Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. While you may already be familiar with our eco-friendly packaging, our commitment to sustainability starts long before the bottle. From the way we run our labs, to how we source our ingredients and manufacture our award-winning formulas, we take care to ensure that the Biossance way is more beautiful not just for your skin, but for the planet, too.
Certified by My Green Lab
Our sustainable practices start in the lab where we create and our innovative ingredients and formulas.. Labs consume significantly more energy per square foot than the average building due to specialized equipment. Our parent company, Amyris, was founded on the idea that biotechnology is key to solving many of the world’s sustainability problems. It was therefore crucial to not only innovate sustainable ingredients but to do it in a way that would also minimize the impact on the planet.
That’s why our labs are certified by My Green Lab, a non-profit dedicated to transforming the life sciences, industrial sciences, and healthcare industries by creating a culture of sustainability through science. My Green Lab certification is considered the gold standard for laboratory sustainability best practices worldwide and provides scientists and laboratory support teams with actionable ways to make meaningful change.
Our Sustainable Super-Ingredient: Sugarcane Squalane
Plant-derived ingredients recently have come under a lot of scrutiny for their impact on the environment, and with good reason. Palm oil, bisabalol, and vanilla are just a few examples where sourcing ingredients from plants has been detrimental to the environment.
While we are constantly innovating sustainable ingredient alternatives, our sugarcane-derived squalane stands as the embodiment of our sustainable mission.
Beauty companies historically used shark-derived squalene as a moisturizing ingredient. Biossance was born when our scientists found a way to create cruelty-free squalane by fermenting sustainably-grown sugarcane. We produce it in Brazil using just 1 square km of sustainably grown sugarcane using 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 is used for co-generation of electricity to power 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, and is one of the first to be certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials
We share our sugarcane-derived squalane throughout the beauty industry, we’ve eliminated reliance on sharks. This saves 2 million of these crucial apex predators every year and helps protect marine ecosystems around the globe.
Sustainability Meets Efficacy
We use our sustainable, sugarcane-derived squalane in every formula we create. While other plant-derived forms of squalane exist, such as olive-derived squalane, these older methods of squalane production are not only less sustainable, they also yield a less pure form of the molecule.
Our squalane is purer, more stable, effective, and sustainable than olive-derived squalane. Compared to olive-derived squalane, sugarcane squalane reduces land use 600-fold and minimizes environmental impact and water usage.
Sugarcane-derived squalane is bioidentical to your body’s own moisture. It’s weightlessly absorbed into the skin and deeply hydrates, penetrating 20 times deeper. It’s also a perfect conduit to make other ingredients - like vitamin C or lactic acid - perform even better. It is nature’s best moisturizer and is suitable even for the most sensitive skin, which is why we put this hero hydrator at the heart of every Biossance formula.
It’s also one of the many sustainable reasons why The Biossance Way Is More Beautiful.
Christine Tusher
Author
As a lifestyle writer and journalist, I’m excited to bring my passion for storytelling to Biossance as an Engagement Content Writer. Two things you should know about me: I have a deep love of the ocean (especially sharks) and I’m obsessed with clean beauty. My bathroom cabinet is literally overflowing with my many-layered sustainable skincare routine. This combo is what led me to buy my first bottle of Vitamin C Rose Oil. I was so impressed by the way it improved my skin that I wanted to shout this brand from the rooftops. Three years later, and here I am doing just that. I’m excited to be on this journey of clean beauty innovation with Biossance, and to share it with you here on the blog.