Key Takeaways
- 75% of key cosmetic ingredients analysed rank as high risk
- Palm oil ranks as the highest-risk ingredient assessed
- Human rights risks are more severe than environmental risks across all eight ingredients analysed
Sustainability risks are entrenched across cosmetic ingredient supply chains, raising the stakes for beauty companies as scrutiny intensifies over where and how raw materials are sourced. Many of the commodities underpinning everyday cosmetics products are produced in the world’s highest-risk supply chains, according to our Commodity Risk Data, which covers 160+ globally traded commodities.
Our analysis of eight key ingredients finds that six - palm oil, cocoa, shea nuts, coconut, soy and carnauba wax - rank as high-risk on a composite sustainability score. We assessed producer countries across deforestation, water stress, water pollution, natural hazards, child labour, forced labour, land grabs and health and safety.
Palm oil ranks as the highest-risk commodity, followed by cocoa and shea nuts, ingredients widely used in products such as moisturisers, body butters and lip balms. The findings highlight how sustainability risks often originate far upstream of direct suppliers, embedded within the countries, commodities and production systems that support global beauty supply chains.
For beauty companies, this is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, as the pressures facing brands build from two directions. Consumers are demanding greater transparency about where ingredients come from, while regulations such as the EU’s Forced Labour Regulation, Deforestation Regulation and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and US and Canada’s import prohibitions on forced labour, are increasing expectations that businesses understand, assess and address risks deeper within their supply chains.
Figure: All eight ingredients are commonly used in the most popular products produced by European cosmetics brands
Commodity Risk Data Q3 2026
Click to highlight a commodity
Wide network diagram with eight ingredients in the centre and five cosmetic product types on each side; click a bubble to highlight its connections. Yellow ingredients are medium risk and orange ingredients are high risk.
Source: COSMILE Europe, Verisk Maplecroft
© Verisk Maplecroft 2026
Human rights challenges most severe across key cosmetics ingredients
While the assessment spans a range of sustainability issues, including climate and environmental risks, it is the human rights challenges that stand out as the most severe. On child labour, for example, all eight commodities fall within the high or very high-risk categories. Cocoa and shea nuts, which both receive very-high risk scores, are marked by informal production, very low wages, and shortages of adult labour; a combination that drives worsening reliance on child labour.
Shea is gathered from wild trees across West Africa, with children commonly involved in collecting nuts, cracking shells and carrying loads alongside adults. Nigeria, one of the world’s largest shea producers, receives the worst child labour score of any of the assessed producers. Across cocoa supply chains, the International Cocoa Initiative (with original research by NORC/US DOL) reported estimates that around 1.56 million children are in child labour in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the two largest producers globally, mostly in hazardous work involving sharp tools.
Forced labour is another key issue, with all the assessed commodities rated high-risk. Palm oil stands out as the most exposed, principally due to the concentration of production in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together account for 88% of global supply.
