78 UPCYCLED INGREDIENTS


Figure 1: The upcycling process - fermented grain


making their way into finished products. Bybi, focused on becoming the world’s first carbon- negative pro-planet beauty brand, uses upcycled ingredients in over 50% of its range. Deodorant brand Fussy rescued


unwanted ‘wonky’ Christmas trees to create a pine fragrance for a festive limited-edition deodorant. Elsewhere, Farmacy has a number of skincare products using by-products, including Honey Potion Plus which contains upcycled apple extract. This shift towards zero-waste ingredients


is not only the provenance of indie brands. Upcycled materials are also making their way into multinational branded products. Palmolive has a range of shower gels with upcycled ingredients from juice, paper and perfume industries.11 In addition, Nivea has added upcycled


coffee grounds to its new ‘Naturally Good’ face cream in partnership with Kaffe Bueno, a company which transforms coffee waste from the hotel and catering industries into cosmetic actives.12


Disadvantages and how to overcome them There can be drawbacks when moving towards more circular processes and developers can run into problems. Finnish brand Lumene, a pioneer in


‘Sustainable Nordic Beauty’, has developed a brightening cloudberry seed oil using Nordic cloudberries.13


However, they found it


challenging working with such a rare fruit as yields are low, with harvesting occurring during a small window of four to six weeks in summer. Lumene said a close relationship was


needed with manufacturers in the procurement process to ensure adequate processing, and to accurately estimate yields. They sounded caution over being able to sell to multinationals who would want large quantities, adding that formulas would need to be in low


PERSONAL CARE September 2023


concentration, or sold in small batches. When it comes to sourcing materials for


mass markets, we need to look at waste which is in abundance. Taking oranges for example, every supermarket around the world has orange juice for sale. The volume of citrus waste is off the scale compared to small batch produce, which makes ingredients sourced from orange waste appear more achievable. This comes back to flipping the traditional manufacturing process of take-make-dispose on its head. Another issue Lumene came up against was the time it took to develop the ingredient: ten years. It admitted there was limited knowledge of food and forestry industries and regulations back then. Despite this, over the last two decades


this Nordic pioneer of circular economy has managed to develop 20 upcycled ingredients sourced from Nordic food and forestry industries. With more knowledge and technology, development times can be slashed considerably. In its paper on upcycling cloudberries,


Lumene also said it was difficult to simply explain upcycled ingredients, which meant there was a ‘jungle of sustainability claims… spanning from greenwashing to authentic attempts to offer truly developed sustainable cosmetic product solutions.’ We agree that openness and education will be fundamental to the future of upcycling. Communication can be a challenge when


it comes to marketing upcycled ingredients or upcycled beauty products and most companies are currently unsure which words to use. The same can be said with regards to upcycled food. This is one conclusion of a recent report coming out of Denmark. As part of a Project PlantPro survey, a


sample of consumers drawn from a nationally representative panel were asked about which by/co-product or upcycling terms they were aware of or not. The questions were asked


in May 2021 and again in October 2022. The results of this survey found that familiarity is relatively low (higher with by/co-product) but there was an upward tendency for the term ‘upcycling.’14 Part of our mission is to inform, inspire and


build awareness around all things upcycled in personal care. We believe education and communication is key to help the industry become more circular. Currently, beauty manufacturers can use the


‘Upcycled Certified’ standard created by the Upcycled Food Association to help verify their upcycled sustainability claims. In 2020, the established definition of ‘upcycled food’ was determined by a team of experts from Harvard Law School, Drexel University, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defence Council, ReFED, and others for use in policy, research and elsewhere. “Upcycled foods use ingredients that


otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, are procured and produced using verifiable supply chains, and have a positive impact on the environment.”15 However, there is no such definition in


personal care, and because it is possible that raw materials can be upcycled from sources other than food, such as charcoal, there is a gap in certification. With this in mind, we are collaborating with industry and beyond to find a collective understanding and definition more appropriate to cosmetics. Giorgio Dell’Acqua, advisor to, and former


chair of, the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists, was reported as saying that while ingredients from upcycled food production waste appear to have promise, logistics of securing the ingredients in a useable state are a roadblock to scalability.16 However, if we look at the history of


personal care, upcycling, by definition, is not a new concept. Raw materials like lanolin, glycerine and many seed oils are all by-


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