It seems everyone in beauty is talking about carbon right now.
Beauty Brands are Reducing and Recycling Carbon Dioxide
On the journey from environmentally sustainable cosmetics and personal care business practices to a circular economy, ingredient suppliers, packaging companies, beauty startups and multinationals are all taking about carbon dioxide reduction and carbon dioxide recycling.
For instance, the popular ethical indie brand Athr Beauty, known for its crystal-infused color cosmetics offers carbon-neutral shipping.
While London-based Bybi Beauty is proudly a carbon-neutral brand. Last year, when business was anything but normal, Founders Dominika Minarovic and Elsie Rutterford worked with their manufacturing partners, encouraging them to switch to green power sources. And now that brand’s 15+ skincare products are all made using wind and solar energy.
And Coco Kind made headlines recently by including sustainability facts on their products’ secondary packaging, including carbon emissions per use of the enclosed product. The Coco Kind rosewater toner, as an example, expends 24.5 grams of carbon dioxide per use (which is 4-6 spritzes according to the label).
The brand calculates those figures using the Department of Energy’s Life Cycle Inventory Database and has the calculations confirmed by the data and assessment company Carbon Calories.
Carbon Cuts from Beauty Manufacturing and Ingredient Makers
Reducing carbon emissions has been an important aspect of sustainability in beauty all along.
It’s one reason why cold-pressed ingredients and cold-processed formulations are so appealing.
It’s why Dow promotes ingredients like its ACULYN Siltouch Rheology Modifier (a polymer made with silicone) as a shortcut to low-carbon-footprint formulations.
It’s why L’Oréal built a nearly 1.5 megawatt solar panel installation at its manufacturing facility in Florence, Kentucky some 5 years ago. And why that company set out to reach and attained carbon neutral status for all its US manufacturing facilities and industrial sites in 2019.
What we’re seeing now is that more brands and businesses are taking steps to be carbon-neutral or carbon-negative and are leveraging these practices in marketing campaigns and thought leadership initiatives to ensure consumers and stakeholders are more aware of these benchmarks and the associated sustainability measures.
Carbon Capture and Re-use is on the Rise in Beauty
And some of the more fascinating uses of carbon dioxide in beauty news right now have to do with carbon capture or the re-use of carbon dioxide to help cultivate algae or in the manufacturing of fuels, polymers, and novel materials. And those are just some of the uses of carbon that’s captured from industrial facilities as well as directly from the atmosphere.
Companies like Global Thermostat have been perfecting this technology for over a decade. And now multinational beauty makers like Coty and L’Oréal are on track to use captured carbon in both product formulations and in cosmetics and personal care packaging materials.
How is Your Beauty Business Working to Reduce Carbon Use?
But this is only the beginning. And like I said, it seems as if everyone in our industry is talking about carbon right now. So please do take a moment to leave a comment, and let me know what you see happening with carbon.
And thanks as always for watching DUviews!
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this DUviews item was originally posted to LinkedIn and now appears on DeannaUtroske.com