From the increasing interest in B Corp certification to fighting greenwashing claims with cross-industry partnerships, sustainability has come a long way since its shop-baiting beginnings. However, an aspect that is often overlooked when it comes to obtaining reputable certification is the resources needed to begin the journey: adequate funds and an extensive overview of one’s supply chain—something not accessible for every indie entrepreneur.

E-commerce and climate-tech platform Dayrize is hoping to make democratic access to sustainable operations a reality with its new technology update, launched in July 2020, and currently expanding into the US as of this month. In only six months, Dayrize has already signed over 500 brands and indexed over 10,000 products. Their brand partnerships encompass the worlds of tech, fashion, and homeware, with Dayrize’s current beauty roster including the likes of Beauty Kitchen, Aromatherapy Shed, Codex Beauty Labs, LIHA Beauty, and Science of Skin. The company hopes to expand into further consumer categories in the future. “Our ambition is to become the global standard for impact assessment for consumer products,” co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Austin Simms tells BeautyMatter.

Not only is their sustainability scoring based on five pillars (circularity, climate impact, ecosystem impact, livelihoods and well-being, purpose) for a broader analysis, but now brands are able to directly incorporate the scoring on their own sites. Specifically the pillar of purpose, a factor which perhaps is less numerically weighted than the likes of carbon footprint or water usage, can serve as a thought-provoking point for beauty brands. Does product X really bring anything new to the Y table, or is it chasing a trend, or a carbon copy of an already-existing product? As Credo VP of Sustainability and Impact Mia Davis told BeautyMatter, we can’t shop our way to sustainability. Nonetheless, helping consumers make more informed choices for those necessary purchases, made possible through easily accessible tools such as those proposed by Dayrize, is a positive change.

As Simms explains, Dayrize began with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, developing their own unique value pyramid, incorporating factors such as design for displacement, as well as durability and longevity of the product. “The purpose is the hardest one to quantify, but we want to make sure that we're using the Earth's resources in the best way, that each product might actually contribute to something rather than just being made for the sake of being made,” he states.

Regarding the calculations themselves, brands send Dayrize all available data, but the company also offers a helping hand. It analyzes eco-certifications and standardized measurement tools such as the Higg Index, information from third-party databases, geospatial overlays to determine how where, not just what, material is sourced determines environmental impact, and the company’s own continuously growing material database. With this cross-referencing, Dayrize is able to produce a comprehensive rating picture. “For a lot of assessments, unless you've got 50,000 data points through your supply chain, we can't measure the impact of your product. The big thing that we're solving is if you have missing or incomplete information, we can still give you an assessment,” Simms explains. “That's really important, particularly for small brands that maybe don't have all the information.”

Due to the speed of calculation (a few minutes), enabled through the new algorithms developed over the course of the past two years, as well as a volumes-based operation approach, the company is able to offer a yearly subscription price of $60 per year, per product. Simms notes that not only would a normal lifetime assessment take months to be calculated, but also cost up to $30,000 per product. “Previously, with the cost of life cycle assessments, it was only the big, multinational brands that did it. Now we're making this level of high-resolution impact assessment available for every brand,” he comments. Beyond the initial scoring, Dayrize also offers ongoing support to help brands better their sustainability efforts, alongside investing 5% of its annual profits to assist its brand partners in redesigning their products and value chains. The company upholds its own benchmarks through a range of auditing: one each quarter by the Dutch government, which serves as an investor in the company, an algorithm audit by globally leading certification company SGS, as well as an ongoing peer review to ensure the accuracy and relevancy of its calculations.

“What's been really pleasing, for every single brand that we've spoken to, the score becomes secondary for them versus the actual impact report,” Simms explains. “A lot of these small brands don't have the depth of resources to go into excruciating detail about the best choices that they can make. We give them a far greater resolution and knowledge that they can actually use to make better decisions.” Dayrize hopes to act as an equalizer for all brands doing their part to contribute to sustainability. “A lot of brands that really make an effort to be more sustainable aren’t getting rewarded for the work that they're doing, when other brands are maybe not being as truthful with their claims,” Simms states. “As an independent assessor of products, can we get rid of greenwashing and create a level playing field for all brands?” Only time will tell if these ambitions become a reality; however, with time and growth, the (hopefully pollutant-free) sky's the limit.