On April 13, the 4th China International Consumer Goods Expo (hereinafter referred to as the "Expo") opened, and the exhibition will last until April 18. More than 4,000 brands from more than 70 countries and regions around the world participated in the exhibition.
After achieving 100% green electricity for the first time at last year's Consumer Expo, all venues of this exhibition will use green electricity, which is expected to reduce standard coal consumption by about 600 tons and carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1,300 tons.
This year's CICGF highlights the concept of "low carbon". The relevant person in charge of the Hainan International Economic Development Bureau said that relying on the Consumer Expo, a test site for green consumption innovation, more exhibitors at home and abroad will accelerate their transformation and promote green development.
At the meeting, the "Insight Report on China's New Urban Development" jointly released by PwC and Hainan International Economic Development Bureau showed that the market is driving consumption iteration, in which consumers who are gradually getting younger pay more attention to digital technology, personalized features, instant gratification experience, and environmental sustainability.
As a hotly discussed topic of "she economy" and "she power" in previous Consumer Expos, as far as the skin care products market is concerned, it is expected to reach a scale of 418 billion yuan in 2026.
At this exhibition, beauty and skin care brands such as Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, Bloomage Biotech, and Huaxizi all appeared, and green consumption and sustainable development have also become the keywords of these major brands at home and abroad.
Scientific and technological capabilities support green consumption
At this year's Consumer Expo, the Estee Lauder Companies brought 15 iconic brands to participate in the exhibition, from the design of the exhibition hall to the display of the exhibition area, the concept of green environmental protection is deeply rooted in it.
Its pavilion follows the architectural structure of the 6th China International Import Expo in 2023, and uses a large number of sustainable and recyclable ecological aesthetic materials such as eco-friendly paper and eco-friendly white yarn to practice its development concept in sustainable design.
Not only Estee Lauder, but also foreign brands that have dominated China's beauty and skin care market for decades are concentrating on the way of green consumption.
L'Oréal, which has participated in the CICGF for four consecutive years, has been exhibiting at the France Pavilion for the first time, and the century-old brand has been monitoring, recording and calculating the carbon footprint of all its sites since 2005.
Last year, L'Oréal, together with 11 independent scientific experts, launched the "Product Environmental Impact Palette", which accurately measures the impact of L'Oréal products on the planet at every stage of their life cycle, from greenhouse gas emissions to water scarcity.
The "five-color disc" provides consumers with the right to know about the environmental impact, and increases consumer recognition and participation for the realization of a low-carbon development closed loop in the life cycle of products.
When foreign big brands are vying to interpret green consumption with scientific and technological strength, the fully rising domestic beauty and skin care brands are not absent from this field. At this year's Consumer Expo, Bloomage Biotech took "Technology + Green Ignition of New Domestic Products" as the theme, which coincided with its background of synthetic biotechnology as the development driver.
Exploring the genes of the enterprise, Bloomage Biotech has iterated the large-scale preparation method of hyaluronic acid - replacing the traditional chicken comb extraction with a more efficient and environmentally friendly microbial fermentation method.
In the past, 200 kilograms of chicken combs from about 20,000 chickens could extract 1 kilogram of hyaluronic acid, which had a low extraction rate, low purity, and high consumption. Bloomage Biotech is the first in China to produce hyaluronic acid on a large scale through microbial fermentation technology, increasing the fermentation yield of hyaluronic acid to 16-17g/L without the need for animal tissue raw materials. Now, through synthetic biology production, the laboratory fermentation yield has reached 73g/L, which is more low-carbon and environmentally friendly, and reduces resource consumption.
The concept of green environmental protection has long penetrated into the in-depth development of the enterprise, and Bloomage Biotech, which has never been absent from the feast of the Consumer Expo, has also become the local representative and pioneer force of this green consumption innovation test site.
At this year's Consumer Expo, Bloomage Biotech's booth was expanded to 300 square meters, and the materials used in the booth were all safe and environmentally friendly materials, and the company also exhibited its ESG strategic achievements at the Consumer Expo for the first time, conveying its efforts in the field of sustainable development to the public.
It is worth noting that the new Brown Rice Water 2.0 (product record name: Bio-MESO Brown Rice Rejuvenating Essence Water) brought by Bio-MESO, a functional skin care product brand of Bloomage Biotech, ushered in its debut at the Consumer Expo.
According to the booth staff, the new product relies on the empowerment of Bloomage Biotech's 20-year microbial fermentation platform, specializes in the fermentation technology of "carefully selected natural strains CF37" + "unique biological metabolism decoding", combined with multiple environmental controls such as temperature, humidity and pressure at different times, and finally breaks through the barriers of brown rice fermentation, and obtains a patented ingredient with both fermentation efficiency, product concentration and safety and mildness - "brown rice fermentation filtrate", which can achieve multi-channel and multi-scene oil control and other effects.
