United States
Product Responsibility
As a global leader in prestige beauty, The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is committed to providing consumers with prestige beauty products that deliver exceptional performance and luxury coupled with high standards for safety, quality, efficacy, and sustainability. The process by which we bring our products to life is multifaceted—from ingredient selection and sourcing to product formulation and packaging—and depends on insights from experts across our organization. We seek to be transparent about this process and embed responsibility throughout our end-to-end product lifecycle.
Ingredient Philosophy
For more than 75 years, discovering and sharing high-quality ingredients has been at the heart of what we do at ELC. Our beloved portfolio of prestige beauty brands delivers quality products and high-performance benefits to our discerning consumers. We use powerful, artisanal-quality ingredients to formulate transformative products that meet a diverse range of global beauty needs.
Ingredient Glossary
Our ingredient palette is comprised of thousands of materials, and we continue to place focus on our commitment to ingredient transparency and fully support providing more information to our consumers about the ingredients in our products. This is demonstrated through the ways we are enabling consumers to learn more about key ingredients in the products they love, the reasons behind the uses of those ingredients, and their benefits.
Learn more about some of the ingredients we choose to use in some of our products.
Product Formulation
Our innovative product formulations enable us to stay at the forefront of the prestige beauty industry. We create high-performing products by combining breakthrough science with creativity and tapping into the deep expertise of our scientists, engineers, and product developers. We strive to exceed consumer needs and preferences by providing a broad range of quality products, including those made with natural or vegan ingredients, free of specific ingredients, or specially formulated for different skin types.
Product Safety Philosophy & Process
Consumers around the world trust our brands to safely deliver the best beauty performance. ELC works every day to deliver on that promise. We evaluate each product for safety throughout its development.
Our sophisticated testing plans and tools span stability, sensory, safety-in-use, and clinical tests, as well as ophthalmologist and dermatologist testing. Our integrated global Research and Development (R&D) network constantly works to advance modern, scientific cosmetic testing methodologies. Once the cosmetic formula meets our safety and quality standards, it is further tested for compatibility with packaging.
To read more, visit our Ingredient and Product Safety and Testing Viewpoint.
Green Chemistry
For over 15 years, ELC has worked to embed the principles of green chemistry throughout our product formulation process to guide innovation in a more thoughtful way. At the heart of our approach is our green chemistry methodology developed by a robust team of ELC’s chemists, toxicologists, and environmental scientists and in partnership with leading external green chemistry pioneers and scientific experts. This peer-reviewed methodology, which enables us to quantify the environmental, ecosystem health, and human health profiles of our ingredients and formulations, is the cornerstone of our ambition to embed sustainability practices throughout our product formulation process for our in-house portfolio of prestige beauty products.
Sustainable innovation is a continuous journey, and today, our scientists worldwide are identifying how to more practically apply this green chemistry methodology to guide day-to-day innovation for greener alternatives to ingredients and formulations and assess new product launches across ELC’s in-house portfolio of prestige beauty products. We are also committed to sharing our approach externally to inspire sustainable innovation across the personal care industry and beyond.
Sustainability in Luxury Packaging
A product’s packaging often delivers the first high-touch moment for our consumers, providing a sense of prestige and luxury right at their fingertips. At the same time, packaging must protect the products inside, which means it must be sturdy and durable.
Prestige packaging presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation because it plays such an important role in consumer experience. Incorporating sustainability concepts into packaging designs is a strategic imperative, and we believe our creativity and inventiveness can help advance solutions for our brands and for the personal care and cosmetics industries at large.
Learn more about our approach to sustainability in luxury packaging.