The Beauty Edit Honor Roll: Sustainable Beauty Game-changers

From anti-aging elixirs and powerful moisturizers to luxury hair care, these products not only beautify—they also care for the planet. Discover our top picks for this year’s most sustainable brands in body and hair care.
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Welcome to The Beauty Edit Honor Roll™️, our tribute to the trailblazers redefining the beauty industry. This series celebrates the personalities, publications, brands, and leaders who have sparked inspiration, broken barriers, and left a lasting mark on the world of beauty. Curated through votes from The Beauty Edit team and a panel of industry experts, The Beauty Edit Honor Roll™️ 2024 is a proud testament to Filipino ingenuity, creativity, and exceptional talent.

With the rest of 2025 ahead of us, it’s the perfect time to reflect on a year that redefined the beauty landscape. Although a gamut exists of wrinkle-reducing, skin-protecting, and hypo-allergenic selections, only a handful shine for keeping nature in mind and heart. While small and large-scale innovations uplift tresses, skin tones, and complexions, the environment ultimately pays the price for these.

Thankfully, some brands are leading the charge in creating safe, natural, and effective products while empowering communities and championing eco-friendly practices. From their overarching vision to the smallest operational details, these companies are committed to conserving natural resources, minimizing waste, and reducing their environmental footprint.

In this edition of The Beauty Edit Honor Roll, we proudly highlight the sustainable beauty game-changers. Join us as we celebrate their stories of environmental stewardship and their passion for shaping a greener, more responsible industry for generations to come.

Pili Ani

Beyond their delicious edible seeds, the pili tree offers even more through its bark and pulp, which yield elemi and pili oil—renowned for their rejuvenating, hydrating, and nourishing properties for the skin. After Rosalina Tan, a pioneer in sustainable beauty and co-founder of Pili Ani, discovered that a popular French beauty brand had over-tapped elemi oil and was underpaying Bicol’s pili farmers, she launched a program to teach these farmers how to maintain the health of pili trees while ensuring fair livelihoods.

Today, Pili Ani offers consumers the chance to experience the remarkable skin-glowing properties of pili and elemi oil, while supporting the same farmers Tan initially worked with. The Pili Ani Ageless Concentrate—indeed a beauty holy grail—gives skin an undeniable radiance, while moisturizing it and reducing signs of premature aging. The Pili Ani Deep Detox Volcanic Exfoliating Mask, meanwhile, effectively unclogs pores, brightens and tightens skin, and fights acne-causing bacteria.

Apart from its community-empowering commitment, Pili Ani products are also FDA and U.S. FDA-approved. They are all-natural, non-comedogenic, cruelty-free, and do not contain harmful ingredients such as SLS, paraben, sulfate, silicone, PEG, and EDTA. Moreover, with every purchase of a Pili Ani item, customers support pili reforestation in Bicol.

Pure Culture

What happens when you bring together three moms who love the planet and prefer all-natural products for their food and skin allergies? They embark on a journey of curating the best beauty ingredients for a brand that celebrates connection, wholeness, and well-being. 

Fusing their different expertise, they built Pure Culture, which prides itself on affordable science-driven clean beauty backed by the highest standards. Alex Gentry is an entrepreneur and investor; Rina del Calzada is an advertising professional; and Kim Reyes-Palanca is a beauty editor. 

Pure Culture’s products range from anti-aging elixirs, night creams, and sunscreens, to face oils, all made with responsibly sourced materials. The Pure Culture Wild Algae Glow Serum—a crowd favorite— brightens age spots while promoting bright, clear skin using vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, and New Zealand Black Fern. On the other hand, the Pure Culture Dream Drops Universal Hydro-Oil deeply hydrates the skin and smoothens wrinkles with its potent formulation of resveratrol, edelweiss callus culture extract, and bifida ferment lysate. 

Despite the abundance of certain oils in the Philippines, it was a conscious decision for Gentry, del Calzada, and Reyes-Palanca to focus on such ethically and sustainably grown and harvested ingredients. Most importantly, their products contain no toxins and come in ocean-friendly packaging. Every purchase of a Pure Culture product removes one pound of plastic waste from the environment, as the company funds plastic collection in coastal communities.

Dermtropics

When Margaux Arambulo-Luceno discovered the key ingredient in her dermatologist mom’s sought-after soap, it lit a fire in her to learn more about its many health and beauty benefits. Her mother had harnessed virgin coconut oil in such a way that it thoroughly cleanses without irritating. 

This passion deepened when Arambulo-Luceno learned about the eco-friendly wet-milling process, which preserves VCO’s natural aroma and antioxidants while eliminating harmful chemicals. Inspired, she combined VCO with other plant-derived ingredients to launch Dermtropics—a brand that champions green beauty while prioritizing environmental well-being. All Dermtropics products are free from sulfates, parabens, and artificial fragrances. The brand also boasts several certifications, including BRCGS Food Safety Global Standard, Certified Fair Trade, FDA, and USDA Organic.

