BYBI bosses take on carbon-negative challenge

21 Oct 2021 --- BYBI became a carbon neutral brand at the end of 2020. It attained the sustainability milestone across its supply chain by balancing its carbon emissions with carbon removal. The brand offset all of its historic carbon emissions since its launch in 2017 by purchasing carbon credits, certified by The Gold Standard, but now seeks to achieve negative impact without offsetting. "We know offsetting is not the answer, it’s a low impact, short-term action we can take today,” shares Dominika Minarovic, Co-Founder of BYBI.

Detailing its plan in its 2020 Carbon Report, BYBI stated that since 2019 it has been focusing on “righting the wrong we’ve done so far”. Now, the vegan and cruelty-free skin care brand is centering its efforts on carbon reduction via its distribution, manufacturing, packaging and ingredient operations. From 2019 to 2020, BYBI reduced its carbon emissions by 12% and hopes to lower them by a further 25% by the end of 2021.

Click to EnlargeBYBI's founders are open about the carbon cost of the whole product lifespan. Source: BYBI.Net zero is a term used frequently by beauty and personal care brands as the industry strives to move closer to its environmental targets and contribute to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A brand reaches net zero when the amount of greenhouse gases produced are no more than the amount removed from the atmosphere.

For BYBI, the journey to achieving carbon negativity is part of the story, but is not the whole story. “Net zero gets us closer to our goal of being carbon negative, but it is not enough,” highlights Minarovic. “We must task ourselves to actually reduce our annual CO2 emissions and tax ourselves if we fail to do so.” 

At the beginning of 2021, BYBI achieved its latest milestone by ensuring all its products are manufactured using only green energy. As BYBI continues to set its sights on its upcoming mid-term goal, BYBI’s Minarovic shares: “We are on track to become carbon-negative by 2025.”

The company has also been working “hard on a huge piece of ingredient analysis for our entire product range.” Delving into its formulation components in depth, Minarovic details, “will help us identify where our carbon emissions can be reduced further within our supply chain.”

Four ways carbon negativity influences innovation

BYBI’s carbon-negative philosophy impacts its innovation and product creation in a variety of ways. Minarovic details how a positive planet-focus and The Gold Standard influences its brand activities:

● BYBI formulates everything in-house, which allows us to control the climate footprint of our products.

● We apply forward-thinking product development that doesn’t rely on retrospective offsetting.

● We have created and used our owned Susty Score to formulate.

● We balance for efficacy and for our carbon footprint.

The Susty Score seeks to provide a fluid model for rating how critical elements of product development score on a number of key sustainability indicators. “When evaluating BYBI’s sustainability practices across the business, it became apparent that it was lacking in data and ways to track improvements in any measures that are implemented, particularly with regards to raw materials and packaging,” shares Minarovic.

Developed to sit alongside the brand’s built understanding of the ingredients its uses and its footprints, the Susty Score goes a step further by bringing in an external supplier to verify the information. It provides details on many aspects of product development, including energy use, water consumption, supplier credentials, renewability and wastage. Stating that this “process takes some time”, BYBI adds: “We're working on it and once we have the full set of data, we will add this to our historic emissions and offset that too.”

The Susty Score is designed to be a simple and quick method that can be used as part of a product developer’s normal toolkit, without the need for lengthy calculations or access to difficult-to-obtain information. BYBI’s rating system gives a number from 0-3. The higher the number, the less sustainable the ingredient or material is. The scores are then totaled for every product to give an aggregated score. “The rating system has been built to be flexible and change with new research that may reveal improvements in sustainable practices,” says Minarovic. 

Carbon negative case study: Milk Melt

Milk Melt is BYBI’s ultra-softening gentle cream cleanser. The skin care brand’s vegan oat milk cleanser strives to melt away dirt, grime and makeup for clear, nourished and smooth skin.

Click to EnlargeSource: BYBI.BYBI aims to adopt a sustainability mindset with every aspect of its development process, from its ingredients and manufacturing to packaging. 

“We love upcycled ingredients at BYBI and use them in over 50% of the range,” says Minarovic. The oat kernel extract in its Milk Melt is an upcycled ingredient from the oat milling industry. 

“Upcycling negates the need for a secondary supply chain to grow the oats in order to access the milk, meaning there’s no doubling up and therefore dramatically reduced energy consumption,” outlines Minarovic. BYBI details how it uses sustainably sourced vegan coconut yogurt that is extracted from fermented coconut milk for a probiotic effect.

Milk Melt is manufactured using green energy, primarily from wind and solar. Its tube is made from sugarcane, a carbon-neutral material that is 100% recyclable.

By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Journalist