THE WHAT? LMR Naturals by IFF has unveiled the fruits of a three-year quest to develop a calculation to determine the carbon footprint of a fragrance. The team worked with Carbone 4 to develop the methodology.

THE DETAILS The team followed a life-cycle approach to generate a matrix which takes into account agricultural practices, extraction, transport, purification and distillation or extraction.

THE WHY? Only once a carbon footprint of a given ingredient has been calculated, can ways to reduce it be identified. Bertrand de Préville, General Manager of LMR Naturals explains, “The increasing use of natural extracts in perfumery and food flavors mandated a study of their footprint. However, there are huge variations which depend on the nature of biomass, its origin, and its extraction process; we needed a reliable, reproducible methodology, based on a detailed understanding of our ingredients.”