L’Oréal Groupe, the world’s leading beauty company, paves the way for a more sustainable future in seeking, advancing and scaling pioneering solutions through “L’AcceleratOR”, its flagship a sustainable innovation programme.
Building on its long-standing culture of innovation, L’Oréal has partnered with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)’s Canopy innovation experts to scout, identify, pilot, and scale breakthrough technologies addressing critical solution gaps within the industry in support of its sustainability transformation.
CISL’s extensive network of over 40,000 people driving impact and deep expertise in sustainable business development will provide crucial support to selected applicants through a up to 12-month cohort-based programme, facilitating pilot projects and scaling of innovative solutions within the L'Oréal ecosystem.
Who is it for?We are seeking bold startups, SMEs and innovative solutions from established companies from around the world working on deployment-ready innovations, at TRL 7 or higher, that offer a solution to one of the L’Oréal sustainability challenges:
Targeted Technology Readiness Level (TRL):
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Key Dates
Applications are now open. Please use this link to apply.You can view and download the full set of application questions here before applying. Please note: all dates are indicative and may be updated. If you do not hear from the L’AcceleratOR team by September 2026, please consider your application unsuccessful.
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What support do participants receive?
Successful applicants will join an up to 12-month programme that includes:
- A 12-week group acceleration support delivered by CISL innovation team, focused on pilot readiness and scale-up.
- Up to 12 hours of 1:1 mentoring and coaching from global sustainability, innovation and industry leaders:
- Mentoring – longer‑term, 1:1 support with a matched expert, offering tailored guidance to meet participants’ individual needs and support strategic development over time
- Coaching – clinic‑style, 1:1 sessions with subject‑matter experts, providing timely guidance and practical input on specific topics or challenges.
- In-person or virtual peer-learning sessions.
- The potential opportunity to co-develop pilot projects with L’Oréal*, including, if applicable, the potential opportunity for commercial agreement or investment.
- Leveraging CISL's sustainability expertise and L'Oréal's leading cosmetics industry position.
*Participation in the programme does not guarantee future collaboration
L'AcceleratOR: Your questions answered
In this Q&A session, Cannelle Lacoste, Sustainability Director, Innovation and Circularity at L’Oréal and Viola Jardon, CISL's Director of Innovation Programmes, discussed:
- What L’Oréal is looking for
- The seven key innovation areas
- Application process and selection timeline
- What selected programme participants will receive
- Pilot and mentoring opportunities
- Live Q&A with attendees
Click here to watch the L'AcceleratOR's Q&A session
The seven key innovation areas and a detailed list of challenges**
This ambitious programme is designed across seven areas to address the critical solution gaps within the beauty industry and accelerate the delivery of L'Oréal's 2030 sustainability commitments.
**Challenges may evolve and do not constitute binding commitments.
Low-carbon, climate-smart technologies
PACKAGING
- Innovative technologies and materials for spraying liquids (including no propellant systems, alternative aerosols)
- Decoration technologies to enable high-end packaging at low environmental impact (all packaging materials)
- Key enabling technologies for lower environmental impact of aluminium packaging (forming, shaping, assembling, coating and decoration)
- Key enabling technologies for lower environmental impact of glass packaging (forming, shaping, assembling, treatment or decoration)
INGREDIENTS
- Low-impact propellants
- Low-impact oleochemicals (C12-C14) for surfactants
INDUSTRY
- Fatal energy recovery solutions in plants or operated sites (monitoring, measurement, heat pumps, heat or energy storage without losses and better transfer yield)
- Solutions for hydrothermal gasification at industrial scale
- Solutions for biomethanisation of sludges or bulks at industrial scale
OTHER AREAS OF INTEREST
- Low-impact point-of-sale (POS) and promotional items
- Low-impact logistics solutions, including alternative fuels, carbon reduction solutions, fuel efficiency, and truck load optimisation tools
- Solutions to measure, control and minimise the environmental impact of IT and digital footprint, including AI
- Solutions for low-impact digital workplace and employee engagement.