In addition, this upgraded new product adopts a new specialized antioxidant composition "Bright Energy-Pro" to achieve layered antioxidant yellowing, so that this large single product with sales of more than 10 million bottles on the whole network can achieve brightening, oil control, and long-term antioxidant efficacy.
Taking Bio-MESO as an example, Bloomage Biotech's ESG concept has been implemented in the details of the brand.
Bio-MESO's newly launched seaweed energy series and other products adopt green innovative technology in packaging design. The new generation of outer boxes uses environmentally friendly packaging materials certified by authoritative organizations to ensure that every step of the product outer box from the source to the hands of consumers is in line with the principle of sustainable development.
Judging from the development of the Bio-MESO brand, whose main consumer group is the young group, the brand awareness of the Bio-MESO brand has jumped from a single function to a more three-dimensional level such as social responsibility and environmental protection.
ESG of domestic brands has sprung up
Domestic and foreign brands continue to make efforts to green and environmentally friendly products, both under the guidance of policies and the growth needs of enterprises.
On the one hand, the "Implementation Plan for Promoting Green Consumption" jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and other seven departments proposes that by 2025, the green transformation of consumption in key areas will achieve remarkable results, green consumption methods will be widely implemented, and a consumption system with green, low-carbon and circular development will be initially formed.
On the other hand, there is a consensus on the potential growth brought by green consumption. According to Bain & Company's Asia Pacific Sustainable Consumption Trend Insights, 90% of respondents are willing to pay a premium for the sustainability of their products, while a whopping 51% of respondents cite environmental protection as one of the top three most important shopping criteria.
Green cycle development has also become an important direction for product iteration.
Shiseido's ninth-generation red honeydew is the first in the industry to adopt interchangeable jelly core packaging technology, which is a simple step to inject liquid into the bottle instead of compressed air, while shaping and filling plastic containers, reducing CO2 emissions by 70% and plastic use by 92%.
Returning to the domestic product track that has risen with functional skin care products in recent years, there are not only the successful experience of century-old stores pointing out the direction, but also the brand's own new exploration of green environmental protection, domestic beauty and skin care brands have gradually emerged in the field of ESG, and Bloomage Biotech is at the forefront of the industry.
The company's core brand Runbaiyan, launched in 2014, uses B.F.S. three-second integrated canning technology to create a sub-throwing essence, so that the essence products can achieve "one throw at a time" and be fresh and vivid. In order to encourage "sustainable consumption", in December 2020, Runbaiyan launched the "Beauty Bank" secondary empty tube recycling program for the first time, which will recycle the secondary empty empty tube used by consumers on a regular and large-scale basis.
Up to now, Runbaiyan has continued to launch 14 phases of the "Secondary Dump Air Tube Recycling Program", with a total of more than 10.41 million empty tubes recycled, and more than 100,000 users have participated.
In addition, Bloomage Biotech is also committed to the research of environmentally friendly packaging, and has completed the application research of sugarcane-based plastics in disposable packaging materials, sugarcane-based plastics are environmentally friendly and degradable packaging raw materials, which will be used in the products of Runbaiyan. Compared to conventional petroleum-based plastics, bio-based plastics can reduce CO2 emissions by about 3 tons per tonne.
Relying on R&D strength and biomanufacturing green supply chain, the company continuously promotes the innovation and technological upgrading of consumer terminal products, integrates green environmental protection into the entire life cycle of products, and strives to achieve efficient use of resources and friendly protection of the environment. The relevant person in charge of Bloomage Biotech said.
In addition to advocating green consumption, Bloomage Biotech as a whole is also continuing to move towards sustainable development, implementing the concept of green and sustainable development into the daily operation and management process of the enterprise.
In March 2023, the company officially established the ESG strategic management center, comprehensively built the company's ESG management system, and upgraded ESG governance. In terms of practicing ESG low-carbon environmental protection measures, Bloomage Biotech is committed to promoting green manufacturing with technological innovation, using clean energy such as photovoltaic and solar energy in production, and paying attention to resource recovery and recycling of "tailings" generated in production.
At present, in accordance with Industry 4.0 standards, Bloomage Biotech has built a sustainable bio-intelligent manufacturing supply chain system by building a digital supply chain, building a black light factory, a green manufacturing cycle factory, and quickly realizing biomanufacturing supported by synthetic biology.
Starting from many aspects such as production automation, plant intensification, harmless raw materials, waste recycling, and low-carbon energy, Bloomage Biotech has successfully established a green factory standard system and has been rated as a national "green factory".
In the past 13 years, the company has traveled more than 130,000 kilometers to 35 ethnic groups and more than 50 cities, helping 300 inheritors of national culture and intangible cultural heritage to go to the domestic and foreign stages.
Moreover, since the company settled on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2019, it has insisted on publishing social responsibility reports for four consecutive years.
From production and R&D to product sales to corporate governance, Bloomage Biotech has always practiced green and sustainable development, continuously improved its ESG strategic goals, and taken "green + technology" as its new corporate mission to move forward.
(This article was first published on Titanium Media App)