UPCYCLED INGREDIENTS


Waste not, want not: upcycled ingredients


Helen Barnett - The Upcycled Beauty Company


The way we shop is changing. It is no longer enough to promise powerhouse products and slew of vague claims around naturality. A new generation of wary, passionate and careful consumers are here and personal care brands must prioritise authentic and effective sustainability if they are to thrive. People are aligning with brands that have the same ethics as them. We have all seen this, especially since the pandemic. Indeed, sustainability is important to nine in ten shoppers, according to a report by sustainability marketing organisation Provenance.1 As climate issues are engrained in the


consumer conscience and felt in real-time, personal care credentials need to be authentic and become such a normal part of operations it is not even considered news. So how do we get there? At The Upcycled


Beauty Company, we propose the personal care industry can thrive from waste products alone to produce raw materials all the way through to packaging. This is not a new concept or process and it is not a giant leap for our industry. Many ingredients we already use are by-


products – nobody is drilling for crude oil to make Vaseline. Excitingly, there are so many new upcycled ingredients and circular technologies entering the personal care sphere, and the innovation is inspiring. Take Hamburg-based ingredient


manufacturer Lignopure. It has created LignoBase, a line of upcycled, lignin-based ingredients from renewable vegetal sources with multifunctional properties. The natural molecular structure offers SPF and antioxidant boosting with a soft matte finish to multiple formulations such as CC (colour/complexion correcting) and BB (beauty balm) creams, mascara and more.2 Our own Blueberry NECTA®, an active oil


that packs a punch against blue light, made from cold-pressing blueberry seeds saved after the flesh has been juiced. Just one kilogramme of oil diverts waste from 800,000 blueberries.3 Leftover waste seedcake is then repurposed again to make 14 kilogrammes of active powders for cleansers and exfoliants. Active Concepts has developed a protein- mimicking material for hair care, made from upcycled orange pulp and oranges ‘too ugly’ to make it to supermarkets. Discarded oranges undergo enzymatic extraction and modification to create a water-soluble active to smooth and strengthen hair.4


It is great to see the industry is


already taking steps towards circularity and we champion all these efforts.


www.personalcaremagazine.com


Parliament voted in January in support of a new EU law to ban the shipment of waste destined for disposal.10 November 2022 saw the global population surpass 8 billion people, sparking concern over food security, nutrition and climate change. We do not think the personal care industry should be taking primary resources to manufacture products and we know there is a better way for people and the planet.


How ingredient manufacturers are interrupting supply chains It is not harder to work with upcycled supply chains, just different. Instead of the traditional linear economy and process of take-make- dispose, ingredient manufacturers can reverse this: investigate what is being disposed of and determine what can be created. If we think of waste as a resource with value, rather than worthless scraps, it becomes a profitable commodity. This leads to fascinating innovation without utilising virgin resources. In one example, we take waste from a local


Motivations for upcycled ingredients Before we go into how we can close the circular gap, it is good to know the reasons why we should bother. Tackling food waste is key to limiting climate change, according to the research,5


with uneaten food accounting for at


least 8% of global greenhouse emissions.6 Shockingly, a third of food is lost during When something goes uneaten,


production.7


it is not just a head of broccoli going from the fridge to the bin. It is the invisible water, energy, materials and money that have been needlessly used to grow, harvest, package, transport, store and prepare the produce. Then there is the cost and resources of dealing with that broccoli when the bin is collected. And what of that bin? It has become quite


clear to us in Western countries that what we deem as rubbish often pops up somewhere else – usually a developing country country.8


In fact,


192 million tonnes of waste were traded around the world in 2018 according to OECD figures.9 The West is starting to wake up to their


waste responsibility. In a move to encourage turning waste into a resource, the European


gin distillery in the UK to create barley extract ferment. During the gin-making process, malted barley is fermented to make alcohol before the ethanol is removed during distillation. While the ethanol goes on to make gin, the leftover grain ferment would be wasted. Instead, it is taken and combined with


glycerine (which is another by-product) to eliminate the need for any preservative (Figure 1). This upcycled active quenches thirsty skin by offering long-lasting hydration and delivers three times more moisture than glycerine alone. Shown to reduce the pro-inflammatory


cytokine IL-8, this ferment also helps calm and soothe stressed-out skin. For every bottle of gin produced, four litres of waste are taken from distillers for this process. No new materials are created – no existing resources are wasted. In another, SurfactGreen has created


CosmeGreen, a line of biobased, readily biodegradable cationic surfactants utilising the principles of green and upcycled chemistry. These products provide body and formulation stability to emulsion systems. Meanwhile, waste from sugarcane has been


captured to create an emulsifier. Sensient’s Natpure SOL is a mixture of sugar and lauric acid with a high solubilizing efficacy, mixing well with both aqueous and hydroalcoholic products. Furthermore, upcycled ingredients are


September 2023 PERSONAL CARE


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