- Tech-based or nature-based solutions for permanent carbon capture and carbon removal
Water resilience solutions
PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGIES
- Waterless or water-efficient innovations for hygiene and beauty habits
- Solutions for clean water access for hygiene and beauty habits
- Water use reduction, water recycling and wastewater treatment solutions applicable to the cosmetic industry (residential, commercial or industrial)
- Packaging technologies and solutions for dispensing or dosing liquids/paste/powders
Nature-based solutions
PROTECTING, RESTORING AND REGENERATING LANDSCAPES
- Weather-resistant, drought-tolerant, high-yield crop varieties (incl. rapeseed, palm, sugar cane, maise)
- Tools and technologies for regenerative agriculture practices to improve adoption, transition time and profitability
- Nature or tech-based interventions to reinforce ecosystem health, including soil health, water-cycle regeneration and biodiversity enhancement
- Innovative low-impact inputs for sustainable soil management
DATA MANAGEMENT
- Tools and technologies to enhance traceability, track and monitor natural and agricultural ecosystems, including MRV systems on biodiversity, carbon and water
- Predictive analytics & AI for nature state modelling
Alternative ingredients and materials
INGREDIENTS
- Alternative ingredients coming from biobased feedstock or issued from co-products or from recycled feedstock, including for dimethyl ether, monoethanolamine, hydrogen peroxide, ammonia, non-ethoxylated surfactants, glycine, and glycolic acid
- Ingredients/precursors issued from gases, in particular C1 gases and dihydrogen coming from either bio-source (methanisation, fermentation) or recycled fossil source (industrial effluent), or air capture
- Mineral oils from innovative feedstock
OTHER MATERIALS OF INTEREST
- Sustainable, modifiable, reusable, recycled, alternative POS materials for luxury retail
- Wipes or sheet masks that are compostable, biodegradable, circular or bio-sourced or alternatives to tissue-based products
- Recycled materials or rare earth alternatives for 3D electronic components for beauty devices
- Magnet alternative for the same magnet effect, closure system with a magnet-like user experience or innovative closures
Eliminating fossil plastic use and plastic waste
REDUCE
- Technologies for plastic packaging lightweighting
- Technologies to decrease the environmental impact of plastic packaging
REPLACE
- Technologies for low-carbon alternatives to plastic materials
- Technologies for bio-based and biodegradable plastic material production
- Technologies for advanced and/or chemical plastic recycling with low environmental impact
- Recyclable and recycled, containing flexible plastic packaging for sachets, pouches, and tubes
- Technologies and materials for recyclable, functional, flexible paper-based primary packaging (forming technologies, barrier technologies, assembly, closures, decoration technologies)
- Technologies for rigid paper primary packaging (forming technologies, barrier technologies, decoration technologies)
- Materials and technologies for sustainable sampling
REUSE & RECYCLE
- Key enabling technologies for plastic packaging recycling at scale (environmental impact, improve quality and safety)
- Recycling of flexible plastic packaging
- Reusable wrap covers (incl. strapping) for transportation
Circularity and resource management
PRODUCTS
- In-store or at-home refill, recharge or deposit solutions
- Key enabling models and technologies to improve repairability and recyclability of beauty devices, including associated retro-logistics models
PACKAGING
- Innovative materials and technologies for reuse and refill models
- Technologies and materials for ultralight glass packaging or flexible glass (forming, reinforcement coating, assembly, glueing)
- Technologies for glass packaging recycling, including making opaque glass recyclable
- Technologies to improve recyclability management at conception (e.g. AI or software to assess the design-for-recycling of a packaging)
- Technologies to improve the end-of-life collection and/or sorting of packaging
- Innovative design, materials and technologies to recycle or dismantle and recycle small and complex packaging items (e.g. make-up)
- Decoration technologies to remove recycling disruptors (detectable and recyclable deep black, safe pure white, detectable metallic finish)
- Innovative technologies and materials for sustainable hinges, closure/opening
RETAIL
- Reusable, modifiable, sustainable merchandising solutions for make-up
- Technologies and solutions to enable design for reusability and recyclability of retail POS, including associated retro-logistics models
- Technologies and solutions to enable the collection, dismantling and sorting of retail POS
SUPPLY & INDUSTRY
- Reusable boxes and containers solutions for upstream transportation and logistics
- Quality-proof technologies for product return management
- Logistic solutions enabling “beauty as a service" models (leasing/subscription)
- Solutions for the recycling of complex cosmetic formulas (to be extracted from packaging or in bulk)
Sustainable and inclusive business models
COMMUNITIES
- Open source living wage database
- Solutions enabling living wage gap analysis and an action plan
- Critical weather forecast prediction and early warning systems for workforce adaptation
- Climate change adaptation solutions for workers
- Open-source due diligence models for human rights assessment
- Human rights risk assessment and mitigation tools for suppliers
- Local worker-voice solutions
- Gender specific prevention solutions for supply chain health & safety
- Value chain transparency solutions
FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION
- Market-specific solutions enabling consumer understanding and engagement on sustainability, including on water usage, circular solutions, timely weather-adapted hygiene and beauty habits
- Retailer solutions for sustainable assortment enablement
- Sustainable beauty brands or beauty products
Why L’Oréal and CISL?
L’Oréal is the world’s leading beauty company, with a longstanding commitment to sustainability leadership. L’Oréal for the Future programme, launched in 2020, is centred around four key pillars: steward the climate transition, safeguard nature, drive circularity and support communities.
CISL is a globally renowned centre for sustainability leadership, with decades of experience educating, supporting, and convening leaders across policy, academia, and business. Through our innovation work under CISL’s Canopy team, we empower mission-led startups to drive the systemic transformation needed across industries and sectors.
