Calvin Lam
DES 40A Winter 2016
Proessor Cogdell
March 14, 2016
Burt’s Bees Lip Balm: Raw Materials
Introduction
Burt’s Bees is well known as a company that embodies environmentally friendly product production, using natural ingredients and a homemade formulation of their products. However, the brand has risen greatly in popularity and has now become a large scale commercial company. How has this affected the production life cycle of their most popular product: lip balm? The purpose and focus of this life cycle analysis is to understand the origins and uses of the raw materials needed to produce Burt’s Bees lip balm.
The lip balm product begins with acquisition of raw materials used in the final product; this includes the materials within the lip balm itself and the materials used in the final product packaging. Burt’s Bees provides the raw materials in their lip balm and they are as follows: beeswax, coconut oil, sunflower oil, peppermint oil, rosemary leaf extract, soybean oil, canola oil, and limonene. The primary ingredient, beeswax, is sourced from beeswax farms in East Africa (Molina). The essential oils and extracts are derived from their respective plants. The lip balm tube is made from polypropylene, otherwise known as plastic #5.
Beeswax
Beeswax, the main ingredient in Burt’s Bees Lip Balm, is a naturally occurring wax produced by honeybees, namely the Apis species. Because of its unique properties, this wax has been long used in the manufacture of cosmetics. Furthermore, bees wax is generally safe for human consumption it is also used in food and pharmaceutical products (Yadeta). Worker bees convert the sugars they consume through honey into wax, which is extruded through small pores on their abdomen and appear as small flakes. The small wax platelets are then used to construct the combs that makeup the internal structure of the beehive.
The production of beeswax in Africa is of note because of the huge number of honeybee colonies kept in traditional hives. These tropical bees migrate continuously, abandoning nests in search of new ones when local conditions are unfavorable. This favorable because the entire nest can be collected and processed at a single time. In 2005, Ethiopia produced about 4300 tons of beeswax, placing it at the third highest production in the world (Yadeta).
To make beeswax fit for product use, it must be rendered and filtered to remove impurities and hom*ogenize the wax. The sources for crude beeswax can range from just the cappings, thin covers of each comb, removed in honey extraction, to the entire combs themselves. Wax from cappings contains fewer impurities and results in a high quality light colored wax. The wax in combs darkens with time due to increased pigmentation, changing from white to yellow to brown. Furthermore, if whole combs are used, impurities like pollen, dead bodies, parts of honeybees, and other parts of the hive can be present, lowering the quality of the beeswax. To continue processing any grade of beeswax, the wax must be separated from the honey and other impurities. This is done by any of several rendering methods, the most common being boiling the wax in water then filtering (Yadeta).
For Burt’s Bees Lip Balm, the beeswax comes rendered and filtered into blocks from Africa. While the exact quality of the raw beeswax blocks is uncertain, Burt’s Bees additionally processes the beeswax to meet their standards. This process consists of additional rendering and filtering of the wax and the wax is processed into small pellets for ease of use. These small pellets are much easier to transport and measure later in the manufacturing process.
Essential Oils
The essential oils added to the beeswax are the key components to creating the consistency, color, and aroma that is associated with the Burt’s Bees brand. There are two main ways to extract the essential oils from their respective plants: distillation and expression (NAHA). Distillation is a process that takes advantage of the different boiling points of varying substances in a mixture. Different components boil off at different temperatures and thus can be condensed and collected in their pure form. However, this process must be conducted in a very accurate manner as some substances will change their chemical nature when exposed to excessive amounts of heat (How It Works).
The basic process using plant material is to place the material inside a still where steam is passed through the still to break up the plant material. The volatile components, our essential oils, rise upwards and flow into a condenser changing the vapor back into liquid form. Here, the oils are separated from water as they do not mix. Additional distillation processes can be conducted to further separate the oils based on their chemical properties. The advantages of steam/water distillation are that large quantities of raw plant material can be used and distilled at once. Furthermore, the oils produced by distillation are chemically more pure.
Expression is most commonly used when extracting citrus essential oils; for Burt’s Bees lip balm this would be limonene. This process physically extracts the oils by crushing the rinds of the citrus fruit. The modern process involves mechanically pricking the rind in a spinning container where centrifugal force drives the oils to the outer walls of the container. The oils can then be collected. Expressed oils can contain nonvolatile substances, such as waxes, that are present in the original plant material. Depending on the eventual use of expressed oils, these substances may or may not be desired (NAHA).
