Brand Rating:

Aesop

Average

6/10

Score 6/10

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Rated: May 06, 2026
Category: Beauty care
Subcategory: Body Care

Overview:

Sustainability 6.1/10

Non-toxicity 5.5/10

Aesop is an Australian luxury skincare, body care, hair care, and fragrance house, known for its apothecary-style amber bottles and minimalist retail design.

Highlights

Certified B Corporation
Leaping Bunny cruelty-free
Fully vegan formulations
97% recycled plastic in 500mL bottles
In-store packaging take-back program

Sustainability

score : 6.1/10

Packaging

Three of the brand’s hand and body balms have transitioned to 100% recycled aluminum tubes, and the wider range incorporates aluminum, glass, and FSC-certified paper across boxes and inserts. The brand has also removed cardboard sleeves from gift kits and city kits to reduce single-use plastic, and offers a screw-cap replenishment option on most 500mL hand and body cleansers, saving 12 grams of plastic per unit when customers reuse their original pump.

That said, plastic, even recycled, remains the dominant packaging material across most of the line. Multilayered tubes used for products like the Geranium Leaf Body Scrub remain non-recyclable, and refill formats are currently limited to three products: Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash, Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser, and Parsley Seed Facial Cleanser. Inks are claimed to be non-toxic but are not verified by third-party certifications such as TUV OK Compost or comparable standards.

Ingredient Sustainability

Aesop’s formulations rely on a blend of plant-based botanicals and lab-made synthetics. Many of the plant-based ingredients sit in the more sustainable tiers, including jojoba seed oil, sunflower seed oil, sweet almond oil, lavender oil, rosemary leaf, chamomile flower oil, blackcurrant seed oil, grape seed extract, parsley seed oil, aloe vera, and licorice root.

These ingredients tend to be relatively low-impact in terms of water and land use, and several are agricultural byproducts. Aesop’s product line also avoids animal-derived ingredients entirely, which removes a substantial category of sustainability concerns linked to wool, silk, beeswax, lanolin, and similar inputs.

The areas of concern center on the brand’s heavy use of essential oils derived from species with known overharvesting and monoculture-related sustainability issues. Geranium oil, which appears in the Geranium Leaf range and several fragrances, is a common indicator of unsustainability when grown in monoculture and is highly water-intensive in many production regions. Patchouli, cedarwood, and citrus peel oils appear repeatedly across the range and are typically grown in monoculture systems that deplete soil and reduce biodiversity.

The synthetic side of the formulations leans on moderately-impact ingredients such as PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil, polysorbate 20 and 80, phenoxyethanol, sodium dehydroacetate, and ethylhexylglycerin, with some products still using sodium laureth sulfate. None of these are inherently bioaccumulative or extreme red flags, but the continued use of petro-derived ingredients contributes to a lower score for this category.

Energy Use and Carbon Footprint

Aesop powers 100% of its retail stores and corporate offices with renewable energy, and the brand achieved Climate Active carbon neutral certification under the Australian government framework for its Australian operations. The brand has set a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and committed to a science-based emissions reduction target. In its 2022 Impact Report, the brand reported a 24% reduction in freight emissions through improved inventory planning and reduced reliance on air transport. Through parent company L’Oréal, Aesop benefits from SBTi-approved targets and a manufacturing footprint where 97% of global L’Oréal sites operate on renewable energy. Aesop has historically published a brand-level Impact Report with audited emissions data, with the most recent edition disclosing 57,693 tons CO2e.

There are caveats. Since the L’Oréal acquisition in 2023, brand-level emissions reporting has not been updated independently of the parent company, and L’Oréal as a whole is reportedly off-track on its scope 3 emissions target. The brand also voluntarily offsets remaining global emissions through certified projects, but offsets are an imperfect tool and do not replace direct reductions. Despite these qualifications, Aesop’s combination of 100% renewable energy in stores, science-based targets, third-party-verified climate neutrality in Australia, and freight reduction puts the brand well ahead of conventional beauty and luxury industry peers.

Waste Management

Aesop runs Rinse and Return, an in-store packaging take-back program now active in over 150 stores across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. The program accepts cleaned aluminum, glass, plastic, and paper Aesop containers, including caps, pumps, and pipettes. Returned packaging is sorted, cleaned, shredded, and processed into new recycled products such as outdoor furniture, decking, and benches. In Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the program also accepts cosmetic packaging from other brands, with proceeds donated to local zero-waste organizations. As of 2020, the Hong Kong and Taiwan programs had collectively diverted over 4.5 tonnes of packaging from landfill.

