Fragrance ingredients: What are the environmental assessment challenges?

After several months of collaborative work, exchanges and methodological questioning, a scientific article co-authored by L'Oréal, MANE and EVEA has just been published in the Royal Society of Chemistry's Green Chemistry Journal. At EVEA, Kévin Lafaye and Yves Gerand had been asked to contribute.

In September 2021, L'Oréal and MANE contacted EVEA to promote their work on the environmental assessment of fragrance ingredients.

This collaborative effort shows the diversity of environmental profiles of fragrance ingredients. It also highlights 2 tools:

• GREEN MOTION®, a decision-making tool based on the principles of green chemistry and developed by MANE
• SPOT, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool deployed internally by L'Oréal

In addition, this publication shows that biobased materials do not always lead to a reduction in environmental impact compared with fossil-based materials. Indeed, their impact is highly dependent on agricultural practices and the extraction processes used to obtain the molecule of interest.

Finally, the two tools studied, GREEN MOTION® and LCA, are complementary. They provide broadly the same trends, but are adapted to different phases of the product development process:

• GREEN MOTION® helps to guide eco-design choices made early in the process
• LCA can complete the approach (based on information available later in the process), to validate the environmental benefit of the product developed

Special thanks to Patricia Martz and Jacques Lharidon of l'Oréal, and to Tony Phan and Cyril Gallardo of MANE for their confidence in our Green Chemistry team.

Click here to read the full article