfrew says. “Be familiar with what you are putting on your face and body. MOCRA is helping with that, but there’s a lot more work to be done to protect the consumer. For example, there are a lot of fragrance loopholes. We’ve been advocating for stronger transparency on this for many years. Everyone can print our Never List (2,800 ingredients that are questionable or harmful that we never use in our products), and use this list to inform themselves when shopping online or instore. That’s something they can do to empower themselves.”