L'Oreal's Second Cohort Brings In Water for the First Time

What is the signal?

On 17 September L'Oreal selected 13 companies from eight countries as the second cohort of its sustainable innovation programme. Launched in January of this year and endowed with EUR 100 million, the programme aims to identify solutions across climate, nature and circularity, pilot them, and scale them. The second cohort widened its geographic footprint, with India, China, Germany, Italy and Finland appearing as five countries absent from the first.

The areas the 13 work across were framed as next-generation packaging and materials, innovative ingredients and formulas, advanced industrial processes and data intelligence — with a water-technology selection added for the first time in this round. Among the disclosed examples, Laminar of the United States works on managing industrial water use through intelligent sensor technology, and Waterplan, also of the United States, on an AI-native platform addressing water and biodiversity risk.

The materials and process entries have a clear character too. Auressens of France is creating metal-free, recyclable reflective pigments for packaging; Bioweg of Germany is using precision fermentation to develop new raw materials; and Envision Energy of China is developing green ammonia made with renewable energy for hair colourants. The selected companies enter an acceleration phase led by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership before moving into pilot projects of six to nine months.

The scope of this signal needs stating plainly. Selection is a step toward pilot readiness, not commercialization or an adoption decision, and which technologies will actually enter products and processes, and when, is not yet set. It remains one company's programme. What can be read from it reaches only as far as this: where the largest company in the industry currently sees the problem, and where it is spending money and time.

1. The stage has widened from ingredients to how things are made

Until now the sustainability demands a brand faced sat mostly on the surface of the product. Which ingredient was removed, what the container was made of, which words could go on the label — that was the centre of the discussion. It was also the part consumers could see.

This selection list sits outside that. Industrial process, water management and data intelligence are areas invisible to someone holding the product. Changing an ingredient ends as a question about one product; process and water are questions that touch the whole way of making.

For a brand, that difference returns in the form of the questions it will be asked. Alongside 'what did you make it from' comes 'how did you make it', and a brand cannot write that answer alone. Where production is outsourced, half the answer sits with the manufacturer.

2. Water is a production item, not a label item

In cosmetics water is usually the first ingredient in the formula, but it is not the only water flowing through a plant. Wash water for tanks and pipework and cooling water for equipment can exceed the water that goes into the product. It appears nowhere on the label and is among the largest items on the floor.

Even a brand that owns no factory does not get to treat that number as someone else's. Once distributors or overseas partners begin asking for supply-chain-level environmental information, a brand can only answer by obtaining data from its manufacturer. Requesting it for the first time at that moment means starting with the format, which takes time.

So the thing to do now is not to demand that the data be created, but to confirm whether it can be received. Knowing the unit, the frequency and the document form shortens the response period when the request does come.

• Whether it can be converted to per-unit or per-batch consumption
• Whether equipment exists to reuse water from cleaning processes
• The frequency at which data is produced (monthly, quarterly, annually)
• Whether it is a summary figure or a third-party-verified document

3. Packaging recyclability is decided first by pigments and coatings

That this second cohort includes a company developing metal-free, recyclable reflective pigments is telling. It means what decides whether packaging can be recycled is not the base material alone but what goes on top of it.

The scene recurs in practice. The substrate is specified as a single material, yet metallization, lamination or a specialty ink gets the pack rejected at sorting. The elements that create a glossy appearance usually overlap with the elements that make recycling difficult.

So this is not an item to verify after packaging design is finished. Whether visual impression or recyclability takes priority has to be settled at the specification stage, and holding both sometimes means waiting until an alternative technology is ready. That is part of why a company of L'Oreal's size runs pilots at the pigment level.

• Surface treatments beyond the base material (metallization, coating, lamination)
• Whether label and ink separate from the substrate
• Whether a priority between visual impression and recyclability has been set
• How far colour and gloss hold up if an alternative material is used

4. A six-to-nine-month pilot runs on a different clock than development

What the selected companies head toward in this programme is not immediate commercialization but a pilot of six to nine months. Even a company with ample resources budgets that much verification before putting a new material or process on a real line.

This is usually where new-material adoption goes wrong on the brand side. The decision to use a new material takes one line in a meeting, but behind it come stability testing, container compatibility checks, line trials, and confirmation that the same quality can be supplied repeatedly. Cut that period backwards from the launch date and what remains is form, not verification.

The realistic order is the reverse. Secure the verification period first, then set the launch date; and if that period cannot be afforded, it is better to use an existing material for this product. A sustainability claim built on an unverified material is the first thing to collapse when grounds are demanded later.

• The real time needed for stability and container-compatibility testing
• A plan to check quality variance between trial runs and full production
• Whether the supplier can supply repeatedly at the same specification
• Whether a fallback existing material is designated if verification runs late

5. Copy the items, not the scale

A EUR 100 million programme and an acceleration process led by an outside research institute are a large company's method. They are not something an indie brand or a small manufacturer should imitate, and there is no need to.

What can be copied is the list of items, not the scale: water, process, packaging materials, data. Choosing one of them where your own operation can actually produce a number, measuring it and keeping the record, is more useful than mentioning all four in words.

The reason records come first is plain. Environmental language is moving steadily toward being asked for grounds, and grounds cannot be assembled after the fact. Fixing one measurable item now, in one product and one process, is what becomes the answer when the next request arrives.

The first question for the brief

Rather than beginning with 'we will make a sustainable product', try one sentence: which item can we currently speak about in numbers, and who holds those numbers? Then add one more line beneath it. If a distributor asked for material on our process or water use, within how many days could we answer?