Sustainability and innovation combined: how AI is accelerating our environmental goals
cosnova has introduced a comprehensive AI strategy (GenAI Governance Framework) that integrates artificial intelligence into all areas of the company. The aim is to train employees in the use of AI tools, create content more efficiently and optimize product development and adaptation to international markets.
As sustainability is a key concern for us, we are using AI in a targeted manner to achieve our environmental goals more quickly. Three examples show how AI is helping us to promote sustainability in all areas and achieve our goals more effectively.
Reducing the carbon footprint sustainably with AI
“We know that many factors influence our carbon footprint. Every change has a direct impact on the overall result. To reduce this complexity and quickly see how adjustments affect our supply chain, we will be using an AI-supported tool in the future,” explains Maximilian Peters, Unit Expert Corporate Responsibility.
cosnova feeds relevant product data such as ingredients, material details of the primary packaging and location information of the production sites into the tool. As this is a machine-learning-based tool, our understanding of composition, material use and origin grows with every new product, which helps us to gain transparency about the carbon footprint of our supply chain and identify major carbon drivers more quickly. This process has not yet been completed, but will provide cosnova with valuable insights that we can use as a basis for our actions in the future.
Maximilian Peters gives an outlook on where the journey is headed: “In the future, we also hope to use the tool to identify the impact of design elements, materials and ingredients on the carbon footprint at an early stage during the development of new products and packaging. It also allows us to experiment with quantities until we achieve the lowest possible carbon footprint.”
Integrating the consumer's perspective with AI
“Our consumers are at the heart of our product development, including when it comes to sustainability issues. It often makes sense to take their perspective, especially if it doesn't completely match the technical view,” explains Melanie Schmidt, Senior Innovation Lab Manager, who played a key role in developing the tool.
To facilitate this change of perspective, “sustainability personas” were developed based on 2,000 quantitative interviews in four countries. To better represent the characters and make them distinguishable in terms of personality, they have also each been given an individual tone of voice. The AI helps to make complex data and correlations more easily accessible and reduces the need for lengthy searches in reports and presentations. This increases the motivation to work with the data. No prior knowledge of statistics or market research is required to use the results. One advantage is the intuitive operation of the AI assistant, as it works as a chat.
Melanie Wieland, Senior Digital Researcher, is developing the tool further together with Melanie Schmidt. She also makes it clear where the limitations lie: “The data complexity still remains to some extent. People simply don't think and act according to a certain pattern - and so do our four sustainability personas. The teams need to know how to use the tool correctly to obtain helpful results. As everywhere in the company, artificial intelligence supports but does not replace human work. We are constantly working on further optimizing the tool and adapting it to the needs of the teams that work with it.”
Our GenAI Governance Framework
A Commitment to Ethical and Trustworthy AI
We believe Generative AI enhances creativity while preserving the human touch. Our GenAI Governance Framework ensures ethical and responsible AI use in the beauty industry, aligned with our values of High Performance and People Focus.
Efficient communication with AI support
Transparency about ingredients and sustainability is significant to us and is increasingly being requested by our consumers. We therefore communicate openly with them and are happy to answer their questions.
We have trained a “cosnovaCares” ChatGPT assistant to help our team answer inquiries. It can access all relevant information on strategy, sustainability goals, raw materials and our products. The assistant makes it much easier to answer questions and saves our team a great deal of time.
cosnova's democratization of beauty
Our aspiration: to be a pioneer in terms of sustainability too
Our make-up products have always been cruelty-free, and the essence and Catrice ranges are already free of microplastic particles and cyclic volatile silicones - long before legal requirements demand this.
