Sustainable beauty seems to be following clean beauty’s trajectory, although exactly where the beauty industry is on the sustainability trajectory is unclear. Sustainable beauty brands pioneering a more sustainable approach to beauty such as Ethique, Susteau, HiBar, Common Heir and UpCircle have been on the market for several years, and many sustainability initiatives have spread broadly in the beauty industry (plastic-free packaging, compostability, refills and water usage reduction, for example). But just how mainstream is sustainability in beauty? If it is mainstream, what’s the impact of it being mainstream?

Those are the sorts of questions we’re thinking about here at Beauty Independent this Earth Month. For the latest edition of our ongoing series posing questions relevant to indie beauty, we decided to get beauty entrepreneurs, investors, executives, consultants, manufacturers and others to weigh in on them. We asked 22 of them the following questions: Do you believe sustainability, similar to clean beauty, has now become table stakes for beauty brands? What does that mean for brands and say about consumer demand for sustainability?