Plastic
Polypropylene is the plastic of choice used to form the Burt’s Bees lip balm tubes. This plastic was invented in the early 1950s and has many beneficial properties such as low density, relatively high thermal stability, easy processing and reprocessing, and a resistance to corrosion (Karger-Kocsis). The ease of processing and reprocessing is because Polypropylene is a thermoplastic polymer, meaning its material properties are easily controlled with heat. As a result it is very commonly used in injection molding and extrusion (Tripathi).
To form the lip balm tubes, polypropylene pellets are heated and injection molded into their final shape. Injection molding is a mechanical manufacturing process that forces a heat reactive material into a mold. The material is rapidly cooled to set the mold shape. The result is a low cost but highly accurate and high quality product.
Polypropylene is also easily recyclable, falling under the category of plastic #5. The recycling of poly propylene products involves the following steps: collection, sorting, cleaning, reprocessing by melting, then creation of new products (Azom). Burt’s Bees has recently instituted a packaging recycling program where lip balm containers can be mailed in to the company where the plastic will be reused to make future plastic products.
Discussion
The simplicity and small number of raw materials used in creating a tube of Burt’s Bees lip balm makes its lifecycle easier to follow. Many of the materials are reusable and easy to process and the materials are certainly natural and undergo minimal processing during the lip balm manufacture. The nature of the Burt’s Bees lip balm formula only requires that the waxes and oils be heated and mixed together to achieve the desired product. This is certainly in line with the company’s claims to be as wholly natural as possible. However, it was difficult while researching this topic to find explicit data and information on the degree of pre-processing each of the raw materials undergoes. Furthermore, it was very difficult to determine exactly what suppliers Burt’s Bees use. Depending on the supplier and sources, the raw materials can undergo extensive chemical processes to achieve a high quality product.
Given the large volume of production, Burt’s Bees will definitely need to source its raw materials from more locations, increasing the variability in how natural and sustainable the materials actually are. Additional research will need to be conducted in order to more completely assess the materials used in Burt’s Bees lip balm.
Bibliography
"Beeswax Lip Balm."Burt's Bees. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
"Distillation and Filtration - How It Works." How It Works. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
"How Are Essential Oils Extracted?"National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
"Polypropylene (PP) (C3H6) Plastic Recycling." Polypropylene (PP) (C3H6) Plastic Recycling. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Burt's Bees 2012 Sustainability Report. Rep. no. 4. Burt's Bees. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.
Gemechis Legesse Yadeta. Beeswax Production and Marketing in Ethiopia: Challenges in Value Chain. Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Vol. 3, No. 6, 2014, pp. 447-451. doi: 10.11648/j.aff.20140306.12
Karger-Kocsis, J. Polypropylene Structure, Blends and Composites Volume 3 Composites. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1995. Print.
Maier, Clive, and Theresa Calafut. Polypropylene: The Definitive User's Guide and Databook Plastics Design Library. Elsevier Science, 2008. Print.
Molina, Christina. "How Your Burt's Bees Lip Balm Gets Made."ELLE. 04 May 2014. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Thiriez, A., and T. Gutowski. "An Environmental Analysis of Injection Molding." Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, 2006. (2006). Web.
Tripathi, Devesh. Practical Guide to Polypropylene. Shrewsbury: RAPRA Technology, 2002. Print.
Dankongkakul, Belle
DES 40A | W16
Professor Cogdell
March 13, 2016
Embodied Energy of Burt’s Bees Lip Balm
When it comes to a small tube of lip balm with natural ingredients and a recyclable plastic casing, most ordinary people would assume that the product is environmentally friendly and has little impact on the planet. Though it is true that the Burt’s Bees company does operate in a greener and more environmentally conscious way than others, the matter of fact is that they are a billion dollar company that exists to manufacture products for the consumer. As their company brand grows so does the need for energy and resources to manufacture their products. Every step of the process uses some type of prime mover that requires some kind of energy. The life cycle assessment of a Burt’s Bees tube of lip balm shows that it requires a mix of chemical energy, to fuel the prime movers, and a substantial amount of thermal energy to process the raw materials to the final product.
All the natural ingredients found in a tube of Burt’s Bees lip balm must go through a process of (1) extracting the raw material itself, (2) transporting the raw material to its processing plant, (3) transporting that new processed material to the Burt’s Bees Factory, where it will finally all get mixed together. The plants that are turned into an essential oil go through a process done in the US, but the main ingredient beeswax goes through a different process because it needs to be transported from its origin in East Africa.
