Brand Rating:

Drunk Elephant

Average

6/10

Score 6/10

The Shifting Gaia rating evaluates brands based on sustainable practices, ingredients and materials, and social responsibility, among others. Below are a few factors influencing this brand's score:

Certifications

Leaping Bunny

PETA Cruelty-free

Our ratings are based on a scale from 1 (Avoid) to 5 (Top Choice).
See how we rate.

Rated: August 10, 2026
Category: Beauty care
Subcategory: Skincare

Overview:

Sustainability 5.0/10

Non-toxicity 7.0/10

Drunk Elephant is a prestige skincare brand, now owned by Shiseido, that makes pH-balanced face, body, and hair products built around its signature marula oil.

Highlights

Leaping Bunny and PETA certified
Responsibly sourced marula oil

Sustainability

score : 5.0/10

Packaging

Drunk Elephant relies almost entirely on plastic for its primary containers: airless pump bottles, tubes, and jars in the brand's recognizable white-body, bright-cap style. The company does not currently disclose the recycled content of these containers, and independent reviewers have found the plastic appears to be virgin or of undisclosed origin.

The brand ships in paperboard cartons, provides product-by-product recycling guidance, and in 2025 announced a packaging partnership with manufacturer Albea aimed at post-consumer recycled plastic and recyclable, refill-ready designs. Refillable formats have begun rolling out for hero moisturizers such as the Protini cream and Lala Retro, where customers replace only an inner pod. These steps are encouraging but still early and limited to a handful of products.

Ingredient Sustainability

The brand's signature ingredient, marula oil (Sclerocarya birrea), is a real sustainability strength. Drunk Elephant sources it from Namibia, where the marula harvest is protected by law: the trees cannot be cut down, only ripe fruit that has fallen to the ground may be gathered, and harvesting is reserved for local farming communities. The supplier operates under the UN Nagoya Protocol, which links the trade to biodiversity protection and fair payment to harvesters.

Beyond marula, the formulas lean heavily on other plant-derived oils, several of which carry overharvesting or land-use questions the brand does not address with the same transparency. The Lala Retro cream blends five further African oils: baobab, mongongo, ximenia, Kalahari melon, and passionfruit. Baobab and ximenia in particular grow wild and can be put under pressure by rising cosmetic demand, so they benefit from certified community sourcing that the brand does not document. Several products also rely on coconut-derived ingredients, such as coconut alkanes and caprylic/capric triglyceride, and on soy-derived ferments. Both crops are linked to monoculture, and coconut and soy carry deforestation pressure when not responsibly farmed, yet their sourcing is not disclosed.

On the synthetic side, the brand's complete exclusion of silicones is a meaningful environmental positive, since silicones persist in the environment. That said, the formulas still include some petroleum-derived, slow-to-biodegrade polymers, most notably the polyvinyl alcohol film in the Protini cream, alongside carbomers and polysorbates. Parent company Shiseido has committed to fully RSPO-certified palm sourcing, which matters given the coconut and palm-derived surfactants common to this product category.

Energy Use and Carbon Footprint

Most of the meaningful climate data here comes from parent company Shiseido rather than from Drunk Elephant itself. Shiseido powers its production sites with 100% renewable electricity and is working to extend renewables across its offices. It measures and publicly reports its emissions with third-party involvement, broken down by scope, and holds emissions-reduction targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative for both the medium and long term. The company also offsets a portion of its operations.

The gaps are worth naming too. Progress reporting on Scope 3 emissions, which make up the largest share of a beauty company's footprint, is incomplete.

Waste Management

Drunk Elephant shows moderate progress on waste. Its strongest move is the introduction of refill formats for some hero products, which let customers keep the original container and swap in only a replacement pod, cutting down on repeat packaging. The brand also encourages mixing its serums, oils, and creams in the hand (its 'smoothie' approach) and markets multi-use products, such as the marula oil for face, hair, and body, both of which can reduce the number of items a person buys. Recyclable packaging and clear disposal guidance support this further.

There is no company-wide take-back or buyback program for empties, the refill system currently covers only a few products, and the brand does not publish waste-reduction data.

Business Model

Drunk Elephant's model pulls in two directions. In its favor, the brand keeps a fairly curated, evergreen lineup built around long-running hero products rather than constant seasonal launches, and it positions itself on efficacy and skin health over disposable trends

Working against it, the brand became one of the most visible symbols of beauty overconsumption during the 2024 'Sephora kids' wave, when its colorful, collectible packaging and viral mixing culture drove very young shoppers to amass multiple products. Expansion into hair and body lines has also widened the catalog.

Non-toxicity

score : 7.0/10

Non-toxicity is Drunk Elephant's clearest strength. The brand is built around leaving out a defined set of ingredient categories it considers most likely to irritate or sensitize skin, marketed as its 'Suspicious 6': essential oils, drying alcohols, silicones, chemical sunscreens, fragrance and dyes, and SLS. It extends this to a longer published list of avoided substances, including parabens, formaldehyde and formaldehyde releasers, phthalates, hydroquinone, and chemical UV filters such as oxybenzone.

Across the sample, the formulas are dominated by lower-risk, well-tolerated ingredients: vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, glycerin, ceramides, peptides, amino acids, panthenol, allantoin, and plant extracts. Drunk Elephant publishes a full ingredient list and a usage rationale for every product and is dermatologist tested, which reflects strong transparency for shoppers who want to know what they are putting on their skin.

A few points keep this short of the very top. The preservative phenoxyethanol, which can irritate sensitive individuals, appears in most of the formulas, and exfoliating products like the Framboos serum use high concentrations of acids that, while not toxic, can irritate or sensitize skin if overused, a real-world concern given how many young users were drawn to the brand. Drunk Elephant also does not carry independent safety certifications such as MADE SAFE or EWG Verified.

Social Responsibility

score : 6.0/10

Fair Labor

Drunk Elephant's products are made in the United States by contract manufacturers, a lower-risk setting for labor standards, though the brand does not publicly name its production facilities. Parent company Shiseido publishes a supplier code of conduct that prohibits forced and child labor and protects the right to collective bargaining, and it states that it regularly audits its supply chain partners. The marula supply chain carries an added labor positive: because it operates under the Nagoya Protocol, it is structured to guarantee fair payment to harvesting communities and to guard against worker exploitation and child labor.

The limits are in transparency and depth. Shiseido discloses only partial supplier information, its code does not guarantee a living wage or establish grievance mechanisms, and the brand holds no independent labor certifications such as Fair Trade or SA8000.

Community Engagement

Drunk Elephant ties its community giving to its own identity through ongoing support for the International Elephant Foundation, which funds elephant conservation and anti-poaching work, and it has run an anti-bullying campaign in partnership with its parent company. These read as consistent, values-aligned efforts rather than one-off donations.

Animal Welfare

Animal welfare is a strong area for Drunk Elephant. The brand is certified cruelty-free by both Leaping Bunny and PETA, and it does not test on animals at any stage of production. It has navigated the China market specifically to avoid mandatory animal testing, selling there only through cross-border e-commerce and in Hong Kong retail, channels that do not trigger testing requirements, rather than entering mainland physical retail.

The brand also excludes animal fats, oils, and musks from its formulas and offers a range of clearly labeled vegan products. Two things keep it from the very top: it is not a fully vegan brand, since some products contain animal-derived ingredients, and its parent company, Shiseido, is not itself cruelty-free.