AirCarbon for The Body Shop

The Body Shop and Newlight Technologies announced a research and development partnership to introduce AirCarbon in The Body Shop products.  The Body Shop is the first company to commit to an effort to industrialization of AirCarbon in the beauty industry.

«The Body Shop has a tradition of leadership in environmental innovation, and we are very pleased to partner with them with the aim of introducing AirCarbon materials into the beauty industry,» said Newlight CEO Mark Herrema.  «Caps and containers can be more than caps and containers; they can be a part of how we create a better world.  With The Body Shop, we are replacing oil with carbon that would have otherwise become part of the air and changing the role of materials in society.»

«We are excited about our new research partnership with Newlight.  We share their philosophy that a more sustainable future can be achieved through working together, embracing innovation and driving new ways of thinking,» said Christopher Davis, International Director of Sustainability at The Body Shop.

Today, most plastics are made from fossil fuels that would otherwise stay underground.  AirCarbon is different.  Developed by Newlight over 10 years of research and development, AirCarbon is a thermoplastic material made by combining air with carbon that would otherwise become part of the air to produce a thermoplastic polymer that can replace oil-based plastics.  The AirCarbon production process is carried out at a yield that is over nine times higher than previous technologies, providing a solution that replaces oil with captured carbon.

The Body Shop’s research and development partnership with Newlight Technologies for AirCarbon continues a tradition of standard-bearing leadership in sustainability within the beauty industry.  The Body Shop’s use of AirCarbon has the potential to be a landmark development within the beauty industry.

Founded in 1976 in Brighton, England, The Body Shop is a global beauty brand built on making people feel so good – face, body and soul.  The Body Shop pioneered the philosophy that business can be a force for good and after being acquired by L’Oreal in 2006, it is scaling up its vision. The Body Shop has more than 3,000 stores in 63 countries.

Newlight Technologies is a sustainable materials company using carbon capture technology to produce high-performance materials that replace oil-based materials on a market-driven basis.  Newlight was founded in 2003 with a question: why can’t we use greenhouse gas emissions as a resource to make materials?  Over the course of 10 years of research and development, Newlight developed a breakthrough biotechnological process to produce a material called AirCarbon: a high performance long chain thermoplastic polymer made by combining air and methane-based carbon emissions that is able to match the performance of a range of oil-based plastics while out-competing on price, thereby creating a market-driven solution to displacing oil and capturing carbon.