GOOD SCENTS

It’s become a buzzword for skincare and make-up brands. But what of the sustainability status of the glass bottle perched on your dressing table? WH demystifies the ethics of fragrance

We explore the quiet inroads the fragrance industry is making towards sustainability

ou’ve ditched single-use cleansing wipes, switched to solid shampoo bars and vow only to buy refillable make-up palettes. So you don’t need us to tell you that sustainability certifications have gone from nice-to-have to non-negotiable for beauty brands in recent years. Sustainability now forms a vital part of beauty purchasing decisions. The British Beauty Council’s 2020 survey on the subject found that around two-thirds of consumers want brands to do more to counter climate change, and of those who changed beauty products between April and July 2020, one in seven did so because they wanted to use a more environmentally friendly product or brand. But there’s one item on your dressing table that’s been largely absent from the conversation so far. ‘From a consumer perspective, there’s certainly less talk around sustainable fragrances compared with other areas of beauty,’ says Athina Macpherson, head of brand marketing at The Fragrance Shop, who suspects this is down to the application process. ‘Since you don’t apply fragrance in quite the same way as you do skincare, consumers may be less concerned about the ingredients of the product and, as such, the ethical origins of those ingredients.’

That the industry faces sustainability challenges on so many fronts is significant, too. Josephine Fairley is co-founder of both The Perfume Society and Green & Black’s, which produced the UK’S first ever Fairtrade product back in 1994. She believes the industry is reluctant to shout about progress when that progress is imperfect. ‘There’s so much impactful change going on, but the industry is wary of the criticism it’ll inevitably attract for not being perfect overall as yet,’ she explains. Part of the problem, she notes, lies in the very nature of the sector. ‘It’s one that has an exceptional reliance on natural ingredients and complicated supply chains, which throw up environmental challenges every step of the way.’ That supply chain includes extraction and distillation processes that require water, energy and chemicals, and that’s before you consider the packaging (think: swathes of plastic and multi-material spray dispensers). But don’t swear off your signature scent just yet. Consider this your sustainable scent cheat sheet.

LEVEL WITH ME. IS MY PERFUME DESTROYING THE RAINFOREST?

It’s true that intensive farming has historically been integral to perfume production in order to extract fragrance notes from nature. It’s also true that the industry’s reliance on nature has proven disastrous in the past. ‘Sandalwood was so overfarmed in India in the 80s and 90s that it caused widespread deforestation,’ says Nick Gilbert, co-founder of the fragrance industry consultancy firm Olfiction. Elsewhere, a consequence of the persecution of Chinese farmers in Indonesia was that patchouli supply ran dry as crops lay unattended, and guaiac wood was decimated in South America to make palo santo incense. These days, the industry is much less reliant on the natural world. The majority of fragrances are a mixture of natural and synthetic notes, since the latter have better staying power and contribute significantly to the perfume palette. The revered Chanel No. 5, for one, would be impossible to create without synthetic notes. In fact, some 80% of perfumes produced today don’t rely on natural resources at all, according to the 2015 Fragrance and Sustainability Report from the global fragrance supplier Symrise.

SO, SYNTHETIC NOTES ARE MORE SUSTAINABLE TO PRODUCE?

Well, it’s not quite that straightforward. For starters, manufacturing synthetics is a complicated chemical process, involving the use of water, alcohol and, potentially, pollutants such as petrochemicals, tar, benzene and solvents, says Gilbert. So it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the environmental impact includes damage to the ozone layer, acid rain and air pollution. But manufacturing essential oils

– a key ingredient in many fragrances – from natural sources isn’t much better. The Symrise report found that those obtained via a separation process called steam distillation generally have significantly higher carbon footprints than synthetically produced perfume notes. In other words: synthetic notes are actually more sustainable to produce than the natural kind. That said, the same report acknowledged that only a concerted switch to sustainable farming practices and extraction methods, alongside widespread development of ‘alternative naturals’ will ensure the future of perfume. On the latter point, there’s progress, as brands find renewable alternatives for fossil-based chemicals. Clearwood and Dreamwood are renewable synthetic notes that are alternatives to patchouli and sandalwood respectively, and both are examples of ‘green chemistry’. Biotechnology, which involves fashioning renewable synthetics from natural sources, is another, although this does include genetically modified ingredients, which come with their own controversy around sustainability. ‘The industry also does a life cycle analysis for every ingredient [via suppliers such as IFF-LMR], so brands are able to choose the best option environmentally, whether that’s a natural or synthetic one,’ adds Gilbert.

WHAT ABOUT PACKAGING?

According to the British Beauty Council’s survey, packaging makes up 70% of the beauty industry’s waste: a challenge for an industry in thrall to crystalstudded flacons and gold-embossed boxes. But here, consumers are voting with their pounds by favouring brands like Le Labo, Laboratory Perfumes and Floral Street; brands whose packaging has more in common with a brown paper bag. Floral Street’s packaging is completely compostable, too. As for the bottles, big beauty brands (Chanel, Dior, Hermès) are now offering refillable ones. You can even top yours up from an in-store ‘fountain’ – a concept pioneered by Thierry Mugler and now offered by Molton Brown and Floral Street, among others. The impact isn’t insignificant; Armani Beauty reports that one 50ml My Way bottle and its 150ml refill uses 55% less glass, 32% less cardboard, 64% less plastic and 75% less metal, compared with using four 50ml fragrance spray bottles. Fairley suggests looking for bottles that aren’t ‘crimped’, meaning they have a metal element at the mouth that secures the pump to the bottle,