Beauty company Coty will use recycled carbon (or carbon-captured ethanol) to make its perfume.
This is a huge step for the company since ethanol is a main ingredient in Coty’s fragrances and the biggest ingredient by volume. By producing less carbon pollution, this switch will help reduce the company’s environmental impact.
What is recycled carbon?
Carbon-captured ethanol (or recycled carbon) involves capturing and fermenting carbon dioxide pollution and safely storing it underground — for what can be up to millions of years.
About 100,000 to more than 150,000 tons of carbon is captured at each ethanol plant annually, with plenty of room to reduce harmful carbon pollution in the future.
In Coty’s case, the carbon-captured ethanol is provided by LanzaTech, a recycling specialist that goes through this process to manufacture it.
The specialist’s particular ethanol consumes next to no water, thereby relying less on agricultural land. This is key since often the huge amounts of corn grown to create ethanol can pollute sediments and nutrients and require lots of water, synthetic herbicide, and fertilizer.
Why recycled carbon is important
While we need to reduce pollution to lower the Earth’s temperatures, we also need to use technology to remove carbon from the world around us. And this is exactly where recycled carbon comes in.
Carbon-captured ethanol, like what Coty and other manufacturers are using, is key to reducing carbon pollution, which can help slow the overheating of our planet.
Since businesses like Coty have a huge environmental impact through their production methods, decisions like opting for recycled over traditional carbon can have a major impact.
The company’s chief scientist officer, Shimei Fan, said, “Coty’s accelerated release of fragrances made using carbon-captured ethanol represents the groundbreaking sustainability progress that I joined Coty to lead.”
“Use of carbon captured ethanol can help significantly reduce the fragrance industry’s impact on the environment and the climate,” according to the companies.
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