Why We Use Sugarcane Packaging
Maybe you've heard...but there’s too much single-use plastic on earth. The beauty industry itself produces 120 BILLION units of packaging each year—and this packaging is the #1 offender of plastic waste pollution. If businesses continue to produce and use plastic at the same rate as they are now, we are expected to have more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Yikes.
Standard virgin plastic is not only a pollutant to the earth but also takes thousands of years to breakdown, meaning any single use plastic you’ve ever used in your lifetime, probably still exists on earth. Heck, any single use plastic that your grandparents used in their lifetime still exists.
Needless to say, changes need to be made. We’re excited to change the game in the beauty industry and pave the way for a plastic-free future; starting now.
Our production methods are closely monitored to ensure that they are as low waste as possible—from seed to shelf. When we say low waste, we mean low energy use, low carbon emissions and most importantly LOW PLASTIC PACKAGING! When bottling our products, we opt for a soft sugarcane-derived biopolymer rather than using standard plastic.
Biopolymer is a bioplastic derived from sugarcane, which is a renewable resource, unlike the fossil fuels used to produce standard plastic. The process involves the production of ethylene from sugarcane (instead of the crude oil that is usually used), to produce a bioplastic that behaves the same way as its PET counterpart—without all the waste. The sugarcane that we use is an upcycled material and a by-product of the food industry, meaning we’re actually using materials that would otherwise have gone to waste. That’s what we call a win.
Sugarcane itself is highly absorbent when it comes to carbon, and is in fact a CARBON NEGATIVE crop! That means with every kg of sugarcane grown and harvested 3kgs of carbon are absorbed from the atmosphere. This makes the entire process of creating the plastic material carbon neutral, so all carbon emitted in the supply chain of its production is offset by the amount that the sugarcane absorbs, leaving the total net amount to be zero (or neutral). Woohoo!
When you purchase a BYBI product, and it comes in a soft, squeezable tube, that tube is made from sugarcane! If you look closely, you’ll even see a label on the bottle that says “THIS TUBE IS MADE FROM SUGARCANE”. Read it, and rejoice that your beauty products aren’t contributing to the heaps of plastic in the ocean.
Of course, there is no “perfect” solution when it comes to sustainability. Like all materials, sugarcane based bioplastic still has its drawbacks. In the meantime, this is the best solution we have.
We’re really excited about the future of bioplastics in the beauty industry—including some amazing innovations and the potential for plastic containers to be made from marine and soil bacteria that’s totally degradable. For now, we’ll stick with sugarcane :)