BYBI's Impact
Here's how declaring a fight against carbon filters into the BYBI products that you know and love.
Ingredients
The best part of each BYBI product are our high quality, efficacious ingredients. We strike a delicate balance when choosing the ingredients that go into our products; first and foremost they must deliver stellar skin benefits but equally this must not come at a cost to our planet, particularly given we’re drawing on the Earth’s resources.
Our internal auditing system, The Susty Score, grades the following factors in order to glean an ingredient's carbon footprint and decipher what impact using it in a BYBI product will have on the environment.
Harvesting Process
The score looks to determine how carbon sensitive a supplier's harvesting model is, specifically looking for things including low energy-intensive machinery and good quality soil to capture and store more Co2.
Source Location and Transport
Ingredients are graded on their source location and mode of transport to point of production (the UK). We choose close to home source locations to reduce travel and, when this isn't possible, ensure that the mode of transport is low carbon ie electric vehicle or boat.
Upcycled from another supply chain
We love upcycled ingredients at BYBI and use upcycled ingredients in over 50% of the range, including our Strawberry Booster. Our supplier works with juice manufacturers to collect seeds removed from the strawberries before they are juiced. As there’s no place for them in the juice, the seeds would normally be discarded into landfill, but when pressed they produce high quality oil that’s an amazing skincare ingredient. Our supplier thoroughly steralises the seeds and they are then cold pressed to extract oil. Upcycling negates the need for a secondary supply chain to grow the fruit in order to access the seeds (at which point the pulp would be discarded), meaning there’s no doubling up and therefore dramatically reduced energy consumption. Food waste is accountable for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions so stopping waste at any point in the supply chain has a hugely positive impact.
Manufacturing
All BYBI products are manufactured in the UK which gives us the visibility we need to truly understand the carbon footprint of this part of the supply chain.
We have two forms of manufacturing at BYBI:
In-House
We formulate everything in-house at BYBI meaning we have our own lab based in London which has the facility to produce small runs of products. The lab is powered entirely by green energy and our manufacturing machinery is manual, meaning it doesn't require any energy at all.
Third Party
For larger runs we turn to our trusted manufacturing partners who are experts in their field and have the capabilities to safely produce some of our more complex products. The Susty Score grades these partners on their carbon footprint, based on a few key factors:
Energy - Our partners run large factories that produce products for many brands and use high levels of energy in order to do so. At the start of 2020, we have declared that we would no longer work with any partners who didn't run on green energy. We have the commitment from all of our partners to have fully switched to green energy by 2021.
Waste Management - We must see proof of all partner's waste management policies to ensure they are sending minimal amounts to landfill.
Transport - We ensure that once our products have been produced, they are delivered to their final destination in electric vehicles.
Packaging
The part of our products that you can touch and feel, we scrutinise every material used to package BYBI products. The Susty Score audits the materials we use based on the carbon footprint associated with the production of that material. It also takes into account the material's afterlife (less to landfill = less greenhouse gas emissions).
SUGARCANE POLYETHYLENE
Another upcycled material, this time from the sugar industry! A durable bioplastic that we use for all of our tubes. The sugarcane plant is crushed for its high concentrate sugar juice that’s used for human consumption, at which point it is usually discarded, despite the fact that it still has subsequent crushings of weaker sugar that can’t be used for consumption. It is this substance that is used to produce ethanol and in turn, a fossil-fuel free plastic. Due to sugarcane’s ability to capture high levels of Co2, the production of the sugarcane polyethylene is carbon neutral. This material is recyclable.
Glass
Glass has pros and cons; it's infinitely recyclable and not a fossil fuse based material (pro), but when created as a virgin material, it's actually very energy intensive and it's made from sand which is not a renewable source (con). Based on our audit of these factors, we choose to work with glass where sugarcane isn't possible and are switching to recycled glass, where the carbon footprint is significantly reduced. We print directly onto glass using biodegradable plant-based inks that don't interfere with the recycling process. All of our glass packaging can be recycled in our ReBYBI scheme.
Grasspaper
If your order from bybi.com, your products will arrive in a grasspaper box. Grasspaper is paper made from the pulp of grass rather than the conventional wood. It uses up to 80% less energy to produce than pulp paper, saving approximately 4.8 tonnes of carbon per tonne produced. It also has huge water saving benefits; using only a litre for every tonne produced vs 6,000 litres for wood pulp. This material is recyclable.