PLANET POSITIVE: Beyond Natural as a Design Principle

Sustainability has become one of the most overused words in beauty.

It’s been stretched to cover everything from a recyclable cap to a single “green” ingredient—often without context, transparency, or measurable impact. At INBAR+co, we wanted a different relationship with the word.

We don’t pretend to be perfect. We do insist on being specific.

That’s where our fourth pillar comes in: Planet-Positive, guided by our Beyond Nature philosophy. It’s the way we design our operations, packaging, and ingredient choices to respect not only your skin, but the systems that make our work possible.

What “Planet-Positive” Means at INBAR+co

For us, Planet-Positive is less about slogans and more about operational commitments:

• We run spa and production on 100% renewable electricity

• We work with documented waste management partners (Marin Sanitary Service)

• We build plastic-free packaging systems as standard

• We commit to measuring our footprint before claiming carbon neutrality

• We use the Beyond Nature lens to choose ingredients based on impact, not just on whether they sound “natural”

Instead of promising an abstract “clean” or “eco” reality, we look at actual inputs and outputs—and then ask how we can make them better.

100% Renewable Energy in Spa and Production

The most straightforward place to begin was our energy.

Both our spa and our production run on 100% renewable electricity. That choice affects everything quietly:

• The treatments performed in our space

• The batches mixed and filled

• The digital infrastructure that supports our brand

We don’t frame this as a heroic act; we consider it baseline alignment. If we’re going to ask you to care about the systems behind your skincare, we have to care about ours first.

We are not yet carbon-neutral, and we won’t claim it until we’ve:

1. Measured our emissions baseline properly

2. Reduced what we can through design and operations

3. Used only credible offsets (if and where they are truly needed)

Until then, we say what is true: renewable energy only across spa and production, and a commitment to transparent carbon accounting when the data is ready.

Waste Management That Exists in the Real World

Planet-Positive also means looking at what happens after our work is done.

We work with Marin Sanitary Service, a documented waste management provider, to handle our operational waste responsibly. That includes:

• Proper sorting of paper, metal, and other recyclables

• Clear protocols for non-recyclable waste

• Ongoing opportunities to improve how we handle materials before they ever become “waste”

Inside our packaging ecosystem, we try to make your life simpler too:

• Aluminum tubes and bottles with aluminum caps — designed for conventional metal recycling streams

• FSC-certified paper boxes — compatible with existing paper recycling

• Paper-only shipping — no air pillows, no bubble wrap, no plastic tapes to peel off

Planet-Positive, in practice, looks less like innovation theater and more like choosing systems that already work—and committing to use them properly.

Beyond Nature: Why “Natural” Isn’t Automatically Better

The phrase that anchors this pillar is Beyond Nature.

It captures a tension we see a lot: the assumption that natural = good and synthetic = bad. In reality, it’s more complicated:

• Some natural ingredients are over-harvested, unstable, or irritating

• Some nature-identical or responsibly engineered ingredients are more consistent, safer, and lower impact

So instead of chasing a “100% natural” label, we ask better questions:

1. Does this ingredient respect skin biology (barrier, microbiome, cellular communication)?

2. Does it align with green-chemistry principles (minimal waste, safer processes)?

3. Is its environmental footprint lower than the available alternatives?

4. Can we use it without compromising our no petrochemical derivatives commitment?

If the responsible choice is a nature-identical molecule produced using green chemistry, and it outperforms a fragile, resource-heavy extract—that’s the option we’ll pick.

Beyond Nature doesn’t mean “not natural.” It means beyond simplistic thinking about what natural even means in 2025.

Planet-Positive, Not Planet-Perfect

We’re wary of perfection narratives—both in skin and in sustainability.

The truth is, every product has a footprint. Every operation has a cost. Planet-Positive is our way of taking adult responsibility for those facts and designing with them in mind:

• Energy: renewable only for spa and production

• Materials: plastic-free systems built around aluminum and FSC paper

• Waste: real, verifiable partners and processes, not just “we recycle” language

• Impact accounting: measurement before marketing claims

Instead of saying “we have no impact,” we orient around doing less harm and more good across each decision point—and telling you where we are along the way.

How Planet-Positive Connects to Material Integrity & Responsible Chemistry

This pillar doesn’t sit alone; it’s the environmental thread woven through our entire ethos:

• Material Integrity makes sure that your formulas are delivered in packaging that respects both skin and planet—aluminum primaries, paper-based secondaries, optional sprays tied to WWF donations.

• Responsible Chemistry ensures that we’re not solving packaging and operations only to pour in formulas that are petrochemical-heavy, microplastic-laden, or unnecessarily aggressive.

When you put the pillars together, Planet-Positive is the lens through which we ask, with every choice:

Is there a way to do this that honors the skin in front of us and the systems around us?

If the answer is yes, we design toward it—even if it’s slower or more complex.

For an Audience Who Cares, But Also Lives in the Real World

Many of our clients are busy: people who care about their choices, but also have careers, kids, caretaking roles, and limited bandwidth to decode every single label.

Our job is to reduce friction:

• So you don’t have to become a packaging engineer to recycle a bottle

• So you don’t have to cross-reference ingredient lists with a chemistry textbook

• So you can trust that energy and waste are being handled by actual commitments, not just aesthetic “eco” gestures

Planet-Positive is our commitment to doing that work for you, and to showing you the receipts as we go—literally, in the case of our WWF donation reporting, and more broadly in future transparency updates.