Fragrance and sustainability initiatives have created some exciting projects in recent years: Coty and LanzaTech Inc.’s carbon-captured ethanol, Geno’s Brontide (a fermentation-crafted butylene glycol), Firmenich’s biodegradable and 100% renewable carbon-made Dreamwood. O Boticário is bringing an emotive contender to the table. The Brazilian beauty brand reproduced the scent of Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay, a 380-square-kilometer-long body of water. The fragrance, named Extinto (Portuguese for "extinct"), was created through headspace technology that captured the area’s aromatic profile, the accords of which were then recreated with synthetic and organic, circular-chain ingredients. The result emulates the cool waters of the bay and the green forests surrounding it. In dedication to mindful consumption practices, the scent is not being launched as a consumer product, but instead 100 units of the limited-edition product were sent to influential and prominent figures to promote the campaign.
The perfume was specifically developed to harken back to when the body of water was not polluted, in a cry for improved environmental preservation and waste management. It presents the first chapter of the enterprise’s Extinto Project, supported by the Boticário Group Foundation for Nature Protection (FGB) and in partnership with advertising agency AlmapBBD.
Its transparent bottle, created by local artist Elvira Schuartz, suspends a pale green liquid in a shape reminiscent of Guanabara Bay. The accompanying campaign is a vintage-looking photograph of the area, complete with its coordinates and Extinto Project logo. Artist, philanthropist, and founder of the Alok Institute, Alok Achkar Peres Petrillo, was also brought on board to be a creative partner on the project and broaden the initiative’s impact.
An initiative such as this is more pertinent than ever: every year, 2 billion tons of waste are generated worldwide, and in the case of Brazil, only 4% of trash is recycled. Every day, 98 tons of waste are dumped into Guanabara Bay. The project will soon expand to Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, each region receiving a dedicated scent to address further landscapes affected by pollution: Calabria, Madagascar, New Delhi, and East Arnhem.
O Boticário’s interest in the environment is not new: 75% of its SKUs contain sustainable elements like recycled plastic, and in 2023, the company partnered with Google to increase data on the country’s beauty packaging recycling practices, leading to 3,500 new recycling points nationwide.
Marcela de Masi, Communications Executive Director of Boticário Group, sat down with BeautyMatter to discuss the creation of the fragrance and the search for sustainability solutions.
Why launch this campaign now—was there a specific imperative?
The Extinto Project was born from the brand's genuine concern to contribute to a change in the public's collective behavior, encouraging conscious consumption and highlighting the importance of correct waste management. Following the global waste disposal scenario—which, according to the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), will reach 3.4 billion tons per year by 2050—and in the face of changing consumer behavior, which is increasingly engaged in environmental causes and concerned about buying from sustainable brands, we understand that this would be the ideal time to launch the campaign. Our intention was to raise an alert while there is still time to transform the current scenario, not only of Guanabara Bay, which is the second-largest hydrographic basin in terms of length on the coast of Brazil, but of many other natural areas that have lost their essence due to pollution.
What were the challenges of recreating the scent of Guanabara Bay?
Trying to faithfully reproduce the smell of a natural area, which is at risk of extinction, is a huge challenge. One of the first things that changes with pollution is the smell, and Guanabara Bay has been suffering from this problem for years. Many Cariocas who visit the municipalities bathed by its waters do not know the original smell, which is why they have a negative olfactory memory. We even noticed this impact when we announced the launch of the fragrance: many people believed it would be a bad smell, as it is the only memory they have of the river basin.
However, nature still survives in the region, and that is what we wanted to rescue and immortalize. We dedicated more than six months to studies, analyses, and selection of the best raw materials to arrive at a result that was as faithful as possible to the original smell of Guanabara Bay. This project goes far beyond developing yet another fragrance for the brand's portfolio—we have the challenge of immortalizing an aroma that may soon cease to exist.
The choice of collection points was made in partnership with Fundação Grupo Boticário, which since 2019 has worked, together with other companies in the public and private sectors, to improve water security in the region. In total, FGB has already directly invested more than R$13 million [USD$2.4 million] and mobilized, in the last 5 years, together with various sectors, another R$12 million [USD$2.2 million ] in support of initiatives carried out in the Bay.
We are concerned with capturing the essence of preserved areas without causing any damage to local nature, precisely to be consistent with the message we are taking to the public; after all, this project encourages preservation. To do this, we use headspace technology, which captures, without any type of extraction, samples of aromatic molecules from the environment. With this, our team of experts was able to identify the odors present in the region and read their original elements, which, due to environmental devastation, are only found in specific areas of the river basin.
How can companies play an active role in shaping the environmental future of our world, despite the argument that some would have that we create more waste through our products?
As much as we talk more and more about ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] in society as a whole, very little is said about the correct disposal and adequate management of solid waste. It is this problem that we want to shed light on and bring solutions to. Of course, it is also about rethinking the way we consume from end to end and charging companies with solutions that reduce the negative impact on the environment, but the point here is: of this amount that the population throws “away” every day in the world, what is actually reused and destined for an entire chain that can effectively avoid the extraction of new raw materials and the use of more natural resources?
The search for solutions that minimize the impact of waste is one of our main commitments and a pillar of strategic innovation in our business. The Extinto Project comes to reinforce this front, with a message that alerts the population about the importance of correctly disposing of solid waste.
In addition to specific initiatives, we have been consistently active in reverse logistics for almost two decades through Boti Recicla, the largest reverse logistics program in Brazil at collection points in the beauty sector, with more than 4,000 points across the country. The brand's commercial reach, which is present in 1,750 Brazilian municipalities, allows us to optimize the alarming numbers in the Brazilian scenario—such as the one that reveals a low percentage (4%) of recycling of waste discarded daily—but it depends on a call for society to engage in the cause and, together with other transformative agents, reduce negative impacts on the environment.
We also work, through the Fundação Grupo Boticário de Preservação à Natureza, to ensure that biodiversity conservation is prioritized in business and public policies, in addition to contributing to nature serving as inspiration or being part of the solution to various problems in society. We directly conserve, with two natural reserves that are in the heart of the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado, the two most threatened biomes in Brazil, totaling 110 km²—an area equivalent to 70 Ibirapuera Parks [Ibirapuera is a major urban park in São Paulo covering 158 hectares]. In 30 years of operation, 178 species were discovered and more than 1,600 innovative initiatives, solutions, and businesses supported across the country.
As a brand that carries sustainability in its DNA and has been operating on this front for over 40 years, O Boticário is always looking for innovative solutions that effectively contribute to a more sustainable future. We are a company guided by responsible action towards the planet, society, and consumers, always connected with our purpose of creating opportunities for beauty to transform the world of people and the world around them. Sustainability is embedded in our way of doing business, being a priority and constant concern for Grupo Boticário. We live ESG in practice, translating it more into actions than into concepts.