With VCO’s abundance of antioxidants and fatty acids, paired with glycerin, the Dermtropics Raw Coconut Gentle Cleansing Bar helps lock in the skin’s moisture. As such, it’s a staple for many patrons suffering from extremely dry skin or eczema. Using the Dermtropics Raw Coconut Daily Moisturizing Hand and Body Lotion in tandem also helps keep skin glowing and moisturized no matter what the current weather conditions are. Apart from VCO, it contains colloidal oatmeal, which softens and hydrates skin without that greasy feeling.

Dermtropics doesn’t stop at its sustainable processes and nature-sourced ingredients. It has also invested in biodegradable packaging, using bottles made of 40 percent wheat straw and polymer resins. They also offer refill pouches and use compostable, plastic-free mailers made of cassava and honeycomb wrap to pack orders.

MONDAY Haircare

It’s a tale familiar to many: a bad hair day that can last for an entire week. The weather and humidity, combined with ineffective hair products, can wreak havoc on tresses. This is why founder Jaimee Lupton wanted to come up with a salon-quality hair care line that’s easy on the pocket. Enter MONDAY Haircare, a brand that taps into luxury formulations to nourish hair. Its products are free of SLS, SLES, and parabens, are dermatologically tested, and are not tested on animals (they’re recognized by PETA).

The MONDAY Haircare SMOOTH Shampoo and Conditioner, made with coconut oil and avocado oil, has won awards for giving hair shape and shine, no matter the hair type. It moisturizes and prevents frizz while creating a protective barrier. Need a shampoo on the go? The MONDAY Haircare Dry Shampoo absorbs excess oil while freshening up your hair between washes, using hydrolyzed keratin for balance and protection. Best of all, these products come in recyclable containers.

Magwai

Beach lovers know all too well the importance of sun protection. But while many products may shield the skin from the sun’s harmful rays, a lot also damage the ocean’s precious corals. This is why in 2016, water babies and colleagues Czarina Carbonel and Maffy Tamayo developed a reef-friendly alternative. Ironically, despite living in an archipelago like the Philippines, there were limited options available. 

Fueled by a love for the ocean, Carbonel and Tamayo, joined by Mico Anabo, co-founded Magwai, a marine-friendly personal care brand, in 2017. Magwai takes pride in its partnership with the UP Marine Science Institute, which tested the safety of Magwai products on coral larvae and adult corals. Magwai products have also undergone other scientific tests such as SolarTest Asia’s UVA SPF Test in Bangkok.

Today, Magwai maintains a loyal clientele for its bestselling Magwai Reef-Safe Sunscreen, free of coral-toxic oxybenzone and octinoxate, and its range of Magwai Shampoo Bars, which come in plastic-free and adhesive-free packaging printed with compostable soy-based ink. They also have multi-purpose towels, each made with 10 recycled plastic bottles. 

It doesn’t end there. Magwai ships items using plastic-free packaging, and they’ve even partnered with social enterprise The Plaf and waste management company Green Antz to recycle their sunscreen tubes. Last but not least, a portion of every purchase goes to their environmental partners.

Human Nature

Many will recognize this award-winning brand which has been producing personal care, home care, and beauty products since 2007. With the rise of Philippine-sourced ingredients being incorporated in popular international, founders Anna Meloto-Wilk, her husband Dylan Wilk, and her sister Camille Meloto-Rodriguez worked with a natural formulator to develop Human Nature’s first line of safe, effective, 100 percent natural, and environmentally sustainable products. 

The Human Nature Sunflower Beauty Oil with Bakuchiol has quickly become one of their bestsellers, with its safe formulation that reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and promotes healthy, youthful-looking skin. At the same time, it lightens acne marks and dark undereye circles. Meanwhile, the Human Nature Niacinamide Scrub Mask is powered with bamboo scrubs and kaolin clay to gently remove dead skin cells, resulting in a smoother and brighter-looking complexion.

For six years now, Human Nature has been using 100 percent recyclable 1-liter refill bottles, reducing plastic use by up to 72 percent, versus its regular shampoo bottles. Similarly, its shampoo bars also save up to 98.59 percent of plastic compared to the typical plastic packaging. In addition, customers who order online receive their Human Nature items in plastic-free packaging.

Today, Human Nature continuously finds motivation from its core values of being pro-Philippines, pro-poor, and pro-environment. As a social enterprise, it sources its key ingredients citronella, coconut oil, and lemongrass from low-income communities in Philippine provinces, from where it employs hundreds of workers to fill various roles.

Collage by Dannah Valdezco. Pili Ani Ageless Concentrate photo and Pili Ani Deep Detox Volcanic Exfoliating Mask photo via Pili Ani Instagram. Pure Culture Wild Algae Glow Serum photo and Pure Culture Dream Drops Universal Hydro-Oil via Pure Culture Instagram. Dermtropics Raw Coconut Gentle Cleansing Bar photo and Dermtropics Raw Coconut Daily Moisturizing Hand and Body Lotion via Dermtropics Instagram. MONDAY Haircare photo via MONDAY Haircare Instagram. Magwai Reef-Safe Sunscreen photo and Magwai Shampoo Bars photo via Magwai Instagram. Human Nature Sunflower Beauty Oil with Bakuchiol photo and Human Nature Niacinamide Scrub Mask photo via Human Nature Instagram.

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