Our Sustainability Impact

Biossance was born out of a desire to make the world a better place. With our first-of-their-kind ingredients and sustainable packaging, we’re leading the beauty industry toward a planet-friendly future. But as consumers increasingly demand eco-conscious products, “sustainability” has become as much of a marketing term as it is an actual business practice.

We understand that it’s not enough to simply say our products are sustainable. We need to show how we consciously and impactfully heal our planet. And this Earth Month, we’re doing exactly that.

Our Sustainable Lab Practices

All Biossance formulations are developed in a My Green Lab Platinum Certified facility, reducing our environmental impact with every product we create. 

My Green Lab is a non-profit dedicated to transforming the life sciences, industrial sciences, and healthcare industries by creating a culture of sustainability through science. Certification is the gold standard for laboratory sustainability best practices worldwide and provides scientists and laboratory support teams with actionable ways to make meaningful change.

Helping Heal Marine Ecosystems

Did you know that squalene was originally sourced from shark liver? Scientists at our parent company, Amyris, discovered how to create vegan squalane by fermenting sustainably grown sugarcane. We then shared our sustainable squalane with the beauty and skincare industry to broaden its impact. As a result, 2 million sharks are saved every year.

Healthy shark populations are essential to thriving marine ecosystems. As apex predators, sharks keep the entire food web in balance, boosting biodiversity and helping to preserve crucial marine habitats. They also act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon on the sea floor after they die.

Read more about why we should care about sharks.

Our Closed-System Squalane Manufacturing Process

We produce our squalane  in Brazil using just 1 square km of sustainably grown sugarcane that’s cultivated on existing farmland far from the Amazon rainforest, so there’s no deforestation or adverse impact on biodiversity.

The region’s plentiful rainfall allows us to irrigate our sugarcane naturally, and waste products from the production process are used to generate electricity that powers our production plants. Any electricity not used by the sugarcane mill or fermentation plant is released to power local communities, free of charge.

In addition, the fermentation plant is a low-waste facility that strives to commoditize or reuse all byproducts. It’s also one of the first to be certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials, a global membership organization that drives the just and sustainable transition to a bio-based and circular economy.

Sustainable Packaging + Shipping

The waste products from our squalane manufacturing products are used to create sugarcane plastic for our products, which leaves no environmental footprint. We supplement these materials using post-consumer-recycled plastic sourced from ocean trash, helping to clean up our oceans while creating beautiful packaging that can be easily recycled or upcycled.

We also transform sugarcane waste into sugarcane paper outer packaging, which is fully recyclable. There are no plastic windows or metallic inks in our outer packaging to ensure recyclability, and our outer cartons are tree-free. We’re thrilled to have saved 5,000+ trees by using our sugarcane boxes. 

We complete the sustainability cycle by using carbon-neutral shipping on every single Biossance order. We prevent 22 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere each year by planting trees and reforestation efforts as part of our carbon-neutral shipping practices.