Carbon and water footprint analysis of a soap bar produced in Brazil by Natura Cosmetics

Water shortage represents one of the main threats to life on our planet. Indeed, over the last five years, society and corporate businesses alike have expressed increasing concern about the long-term sustainability of water resources while climate change and freshwater scarcity became important issues for building a consistent sustainability strategy. Here we investigated the relationships between the carbon and water footprints (CF and WF, respectively) of one product from Natura Cosméticos, a leading cosmetic company in Latin America. Our main goal was to determine how to deal synergistically with these environmental pressure indicators in order to help building future strategies that are more sustainable. Our analysis reveals that the total for the CF of the Macadamia soap bar (450 g) was 741 g CO2e, while the WF was 1.581 l, 1.587 l, and 3.672 l for the green, blue, and gray components, respectively. We found that at the formulation step, the soap has accumulated 84% of the total CF and 99% of the green component of WF while it accumulated only 6% of total blue WF component and 10% of the gray WF component. Our results reveal that the major volumes accounting for blue and gray occur in the use and disposal phase of the product, when the soap is no longer under Natura's outreach. The use and disposal of this product represent 70% of the total WF and only 16% of the CF. WE also found that carbon and water footprints were significantly high in the farming stage, mainly because of the use of fertilizers for palm cultivation. This study reveals some relevant aspects of the carbon and water footprints and represents an important step for the integration of different environmental pressure indicators for developing novel sustainability strategies that can also be used to increase consumer perception of all environmental aspects of the company operations.