Beeswax is made by young worker bees in a hive. One worker honeybee produces about eight scales of wax every 12 hours. The energy used by honeybees is pretty much a closed circle. They build honeycombs which produce honey, which is the food source they eat to then make more honeycombs. These honeycomb farms in East Africa are kept by beekeepers. So in Africa the embodied energy to produce beeswax is all chemical: humans and bees. Beeswax is a low energy raw material but it’s the transportation of the material that uses the most energy. In order to get the beeswax from East Africa to the Burt’s Bees Factory in New Jersey, it has to be shipped 7,259 miles overseas in a cargo ship. One cargo ship consumes approximately 380 tons of fuel per day while at sea. The energy used to power those ships is usually crude waste oil that is a byproduct of the oil refining process. Burt’s Bees claims they source their beeswax from Africa because it is more pure, but if they were to acquire it from a source in the US the embodied energy could be reduced greatly.
Growing plants and herbs for commercial use is generally done using tractors and machines to plant, maintain, and harvest them. Then, once they’re harvested they must be transported. Everything in this part of the lifecycle is powered by chemical energy. The plants require sun and water to grow, the machines that maintain the farms are powered by fossil fuels, and the humans overseeing it all are powered by food. It is estimated that a common tractor consumes up to 7 gallons of fuel per hour but maintaining farms takes much more than one tractor. Assuming one farm uses 10 tractors, in one 9 hour work day one farm could consume up to 630 gallons of fuel for one day of one task for one raw material. There are several raw materials that are grown in farmsand they all have to be farmed and harvested at separate places. This means that for each ingredient there is a considerable amount of fossil fuels being used to transport them to the next step of the process: steam distillation to extract essential oils.
In order to add the natural ingredients like rosemary and mint to the lip balm it must first be turned into an essential oil. This is done by a process called steam distillation. The raw material is added to a gridded container that is then steamed from below. The steam breaks down the plant and takes the essential constituents via vapor into a condenser chamber, where it is cooled turning the vapor back into a liquid form. The essential oils can then be found on the surface water since they are less dense. According to a publication from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concerning steam systems and their energy use, “thirty-seven percent of the fossil fuel burned in the US industry is burned to produce steam.” In order to create steam, thermal energy is required. Though it is unsure how exactly the manufacturer for Burt’s Bees’ essential oil’s produces their steam, some common ways to heat the boilers are gas or coal-fired. Like the rest of the life cycle, mechanical energy is used as a requirement to power machines that process and transport the raw materials.
The next material that needs to processed is the polypropylene, also known as plastic #5, which makes up the tube encasing the lip balm. It is unclear exactly which manufacturer Burt’s Bees uses but I will provide an assessment of the most common way polypropylene is produced and moulded into it’s final tube form. Polypropylene plastic is actually made from natural products like natural gas and crude oil. In the example of crude oil, the raw material goes through a distillation process that separates the oil into a lighter group called Naphtha. The Naptha then goes through a “cracking process” where steam converts the large hydrocarbon molecules into a smaller monomer called propylene. The monomers are chemically bonded into chains which turns them into polymers, and thus we have, polypropylene. This process uses a mix of chemical and thermal energy, plus the electricity used to power the factories. According to an article published by the Community of Engineering Services, it can take up to 23 million Joules of energy to produce 1kilogram of Polypropylene, most of it in the steam cracking process. To turn the polypropylene into a plastic tube casing for the lip balm we will next assess the process of injection molding.
Injection molding starts with small pellets of plastic and the entire process is done by machines. Moulds are made of any metal that has a higher melting point than the injected material and for polypropylene that is chromium steel. The polypropylene is melted at 266 fahrenheit into a liquid which is then injected into the mould. Once cooled, the mold is removed and the casing is made. This process uses a lot of thermal heat and electricity to power the factory machines. Most of the polypropylene casing suppliers I have found were stationed in other countries like China. Assuming that these plastic casing are shipped overseas on cargo ships, it adds even more fossil fuel to the embodied energy it takes to produce the materials that make up a single tube of Burt’s Bees lip balm.
Once all the separate components are manufactured they are transported over to the Burt’s Bees factory in New Jersey. A reporter from Elle magazine visited this factory and in her tour, documented the process of how Burt’s Bees lip balm was made. First, the beeswax that arrived from Africa is filtered again until it is completely pure. They then pelletize the beeswax to help it melt easily and uniformly. Once the beeswax is melted in the mixing tanks they add the other ingredients. It takes about 2 hours from start to finish to stir and melt the ingredients together in a three-step melting process. In one day they will only make 2-3 batches, enough to fill 300,000 tubes of lip balm. Once it’s melted and mixed, the liquid goes through a filler machine that fills the polypropylene plastic tubes. Once in the tubes, the concoction is melted and cooled twice in order to ensure a uniform and consistent stick of lip balm. The entire process uses mainly thermal energy and some assistance from the mechanical energy used to power the factory machines and the chemical energy used to power the humans operating the machines.
