Beyond Sustainability: What Regenerative Sourcing Really Means for the Beauty Industry

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• Sustainability as a baseline expectation 
• A spectrum, not a binary
• What regenerative sourcing looks like in practice
• The Tonka bean that says it all
• A challenge worth taking up

🎧 This article is adapted from the Beauty Beat Pod – a podcast by Covalo.

In the full episode, James Atherton shares his perspective on regenerative beauty, how LUSH inspires to integrate principles of regeneration into our lives and work, and how to get involved.  Listen on Spotify

Somewhere in the Brazilian Amazon, a community of Kayapó indigenous peoples is tending a forest so rich and intact that the boundary between their land and the degraded terrain beyond it is visible from above. They grow Tonka beans. Those beans end up in a LUSH cosmetics product sold in high streets across the world. And that supply chain — from ancient stewardship to bathroom shelf — is one of the clearest illustrations of what regenerative sourcing can look like.

Sustainability as a baseline expectation

Sustainability has become a baseline expectation in beauty and personal care. Brands publish charters, suppliers track their carbon footprints, and the industry broadly accepts that minimizing harm is part of doing business. But what if minimizing harm isn't covering it all?

That's the question at the heart of regenerative sourcing, and it's one that James Atherton, who at the time of recording worked on the coordination team of the LUSH Spring Prize and is a founding member of Regenerosity and Re-alliance, explores with quiet conviction. In an episode of Covalo's The Beauty Beat Pod, James laid out a framework that challenges the beauty industry to think not just about doing less damage, but about actively creating more life.

A spectrum, not a binary

The most useful thing James shared is a way of visualizing where any business sits on a scale of impact, starting well before the word "sustainability" enters the conversation.

At on end sits degeneration: operations that actively strip health from the land and communities they touch. Think monoculture farming that depletes soil, or supply chains that fracture local economies.

At the center sits sustainability: doing little or no harm, minimizing negative impact. This is where much of the beauty industry currently aims, and it matters. But James invites us to look further along the spectrum.

"Moving further up to regeneration," he explains, "is how might we, instead of just doing no harm, add health and add space for life and for wildlife and for growth in our activities?"

Regeneration isn't about perfection. It's about direction: choosing practices that leave ecosystems and communities in better shape than they found them. 

What regenerative sourcing looks like in practice

Regenerative sourcing isn't a single certification or a checklist. It looks differently depending on the ecology, the culture, and the people involved in each growing context. What connects regenerative approaches, however, is a shared set of principles.

At LUSH, those principles are grounded in permaculture, a design philosophy built on three core ethics: 

• Earth care
• People care
• Fair share

Translated into sourcing, this means working as directly as possible with suppliers, asking what a genuinely health relationship between a brand and a grower could look like, and letting the answer be shaped by context.

In practice, regenerative farms tend to share some recognizable features: a focus on building soil health without chemical inputs, intercropping (growing complementary plants side by side) and polycultures — multiple crops grown together to support biodiversity and resilience. "The more diverse a system, the healthier and more resilient it is," James noted. If one crop is affected by a weather shock, farmers have others to rely on. Biodiversity isn't just good for the planet; it's good economics.

Crucially, regeneration also means including the social dimension. "It's not just about the natural world," James is clear, "but it also must include that social justice aspect and must include community at the center." Land and people are not separate concerns.

The Tonka bean that says it all

One ingredient story captures the idea better. than any definition. LUSH sources Tonka beans — used in their beloved Sleepy range — from the Kayapó peoples of Brazil, an indigenous community who have stewarded their forest for generations. The contrast with surrounding land that has been cleared and degraded is visible from the sky: rich, abundant forest on one side; stripped, exhausted land on the other.

"It really shows us how indigenous peoples, when we allow them to steward the land that they are from, allow for amazing things to happen." James reflects. The Tonka bean isn't just an ingredient; it's evidence of what regeneration looks like when it's working.

A challenge worth taking up

Ingredient discovery is one of the most practical levers brands and formulators have when it comes to sourcing more responsibly. Knowing where to look, and finding suppliers who are working regeneratively, is part of what platforms like Covalo enable.

For smaller brands just beginning to think about regenerative sourcing, James's advice is simple: start local. Look at what grows around you, what farms are nearby, what traditional or indigenous practices have existed in your region for generations. Rose hips grown wild across the UK and Europe, he notes, are one example of an ingredient with deep roots in local knowledge — and enormous potential for beauty brands willing to look close to home.

The beauty industry sources from living systems. That means it has an unusual opportunity (and arguably, an obligation) to think carefully about what it puts back. Sustainability sets the floor. Regeneration raises the ceiling.

If you want to explore ingredients from suppliers working with regenerative and ethical sourcing practices, browse the Covalo marketplace now.