Artist Residency Day Seven

Behold! The list of ethical ingredients is here. It took several hours over two days to push every ingredient on my list through the framework.

Before I show the list, there’s a foreword I want to write.

Many Australian ingredients passed the test, as I suspected. This is not because Australia’s farming and production practices are without fault, but because there are laws in place to lean on when they are not. I would not call any of our rural industries ethically sound, however, without scrutinising every single producer I cannot say either way.

The reason why so many passed is because they are native and therefore suited to Australian conditions; needing less water and fewer pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Additionally, minimum wages in Australia are “liveable” (or were until recently inflation), and generally speaking most small-scale farmers and producers (which are the usual kind for perfumery ingredients here) are erring towards sustainable practices rather than not. In some cases, such as Australian sandalwood species, they are employing First Nations people to better guide their growing methods.

The other overwhelmingly successful group were the naturally-occurring aroma chemicals: the combination of being naturally-derived originally means that the synthetic production does not harm the environment in the way that purely synthetic ingredients do (by bio-accumulating). I’ll note here that bio-accumulation in itself may or may not be harmful, because we as yet have no seen the long-term effects. Anything that I could not get a clear answer on became an instant fail, so this ruled out a good deal of synthetics and MOST of the naturals. Hence the artificially produced, naturally-occurring molecules were the best aspects of both.

I’ll note as well that I failed any ingredients for which I could not get clarity either way.

Here it is.

ETHICAL PERFUME INGREDIENTS:

Australian myrtle species - backhousia, leptospermum, syzygium genera

Australian eucalypt species - specifically dives, olida, polybrachtea, globulus

Australian buddhawood

Australia cypress - specifically blue (Callitris intratropica) and white (C. glaucophylla)

Australian santal - specifically S. spicatum and S. lanceolatum

Fragonia

Linden blossom

Japanese hiba and hinoki (these are derived from discarded wood)

Ethyl vanillin

Ambrox

Citronellol

Cis-3-hexenyl

Amyl salicylate

Phenyl ethyl acetate

Damascenone

OK. There they are, out of around 200 or so. I couldn’t go through the thousands of aroma molecules available in the industry so I mostly used some very common ones. And if you dispute any of these naturals please show me your evidence - I am just one pair of eyes.

Tomorrow, I shall plan the manifestation of these ethical beauties! But first, a good sleep.