At the end of the life cycle we have distribution to individual stores and the eventual recycling of the finished lip balm tube. Whether the product is distributed by truck, ship, or plane chemical energy in the form gasoline is used. Once the lip balm is finished, the polypropylene tube can be recycled but it has to be recycled by a certain plant that takes plastic #5. Burt’s Bees has implemented recycling solutions by working with a plastic #5 recycler called “Gimme 5”, but these recycling containers are often hard to find. Nonetheless, if the plastic tube does make it to a recycling center it will go through a process of cleaning and then melting. This process is done in a plant powered by mechanical energy and then melted using thermal energy fueled by natural gases.
Transportation and distribution contribute a significant portion of the embodied energy, but it’s thermal energy required to heat and process all the materials that is used the most. Without heat, raw materials cannot be reformed to later be combined to make a tube of lip balm. Chemical energy contributes to distribution in the form of fossil fuels and in the form of sustenance for human labor which is necessary throughout the entire life cycle because without humans operating the machinery none of these processes could be carried out. A label of “100% natural” alludes to an environmentally friendly product, but the assessment of the lifecycle of this one small tube of chapstick tells a different story.
Bibliography
Burt's Bees 2012 Sustainability Report. Rep. Print.
"CIEC Promoting Science at the University of York, York, UK." Cracking and Related Refinery Processes. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Einstein, Dan; Worrell, Ernst; & Khrushch, Marta. (2001). Steam systems in industry: Energy use and energy efficiency improvement potentials. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3m1781f1
"Embodied Energy Polypropylene Vs Copper - Community Engineering Services." Community Engineering Services, PLLC. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Evans, Paul. "Big Polluters: One Massive Container Ship Equals 50 Million Cars." Gizmag.com. 23 Apr. 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Grisso, Robert, John V. Perumpral, Gary T. Roberson, and Robert Pitman. Predicting Tractor Diesel Fuel Consumption. Publication no. 442-073. Virginia Cooperative Extension. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.
"How Are Essential Oils Extracted?" National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
LeBlanc, Rick. "An Overview of Polypropylene Recycling." About.com. 01 Aug. 2015. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
"Lifecycle of a Plastic Product." American Chemistry Council. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Molina, Christina. "How Your Burt's Bees Lip Balm Gets Made." ELLE. 04 May 2014. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Victoria Yuen-Ruan
Professor Cogdell
Design 40
11 March 2016
Waste and Emissions: Life Cycle Assessment of Burt’s Bees Lip Balm
Introduction
How sustainable is the life cycle of a lip balm product? In order to figure that out, it is important to understand the process and materials necessary to make lip balm and its packaging. While going through the different processes, the energy use and waste emissions must also be assessed. Particularly, the waste and emissions associated with lip balm production can provide insight on its environmental impact. This is important to assess because resources from our natural environment are being consumed. When they are consumed there are associated waste products and emissions that could potentially present adverse impacts on ecosystems and human health.
Lip balm can be produced in a variety of manners with many unknown sources and so the focus of this assessment will be on lip balm manufactured by the company Burt’s Bees. Once the lip balm is made, the expected outcome of the balm is that the ingredients inside the container are used up by the consumer and the plastic tube is recycled for re-use. However that is only an ideal situation that may not match the reality that lip balm tubes can easily be misplaced. And so without ideal circ*mstances, Burt’s Bees lip balm often has an unfortunate life cycle from the direction of cradle to grave despite the attempts by Burt’s Bees to create an environmentally friendly product.
Materials
According to the Burt’s Bees product website, the two major components of their lip balm are the polypropylene #5 plastic tube container and the following ingredients: beeswax, coconut oil, sunflower seed oil, peppermint oil, rosemary leaf extract, soybean oil, canola oil, and limonene. Currently their plastic containers on average are made of 39% post-consumer recycled content (Burt’s Bees 2012 Sustainability Report 30).
Process
One reporter, Christiana Molina of Elle, divulged how Burt’s Bees lip balm is made. The process begins with beeswax farming in East Africa (Molina). After the wax is melted down and packed, it gets shipped to New Jersey where it goes through another round of filtering (Molina). At the factory the ingredients are all melted down together and are filled into the tubes. Where these other ingredients come from is unknown. After the tubes are filled, labeled, and packaged, they are shipped out and distributed nationwide. According to Burt’s Bees shipping information page, products made for distribution in the United States are not allowed to be sold outside the country.
