Upcycling in Fragrances
WHAT IS UPCYCLING?
“Valorizing waste materials, or unused products into new materials or products of higher value for a positive impact on the environment. We put circularity into practice by reusing the by-products of other industries. For instance, we use Upcycled Cedarwood coming from furniture industry waste in the making of our finest fragrances.” (Firmenich)
Cedar Shavings, ph. Mick Haupt
HOW WE USE IT.
Rob and I are hands-on when it comes to all of our fragrance creation and production. But, we call in the “troops” (aka. chemists, fragrance evaluators, and master perfumers) from our partner fragrance house to ensure each of our compositions is not only true to our original scent profile but, most importantly, meets, or exceeds, industry standards. It’s a guarantee for the clients, as well, that the products are professionally executed (and smell wonderful).
For us, one of the most beneficial aspects of this creative-meets-scientific collaboration is the ability to use their palette of raw ingredients to create the production version of our scents. In recent years, this has included benefitting from their exhaustive research and investment in sustainability and new technologies to grow, harvest, and extract premium raw ingredients. We’ve always shied away from chasing trends in perfumery but that is largely about marketing-based trends that have little to do with how fragrances are actually made or developed. Being born from the need to address the environment and sustainability, Upcycled ingredients, instead, are among the more worthwhile trends to emerge in modern perfumery creation. To reuse an otherwise discarded material and giving it new life to extract essential oils is technology at its best and a welcomed manufacturing practice for the environment.
Working along side of master perfumers at Agilex (a boutique division of world-renowned, Firmenich) we have included several upcycled ingredients into our original perfume formulas. Here are just some of what you’ll find:
Nutmeg and Polysantol in aétai, Cedarwood and Fir Oil in c’i’aan, Cedarwood and Eucalyptus in monto’ac*, and Cucumber and Cardamom in i’khana. There’s a much longer list upcycled ingredients but, like a chef’s recipe, some things are best left a mystery.
*refers to European version released February 2023