Beauty of Zero™: Our people driving sustainable beauty
This World Environment Day, we’re shining a light on the teams behind Beauty of Zero, Croda Beauty’s bold vision for a future where beauty leaves no trace.
Built around six key pillars – Net Zero, Zero Waste, Zero Biodiversity Loss, Zero Water Impact, Zero Exploitation and Zero Ambiguity – Beauty of Zero reflects our commitment to combining high-performing beauty innovation with measurable sustainability progress. It’s a journey rooted in science, transparency and partnership, recognising that creating a more sustainable beauty industry will take curiosity, collaboration and continuous innovation across the value chain. It will also advance sustainability in the beauty industry.
In this feature, we hear from the people helping shape the campaign from different perspectives across the business, from defining the ambition and translating it into creative storytelling, to delivering the science behind it. Their stories offer a behind-the-scenes look at how smart science, sustainability and teamwork come together at Croda, and why the pathway towards “zero” is as much about people as it is about progress.
Shaping the ambition
Cara Eaton, Consumer Care Sustainability Director, explains how their ambition was shaped: “Croda has a strong commitment to sustainability and delivering against challenging targets. We continually strive for progress, demonstrating what possible can look like through our innovation and programmes.
When we updated our strategic sustainability focus in 2025, we recognised areas where we were already leading, such as decarbonisation, and areas where we needed to go further to meet evolving market and customer needs, including removing deforestation from our key bio-based feedstock supply chains.
While the direction was clear, we were challenged to simplify how we communicated both our progress and our ambition. This, combined with our awareness that the beauty industry has often focused on lessening its impacts, highlighted an opportunity to move beyond this and instead pursue more transformational change.
We felt strongly that we wanted to challenge the industry to do more, to think bigger, and to commit to bolder action. Beauty of Zero brings this together, framing our progress, our evidence and our future ambition in a way that allows us to challenge the industry positively, and to partner with customers and stakeholders to go further, together.”
Bringing the story to life
With the ambition defined, the next step was bringing Beauty of Zero to life in a way that would engage and inspire. The creative direction connects scientific rigor with sustainable beauty storytelling.
Joanne Bradbury, Senior Communications Lead, Croda Beauty explains: “Beauty of Zero was an incredibly compelling concept from the moment we first shaped the positioning. It felt bold, differentiated, and full of potential in terms of how we could bring it to life creatively. From the outset, I knew it should reflect what truly defines Croda Beauty: a passion for innovation, a strong scientific foundation, and a commitment to transparency and authenticity. It made for a genuinely exciting brief, both to write and to translate into something tangible.
Given its ambition and potential, we partnered with an agency to help realise our Beauty of Zero vision, taking the time to meet several teams to ensure the right fit. Beauty of Zero needed to challenge the status quo, showcase our scientific acumen, and, of course, look beautiful. Together with our selected agency, we’ve developed creative elements that bring the concept to life - from creative phrasing like our “nothing is coming” teaser, to the planet‑to‑particle visual storytelling using microscope and telescope perspectives to showcase how we see every impact of our decisions. The result is a campaign that feels distinctive, thought‑provoking, and true to who we are.
We’re currently in phase one of a multi‑phase rollout planned across 2026 and beyond, and it’s been great to see such strong early engagement. The feedback so far has been insightful and encouraging, particularly from those responding in support of the challenge we’re putting into the industry. There’s much more to come - more detail, more data, and more evidence behind Beauty of Zero - and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the conversation continues to evolve.”
Turning ambition into action through smart science
At the heart of Beauty of Zero is the science that enables change. Our R&D and technology teams play a critical role in translating ambition into measurable innovation, developing ingredients and solutions that support both performance and sustainability. This includes applying green chemistry principles to ingredient and process design.
Amy Goddard, Research & Technology Manager, shares: “Beauty of Zero is important because it changes the conversation in R&D from simply doing ‘less harm’ to asking how we design better from the start. It encourages us to think more holistically about the full innovation pathway (from raw material choices to process design), and to use evidence and sustainability data alongside performance to guide choices. This mindset is helping Croda’s R&D teams to embed sustainability more intentionally into the way we innovate every day.”
Sarah Davidson, Technology & Development Lead, adds: “Embedding sustainability into Croda's innovation is nothing new. We have been using the 12 Green Principles of Chemistry to inform new product development for over two decades.
What is new, however, is how we are now considering the net zero trajectory of all developments, using quantifiable and measurable sustainability metrics such as product carbon footprint (PCF) and biodegradability.
Across our global R&D teams, sustainability data now plays a critical role in shaping decisions on chemical composition, raw material selection, and processing. These elements are essential to creating 'net zero ready' products.
As we continue to decarbonise our business, we can be confident that any new products added to our portfolio align with our long-term sustainability targets, while delivering value for customer today.”
Powering progress through our people
Beauty of Zero is more than a campaign; it’s a reflection of how Croda works. By bringing together expertise from across the business, we’re able to connect strategy, science and storytelling in a way that drives real progress.
It’s also a reminder that reaching “zero” is not a single milestone, but an ongoing journey, one that depends on collaboration, innovation, and the passion of our people.
On this World Environment Day, we celebrate the individuals behind that progress, and the role they play in shaping for a more sustainable future for beauty.
Beauty of Zero
Smart science
Do you think it's possible to reach 'zero' in all of these areas?
What is key is setting a clear ambition, with benchmarks, and being transparent about progress, limitations, and trade‑offs. Beauty of Zero moves beyond incremental improvement, holding us accountable to measurable, science‑based pathways rather than vague promises.
In some areas, zero may ultimately mean elimination of impact. In others, it may mean getting as close as possible through redesign, substitution, or systemic change, while being honest about what remains and why. That’s why transparency, data quality, and third‑party validation are central to this approach.
So yes - zero is possible sooner in some areas, aspirational in others, and essential as a guiding goal across all. The point isn’t to claim we’ve arrived, but to keep moving forward with proof, partnership, and progress at the core.