Emissions
Because Burt’s Bees sources their ingredients from other countries, CO2 emissions are a real concern. CO2 emissions come from automobile, ship, and airplane transportation and distribution of individual ingredients, packaging, and machinery. For clarity, CO2 is Carbon dioxide. It is an emission to be concerned about because of its negative effects on climate change.
Essentially the “main effect of increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is global warming” (whatsyourimpact.org). An exact numeric value of emissions released transporting beeswax from East Africa to facilities in America is unknown. However reports on global transport suggest that “sulfur and nitrogen compounds emitted from [ships] will oxidize in the atmosphere to form sulfate and nitrate, and thus contribute to acidification. Emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOC) will lead to enhanced surface ozone formation and methane oxidation, and thus affect the greenhouse warming” (Endresen 14-4).
Waste & Recycling
According to Burt’s Bees company site, they send zero waste to landfill. All products that can be recycled are sent for recycling. However some of their waste is incinerated or sent to an external waste processing facility in Ohio. Caution should be exercised since burning plastics “poses a severe effect on our environment mainly because of additives used in plastic products as these additives contain many toxins such as lead and cadmium” (LeBlanc).
For the plastic tube that contains all the lip balm ingredients, it is uncertain whether the tube will be recycled by the consumer or thrown out and sent to landfills. When polypropylene plastics end up at landfills they, “...account for an estimated 20 to 30% of the total volume of solid waste disposed” and are, “immune to microbial degrading, they remain in the soil and in landfills as a semi-permanent residue” (Longo). It is considered to be semi-permanent because it can take 20 to 30 years for polypropylene to decompose (LeBlanc). This high percentage makes sense as recycling expert Rick LeBlanc mentions that less than one percent of polypropylene plastic is recycled. So even if the consumer was environmentally aware of the hazard of throwing away their lip balm containers, recycling for #5 plastics is not readily available in most recycling programs.
There have been several recycling initiatives to divert lip balm tubes from ending up at landfills since the environmental consequences are dire. One initiative started by Burt’s Bees is the “Recycle on us” mail-back program. This program allows consumers to send back three used Burt’s Bees lip balm tubes to Burt’s Bees facilities. Their website mentions that curbside recycling of lip balm tubes tend to end up at landfills. So they suggest that mailing back the tubes to Burt’s Bees will ensure that the plastic containers can be recycled and repurposed for other uses.
Another attempt to divert waste to proper recycling facilities is the Gimme 5 program by Preserve that makes sure that #5 plastics like lip balm containers can be reused. On Preserve’s website they emphasize how “#5 plastics are often forced (by economic necessity) into bundling them with other plastics; in this process, they’re combined (downcycled) to form a mixed plastic bale, which is of low value and is often shipped overseas to an unknown end of life.”
On the flipside to downcycling is upcycling and repurposing the plastic. It is beneficial to recycle #5 plastic because of the “...reduction in the consumption of raw, finite resources, such as oil and propene gas. It is estimated that around 8% of the oil used worldwide around 400 million tons) is implemented in the traditional methods of plastic production with 4% as ‘feedstock’ and another 4% in manufacturing” (Thomas). Consumers who choose not to dispose of the plastic tubes can repurpose them for their own use such as putting in a new filling of lip balm.
Processing ingredients and cleaning materials also develops water waste. It is less harmful to the environment when water in these processes can be re-used. However Burt’s Bees does not specify the amount of waste their facilities use. This is a concern considering that with all the water in the biosphere, only about 2.5% it is freshwater (White 56). So when water can not be re-used, it contributes to a “growing international problem [of] water scarcity” (White 57).
As an environmentally conscious company, Burt’s Bees has put in some effort to offset their water waste. According to Burt’s Bees 2012 Sustainability Report, Burt’s Bees facilities reuse their water through a reverse osmosis water reclamation system taking water from the manufacturing process to clean buildings and equipment. Despite this effort to reuse waste water, it does not completely eliminate the water waste produced from making the lip balm and its packaging.
Conclusion
There are many factors which Burt’s Bees lip balm tries its best to be a sustainable product. They have set sustainability goals which they hope to achieve by 2020 and none of their lip balm processing or manufacturing waste goes to landfills. Numerical data and quantities are somewhat vague when researching. Even Burt’s Bees sustainability reports will give percentages of “30% more efficient” without actual numbers of how the comparison works. With what information is available though, by outsourcing materials and ingredients from other countries and using plastic for a short-term product it is impossible for Burt’s Bees lip balm to be truly sustainable.
Works Cited
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