Join the Circular Economy with Renewable Biosilica

Silica is used widely in personal care and cosmetics. It is traditionally sourced from non-renewable sand dredging, which requires significant energy consumption and emits large amounts of CO2.

Sustainable and renewable Biosilica™ is derived from discarded sugarcane ashes and has similar or better performance characteristics compared to industry benchmarks. It can be used in foundations, creams, lotions, and more as a sustainable and better performing alternative to extractive silica. In addition, it offers an alternative to microplastics.

We Set Out to Reduce Waste at Every Step

The circular economy is based on the concept that materials and products are never wasted but always reused or recycled. As a philosophy, it decouples economic growth from resource use and promotes a regenerative growth model that gives back to the planet more than it takes. No more “Take, make, dispose.”

Biosilica™ was born out of the effort to make our sustainable cosmetics platform even more circular. Sugarcane ashes are a byproduct of sugarcane juicing used in fermentation. Ashes are created from burning bagasse, the leftover fibers from juice extraction, used for electricity generation. Only a portion of these ashes are used for fertilizer. We wanted to find a way to use all of the ashes. The development of pure, high quality Biosilica™ was led by Amyris in partnership with the UCP in Porto/AICEP Consortium Project to bring clean beauty from these ashes.