Brazilian cosmetics firm O Boticário has united research and development with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) to create a global project focused on raising awareness of the preservation of natural areas under threat globally.
Dubbed Extinto (Extinct, in Portuguese), the initiative, launched on Monday (22), was created by the advertising agency AlmapBBDO and is aimed at alerting the general public about the importance of environmental conservation and solid waste management.
The project involves the creation of a fragrance, which will not be sold commercially and was designed to replicate the original scent of Guanabara Bay, an oceanic bay on the coast of Rio de Janeiro suffering from environmental degradation due to pollution and incorrect disposal of waste.
According to the Brazilian Association of Public Cleaning and Special Waste Companies (Abrelpe), Brazil recycles only 4% of all garbage discarded daily. Guanabara Bay, one of the largest in the world, receives 98 tons of waste daily, according to the trade association.
“From tourism to species conservation, Guanabara [Bay] has invaluable relevance for Brazil, with several species of animals that suffer from pollution caused by incorrect waste disposal,” says André Ferretti, biodiversity economics manager at the Grupo Boticário Foundation.
Technology to Preserve Smells
Developed over six months, the Extinto fragrance was created without extracting any raw materials from the preserved parts of Guanabara Bay. O Boticário’s perfumers visited the area and captured aromatic molecules using Headspace technology. Used to capture and analyze the scent molecules in the air, the technique works similarly to how the human nose detects smells. It involves measuring volatile compounds (substances with a high vapor pressure that evaporate easily at room temperature) around a flower, herb, or plant.
The scent is then released from the sample and trapped under a glass dome, meaning the smell is captured in a cost-effective manner that is not invasive to the environment, since the removal of samples is not required.
The compounds are analyzed using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry software, which provide a chemical breakdown of the sample’s scent, allowing the smell to be replicated in a lab. Headspace technology has been evolving since the 1980s and is widely used in the perfumery industry for preserving and studying the aromas of rare or endangered plants and environments.
The process led to the identification of the original odors of the Rio de Janeiro bay, which are no longer found outside the preserved area due to environmental devastation. The result was a perfume that embodies the freshness of the waters and the greenery of the original forests of the place.
“Headspace will continue to be the main technology used in this project. It has been used by Boticário for years in several brand launches, and now is being employed to raise public awareness,” says Marcela de Masi, branding and communications director at O Boticário, on how the technology was employed for the Extinto initiative.
The project will now be expanded to different places around the world, using the same approach of not extracting any raw materials from the environment. The roadmap for the coming months includes future fragrance releases inspired by locations around the world threatened by pollution, such as Calabria in Europe, Madagascar Island in Africa, New Delhi in India, and Canberra in Oceania.
The Extinto project follows other initiatives that combine a focus on sustainability and technology. O Boticário claims that 75% of its products have sustainability attributes (such as use of recycled plastic in packaging).
Last year, the company formed a partnership with Google to address the lack of data around recycling of beauty product packaging in Brazil, utilizing the Maps feature to direct users to nearby recycling points. Some 3,500 new recycling points have been added across Brazil as a result of the collaboration, with plans to double the number in the coming months.
