Brand Rating:

Nars

Name: Shifting Gaia brand review: Nars
Item: Nars
Rating: 2
Author: Shifting Gaia

Poor

4/10

Score 4/10

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

RSP

RSPO Certified

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

Rated: July 27, 2026
Category: Beauty care
Subcategory: Makeup

Overview:

Sustainability 4.8/10

Non-toxicity 5.5/10

NARS Cosmetics is a French-founded prestige makeup and skincare brand owned by the Japanese beauty group Shiseido.

Highlights

Not cruelty-free; sold in mainland China
Plastic-heavy packaging
Renewable-powered facilities

Sustainability

score : 4.8/10

Packaging

NARS packaging leans heavily on plastic and glass. Foundations and concealers commonly arrive in glass bottles, which we view as an improvement on plastic because glass is endlessly recyclable, while many color cosmetics rely on plastic compacts, caps, and pumps. A recurring weakness is the use of mixed-material and magnetic compacts that combine plastic, metal, and mirror components, which are difficult to separate and recycle in practice.

The brand references post-consumer recycled content and has redesigned some packaging to reduce weight, but it does not publish clear figures for recycled content, and there is no use of compostable or plant-fiber packaging. Outer cartons appear to follow common industry practice of recycled or responsibly sourced paperboard, though printing inks are not disclosed. Refill options exist for a small number of products but remain the exception rather than a line-wide design principle.

Ingredient Sustainability

The formulas are built primarily on synthetic and petroleum-derived inputs. Silicones such as dimethicone and cyclopentasiloxane dominate the texture of the foundations and concealer; these are persistent in the environment and slow to break down. The lipsticks rely on petroleum-derived structuring waxes, namely microcrystalline wax and ozokerite, alongside film-formers and texturizers that contribute to microplastic pollution, including polyethylene and polymethyl methacrylate.

Poorly biodegradable chelating agents such as the EDTA salts also appear across several formulas. These choices drive most of the environmental load and place the brand toward the less sustainable end of the synthetic spectrum.

On the plant-based side, the better choices are the fruit and seed inputs that are effectively industry byproducts and carry a low footprint: grape seed extract, passionfruit seed oil, and the raspberry, watermelon, apple, and lentil fruit extracts used in the foundations. These are low-impact and worth crediting. The concern is the absence of any verified sourcing behind the higher-risk botanicals that also appear.

Some mitigation comes from the parent company. Shiseido is an RSPO member, reports converting about 80 percent of its palm-derived materials to certified sustainable sources with a goal of full conversion, maintains sustainable raw-material procurement guidelines, and participates in the Responsible Mica Initiative. This meaningfully reduces the risk attached to palm-derived and mica inputs. It does not, however, extend visible certification to the shea, candelilla, carnauba, castor, turmeric, or algae used in these products.

Energy Use & Carbon Footprint

Because NARS does not report emissions on its own, its energy and carbon performance is best read through Shiseido, which sets the operating standard for the brand. Here the commitments are strong and externally validated. Shiseido has set a target of carbon neutrality for its own operations (Scope 1 and Scope 2) by 2026, and its value-chain reduction targets are approved by the Science Based Targets initiative on a 1.5 C pathway, including a 46 percent cut in operational emissions and a 55 percent cut in value-chain intensity by 2030 against a 2019 baseline.

The qualifier is scope. The vast majority of the footprint sits in the value chain (Scope 3), which remains large and is not yet neutral, and the nearer-term operational neutrality target leans in part on offsets. There is also no NARS-specific breakdown, so consumers are trusting group-level performance.

Waste Management

NARS offers practical routes to keep packaging out of landfill, including in-boutique take-back through the HANDLE programme in the United Kingdom and store and retailer recycling partnerships in some other markets, which accept hard-to-recycle items that municipal systems usually reject. The brand also uses some recycled content, offers refills on a limited number of products, and sells multi-purpose items such as its multi-use sticks that can reduce the number of products a consumer buys. These are real, if partial, efforts. What is missing is breadth and circularity: refills are not a line-wide default, there is no comprehensive buyback or closed-loop system, and the brand publishes little data on its waste or recycling rates.

Business Model

NARS runs a classic prestige-beauty model that leans toward consumption. The calendar is built around frequent new launches, reformulations, seasonal and holiday collections, limited editions, collaborations, and products engineered for social-media virality, and it is supported by regular promotions, bundles, and gift-with-purchase offers that encourage impulse buying. Working in the other direction is a durable franchise of icons that are evergreen, repurchased for years, and built on quality rather than novelty.

Non-toxicity

score : 5.5/10

Across the sampled products it generally avoids the ingredients of greatest concern: there are no parabens, no formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, and no harsh sulfate surfactants in these formulas, and the reimagined Powder Blush is explicitly formulated without talc, silicones, PEGs, EDTA, parabens, phthalates, mineral oil, and sulfates. Several formulas also carry reef-safe positioning, and many products are free of the most common allergens.

A handful of moderate-concern ingredients keep this from scoring higher. Some lipsticks include synthetic fragrance (parfum), which can carry undisclosed allergens, and the antioxidant BHT, which is a lower-grade concern. Preservatives such as phenoxyethanol and chlorphenesin appear in some products, certain ethoxylated ingredients carry a trace risk of 1,4-dioxane from manufacturing, and colorants such as bismuth oxychloride and carmine can irritate more sensitive users.

None of these is a high-hazard ingredient, and exposure is low in normal use, but their presence, together with the absence of independent safety certification such as EWG Verified or Made Safe, places the brand in the middle of the range: safe for most people, transparent on what is inside, but not a leader in proactively reformulating away every lower-risk ingredient.

Social Responsibility

score : 4.3/10

Fair Labor

Labor practices again run through Shiseido, where governance is comparatively robust. The group is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, maintains a Supplier Code of Conduct that requires wages sufficient for workers and their families to live with dignity, and runs a formal human-rights due-diligence process with regular supplier assessments, third-party audits, and confidential whistleblowing channels. It is an active member of the Responsible Mica Initiative, which is directly relevant given the mica in NARS color cosmetics and has funded community programs reaching tens of thousands of people in mica-producing regions of India.

The main gaps are that living-wage commitments are still maturing across the supplier base rather than fully implemented, that broad supply-chain risks remain in a global beauty business, and that the brand is not blanket-certified to standards such as Fair Trade or SA8000 across all suppliers.

Community Engagement

Community work is strongest at the group level. Shiseido runs a structured social strategy, Empowering People Through the Power of Beauty, with a stated goal of supporting one million people by 2030, alongside an annual employee-volunteering programme (Camellia Day), the Camellia Fund, and substantial humanitarian responses including COVID-19 relief and aid for people displaced from Ukraine.

NARS as a brand contributes more sporadically, for example through Donate Beauty care packages sent to frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic, rather than through a sustained, mission-aligned community programme of its own.

Animal Welfare

This is the brand's weakest area. NARS is not cruelty-free. It sells in mainland China, where animal testing can be required for imported cosmetics, and its policy states that it does not test on animals except where required by law, which is the language brands use when they accept testing in regulated markets.

Its parent, Shiseido, likewise tests where legally required. NARS holds no cruelty-free certification from Leaping Bunny or PETA, and it is not a vegan brand, since some products contain animal-derived ingredients such as carmine, even though certain individual products are formulated without them.