The circle of it: This company upcycles natural by-products into vegan beauty products, thereby keeping useful ingredients from landfills.
UPCIRCLE
Summary
UpCircle Beauty is a vegan, sustainable skincare brand that makes beauty products from by-products of natural ingredients. The company saves ingredients that would otherwise end up in landfill- spent coffee grounds, olive stones, and other discarded materials- to create effective skincare. Each product in their beauty line sources and rescues by-products from other industries – the food and drink industry in particular. The company has created supply chains sourcing ingredients like coffee grounds from local coffee shops, tea leaves, fruit water from juice shops, etc. and utilizes these ingredients in innovative beauty formulas for a range of skin care products like cleansers, exfoliators, creams, lotions and other beauty products. The company has created awareness about waste in many industries and has created a passionate customer base around the concept of upcycling. (Source) The company also has a refill scheme, offering customers a 20% discount for returning their packaging for it to be refilled again.
Story
Sibling co-founders William and Anna Brightman started the company in 2016 when William asked his local coffee shop what they did with their used coffee grounds at the end of the day. He was shocked to hear that they were producing so much that they had to pay the council to have it removed and disposed of on landfill sites. This sparked an idea for a business, but he wasn’t sure what it could be used for. Anna was interested in becoming a makeup artist and knew that coffee could be a great ingredient for skincare, and the business was born. The company started collecting coffee ground from a local coffee shop, and now collects coffee and other ingredients from coffee shops, juiceries and other businesses all over London. (Source)
Pic credit: Upcircle (right) and Cosmetics Design (top)
“There is no shortage of ingredients that need to be rescued. For example, in the UK we send 500,000 tonnes of coffee waste to landfill per year, where it rots to produce methane. Every day we’re contacted by coffee shops all over the country asking if we can collect their grounds. Over time our collection area will expand, but there’s clearly no shortage! We were shocked to find out that 1/3 of all food produced is wasted.”
Anna Brightman in an interview
Founder(s)
William and Anna Brightman
Headquarters
London, UK
In business since
2016
Technology
Creating an upcycled skincare brand using natural by-products, creating supply chain for by-products to be used in new products, creating a take-back/refill scheme
Impact
According to their website, as of 2022, the company has saved 350 tonnes of coffee and rescued other ingredients from the argan, tea, juice, olive, date and wood industries. The company is conserved carbon negative due to their efforts in ocean regeneration projects.
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