The CISL Team
Viola Jardon
Viola Jardon is the Director of Innovation Programmes at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), where she leads strategic partnerships with corporates to drive sustainability transformation through startup-led solutions. She designs and delivers tailored innovation programmes that bridge corporates, investors, and early-stage ventures, supporting over 400 startups to date. Previously, Viola was a founding member of the London Fashion Fund and has over 15 years of experience in the tech sector across the UK and Asia. A 2023 finalist for the UK Asian Women of Achievement Award, she is also a regular speaker and judge at global sustainability and innovation forums, championing the intersection of corporate partnerships and sustainable innovation.
Sam Laakkonen
Senior Programme Director of the Canopy & Accelerator Team at CISL, Sam started his career as a management consultant in the City of London. He was headhunted to his first startup, FirstMark Communications Europe, which raised one of the largest Series A rounds in European history, over $1 billion. He has since been an early employee at Spotify, privately invested in 25+ startups, had 3 further exits from his own companies, helped 250+ startups accelerate growth, and works as an expert for the European Commission to distribute EIC equity and grant funding. Sam has been active in the Techstars ecosystem for a number of years, having been an Entrepreneur-In-Residence for Techstars Amsterdam, and a Lead Mentor on a number of programmes including Techstars Lisbon, Techstars Korea, Techstars Boulder and Techstars Energy in Oslo.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What is the sustainable innovation accelerator?
In order for our efforts to remain pioneering and ambitious, L’Oréal aims to further catalyse new breakthrough technologies to enable its sustainability transformation.
To this effect and building on its long-standing culture of innovation, L’Oréal partnered with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)’s Canopy innovation experts to scout, identify, pilot, and scale breakthrough technologies addressing critical solution gaps within the industry.
How is it different from other acceleration programmes?
In today's sustainability landscape, co-creation with partners is paramount for fostering impactful change. The L'AcceleratOR embodies this principle, leveraging CISL's renowned sustainability expertise and L'Oréal's leadership in beauty, providing a unique platform to accelerate technologies that address critical solution gaps in the industry and advance L'Oréal's sustainability goals.
Successful applicants will access one or more of the tailored elements from the program, ranging from personalised acceleration delivered by CISL experts to opportunities for co-developing pilot projects within the L'Oréal ecosystem, and potentially active support for scaling.
Consistent with L’Oréal’s existing innovation culture, this programme is complementary to the other innovation efforts, incubators, and funds internally operated by L’Oréal. It is dedicated to accelerating breakthrough sustainability solutions towards our 2030 solutions, complementing existing innovation and open development programs across our business.
Why should a startup want to participate?
The L'AcceleratOR program ambitions to leverage CISL's sustainability expertise and L'Oréal's leading position in the beauty industry to further accelerate the impact and growth of applicants’ solutions.
Successful applicants will benefit from one or more elements proposed by the program, including: access to a comprehensive 12-week group accelerator delivered by CISL experts, alongside up to 12 hours of 1:1 mentoring and coaching from global sustainability and industry leaders, peer-learning sessions and potential opportunities for co-developing pilot projects within the L'Oréal ecosystem, and active support for scaling.
Participation in the programme does not guarantee future collaboration
What are the challenges we are looking for?
The L'AcceleratOR is seeking for bold startups, SMEs and innovative solutions from established companies from around the world working on deployment-ready innovations, at TRL 7 or higher, that align with one or more of the following seven key innovation areas : low-carbon, climate-smart technologies; water resilience solutions; nature-based solutions; alternative ingredients and materials; eliminating fossil plastic use and plastic waste; circularity and resource management and sustainable and inclusive business models.
Within these areas, challenges of particular interest are shortlisted to address the critical solution gaps within the industry and accelerate the delivery of L’Oréal’s sustainability ambitions.
Challenges may evolve and do not constitute binding commitments.
Can I join the programme as a partner?
Any start-ups, SMEs, and established companies with innovative solutions meeting the scope of the call for applications are invited to apply.
Beyond applicants, any potential partner that shares our ambition is welcome to join the L'AcceleratOR in the future.
What does the selection process look like?
L’Oréal has partnered with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)’s Canopy innovation experts to scout and identify solutions addressing the critical solution gap to accelerate the delivery of its sustainability ambitions.
Our application evaluation follows a rigorous multi-step process. The CISL team will conduct the initial review and filtering, drawing upon the deep expertise of its vast network of more than 40,000 individuals committed to driving impact and sustainable business development.
L'Oréal will maintain a strong involvement from start to finish, playing a key role in the ultimate selection of solutions.
Applications are being accepted until May 6, 2026, with cohort selection scheduled for July 2026. Applications should be submitted directly online through the dedicated form.
When will I know if I have been selected?
The L'AcceleratOR team is committed to active communication with applicants throughout the application journey. The application window opens on March 27 and closes on May 6, 2026. The selection of the cohort is planned for July 2026, with notifications to successful applicants sent by that time.
