Ingredients
Sustainability starts with the most important part of our products: our ingredients. We’re incredibly proud of the ingredients we use across all of our products; they’re chosen with your skin’s health in mind and each and every one brings a unique benefit. However, we are also aware of the impact that raw ingredients can have on the environment.
When we find an eco ingredient we do our best to roll it out across as many products as possible. Also us buying in larger quantities for multiple products means that we can transport larger amounts in one go rather than multiple individual ingredients, thus saving on emissions associated with shipping.
We’re so passionate about truly sustainable ingredients, that we created our own auditing system THE BYBI GREEN SCORE. This takes into account everything we’ve listed below and quantifies into a grading system that allows us to audit each and every BYBI product, based on what’s in them.
Here’s what we look out for when choosing our ingredients:
Renewability
We chose to work with renewable resources; ingredients that are in abundance, quickly replenished and don’t require heavy labour or energy to grow and harvest. We look for short harvesting cycles that happen multiple times a year.
We are aware that scarcely available ingredients, i.e. those that have a long harvesting cycles and do not grow in abundance, are often energy intensive to grow. This type of ingredient is often viewed as rare and unique which in turn can increase demand, putting pressure on demand which often leads to bad farming practices and over-harvesting. The worst outcome of this situation is that over-harvesting leads to the depletion of the ingredient, having a wider knock on effect to biodiversity.
Really renewable ingredients that BYBI love:
- Calendula - Babe Balm, Swipe Clean
- Hibiscus - Babe Balm
- Buriti - Buriti Booster
- Cucumber - Watch this space…
How far it’s traveled
Like you would with food, we think about how far each of our ingredients have travelled. Manufacturing everything in the UK means we are unfortunately not blessed with tropical climates where exotic ingredients thrive, so it can be difficult to find local ingredients. However, the beauty industry historically has glamourised rare and exotic actives, but often the same beneficial skin properties can be found in more commonplace ingredients. So the first question we ask is: can we find an ingredient grown closer to home that has the same skin benefits?
On the occasions when the answer is no, we will ensure that the ingredient travels to us by road or boat and that the supplier adheres to our other sustainability requirements (renewable, ethical etc).
Upcycling
We work with a supplier who specialises in upcycled beauty ingredients. Partnering with the juicing industry in Europe, they collate elements of fruits used for juicing that would otherwise be thrown away. We use upcycled ingredients in our Strawberry and Blueberry Boosters. Both the strawberry and blueberry seeds from the fruits that have been juiced are collected, sterilised, then cold pressed to produce high quality oils. This is a dual pronged susty win: 1. The seeds would be discarded so it makes use of what would be waste material and 2. It means that fruit isn’t grown solely for seeds, in which case the pulp of the fruit would be binned. Oh and the entire process is carbon neutral.
Ethical Sourcing
It’s important to us to know that the people involved in growing and transporting our wonderful ingredients are treated well, in safe and fair conditions and paid a living wage. We use up to 20 ingredients per product - think about the amount of hands these are passed through to get to the BYBI factory!
We require a modern slavery policy from each of our suppliers. We also then look for suppliers who go the extra mile in supporting the ingredient producers that they work with.
Excellently ethical suppliers that BYBI love:
Shea butter - our supplier run a programme designed to support and empower local communities of women in west Africa. Based on fair trade principles, including access to pre-financing, education and logistical support, the program involves over 300,000 women and continues to grow. This shea is used in Babe Balm, Babe Balm Bronze, Smooth & Soothe Scrub, Buffer and Plumper.