In addition to take-back, the brand offers a glass-bottle in-store refill trial for select facial cleansers in Adelaide, with a stated long-term goal of providing refill solutions for 50% of its packaging by 2030. A screw-cap replenishment option is offered globally for most 500mL hand and body cleansers, allowing customers to reuse pumps. The refill format remains limited to three products globally, and full circular packaging systems are still in pilot stages. Some product packaging, like the multilayered tubes used for Geranium Leaf Body Scrub, remains non-recyclable, and the brand acknowledges these are still under investigation.

Business Model

Aesop’s core philosophy resists the fast, trend-driven pace of conventional beauty. The brand maintains a curated, evergreen product range, with iconic formulations such as the Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash and Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser unchanged for over 25 years.

Aesop does not run frequent sales, deep discounts, or urgency-driven promotions, and the brand has explicitly built its identity around understated, longevity-focused marketing rather than impulse purchasing. Each retail space is designed as a destination rather than a high-volume sales floor, with consultants encouraged to listen rather than upsell.

The brand does, however, regularly extend its range with new fragrance launches, including the recent Above Us, Steorra Eau de Parfum in 2025, and has expanded into adjacent categories such as candles, home fragrance, and most recently lighting (the Aposé lamp collection). Seasonal gift kits are released annually. These releases are paced and intentional rather than trend-chasing, but they do represent a steady cadence of new inventory that prevents the brand from sitting in the most slow-consumption category.

Non-toxicity

score : 5.5/10

Aesop’s formulations across the sample reviewed are paraben-free and fully vegan.

Newer formulations have moved away from sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in favor of milder surfactant systems built around cocamidopropyl hydroxysultaine, sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, sodium hydroxypropylsulfonate laurylglucoside crosspolymer, and coco-betaine. The Parsley Seed Anti-Oxidant Intense Serum reformulation also eliminated PEG-150 distearate in favor of a cleaner profile that includes niacinamide, panthenol, glycerin, hyaluronic-style hydrators, and tocopherol.

Older or region-specific formulations of products like the Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser and Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash still contain sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and, in some markets, methylchloroisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone, both of which are skin sensitizers.

Phenoxyethanol appears as the dominant preservative across most products, and PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil, polysorbate 20, and polysorbate 80 are widely used as solubilizers and emulsifiers. These PEG and polysorbate compounds carry potential 1,4-dioxane contamination concerns from their manufacturing processes.

Social Responsibility

score : 6.8/10

Fair Labor

Aesop is a Certified B Corporation, recertified in 2024, with an overall B Impact Assessment score of 84.0, well above the median of approximately 51. The certification process required Aesop to demonstrate high standards across governance, workers, environment, customers, and community.

Following the L’Oréal acquisition in 2023, the brand now sits within a much larger corporate supply chain, and post-acquisition transparency on Aesop-specific labor outcomes has been limited. The B Corp certification provides reasonable third-party verification of labor practices at a corporate level, but the brand falls short of the deepest tiers of supply chain transparency seen in industry leaders.

Community Engagement

In 2023, the Foundation provided AUD$2.6 million in grants across 20 charities, with a focus on literacy, storytelling, human rights, and environmental causes, and an explicit commitment to investing in organizations led by under-represented communities. Beyond direct philanthropy, the brand operates a matched-giving program where employee donations to registered charities are matched by the Foundation, encourages all full-time employees to use 1% of their working time for volunteering, and empowers individual stores to donate products to local charitable organizations.

During the 2022 cycle alone, the Foundation worked with 40 charity partners to support communities affected by the war in Ukraine, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, flooding in Pakistan, and earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, distributing over USD$3.2 million. In 2020, during the early COVID-19 pandemic, Aesop donated more than $3.4 million in product to community partners, medical staff, and frontline services. The Foundation operates with its own governance structure, board of trustees, and a monitoring and evaluation framework for grantees, which adds rigor and accountability to the brand’s philanthropic work. Community engagement is a clear strength for Aesop, with measurable, sustained, and strategically focused giving.

Animal Welfare

Aesop holds Leaping Bunny certification through Cruelty Free International, the gold standard for cruelty-free verification, and is also PETA-Approved Vegan. The brand has never tested its products or ingredients on animals, has adhered to a fixed cut-off date policy, and uses an independently audited supplier monitoring system. All formulations are vegan, with the brand explicitly excluding industry-favorite animal-derived ingredients such as beeswax, honey, lanolin, silk, and carmine.Aesop was acquired by L’Oréal in 2023, and L’Oréal as a parent company is not cruelty-free and remains on PETA’s list of companies that test on animals where required by law, including in mainland China. Aesop maintains its own Leaping Bunny and PETA approvals, which require that Aesop itself does not sell into markets that mandate animal testing, and the brand has historically operated in mainland China only through cross-border e-commerce and Hainan duty-free, which are exempt from mandatory animal testing requirements.