Step-by-step guide: getting the EcoBeautyScore for a face cream

This guide outlines the essential steps to obtain the EcoBeautyScore (EBS) for a beauty product, providing a clear example for those new to using Pilario.

Connect to Pilario

To get the EBS for any product, we need to connect to Pilario where we will provide our username and password.

Creating our new beauty product

Once we have connected to Pilario we will be brought to the main page which, by default, lists the products we have defined in our system. You can navigate to other assets (like sites, templates etc) via the left bar menu, we cover it later in the guide, at the moment, we will remain in this section.

If this is your first time using the system, the list might be empty. Don't worry, we are about to create our first product. Follow these steps:

1. Click in the upper right corner button, Add a product.
2. Define the basic product attributes like name, external id, model and labels.
   1. Name is mandatory, in this case we will use Face care - Cream Repair - 50 ML
   2. External id can be left empty but it will usually be the identifier used in other IT systems in your company.
   3. In this guide we are using the model EBS-Cosmetic which enables specific stages and results tabs, you can read more about it in our knowledge base
   4. Labels can be used to categorise products or help searching for them in the future. You can add as many as you want, but can also be left empty.
3. Click on Save

The product will be created, and we will be automatically taken to its page. There we should define other attributes related to the type of product and even add a description and one or more pictures to help us identify our product later.

On the left side you will see all the life stages of the product i.e Formula Description, Packaging, Distribution, Use phase, etc. We will be navigating only a couple of them in order to provide the information required to perform the LCA and obtain the EcoBeautyScore related to the product.

Defining other product attributes

In the Description section, there are several mandatory attributes that need to be input before the score can be obtained. They can be found in the Description section, after the General attributes, in a specific subsection called Product description. All the attributes marked with an asterisk (*) must be filled before proceeding. We will fill them according to our example, but you should adapt this to your product:

• Product Segment: 2.2 Face Care - Moisturize & Treat
• Product Sub-Segment: 2.2.5 Cream/Lotion/Masks
• Primary packaging type: Bottle with cap
• Primary packaging per secondary packaging: 1
• Final assembly zone: Europe
• Presence of substances of very high concern (SVHC)? : False
• Product size (primary packaging level): 50
• Unit: mL
• Density: 1 g/mL
• Is this product a monodose or dilutable product?: No

Once the information has been provided, you will be able to find some useful information at the end of the page like the use dose and the number of doses per product.

Adding the ingredients of the product (Formula Description)

We need to define now the ingredients that compose our face cream. We will navigate to the Formula Description section on the left. In a real case, we will likely have to add many other ingredients but, for the sake of simplicity, we will assume that our cream is made of only three ingredients: Water (80%), Glycerin (18%) and Urea (2%).

To add the ingredients, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Formula Description section, and use the ➕ Add row button on the upper right corner to add the different ingredients.
   
   If you prefer, you could click on the ➕ button on the left menu, once per component, and you will see as well how the list of ingredients enlarges accordingly on the left menu, and how a new row is added in the Table view in the main section. 
2. For each ingredient, add the required parameters, noting the following
   1. The first column contains several buttons () to perform actions like
      1. Opening the expert parameteres (see section below)
      2. Duplicate the ingredient
      3. Delete the ingredient
   2. Name: is the name of the ingredient. Pilario will look in its dictionary of synonyms to automatically fill the INCI Name for you, this means that you could type Water, Aqua, H2O, etc and the INCI name will be automatically selected as WATER.
      You can read more about the INCI name functionality in its specific article in the knowledge base, and even update the synonyms tables.
   3. If you prefer, you could directly fill the INCI name without using the name search functionality.
   4. Add the CAS number, the Carbon origin, the Feedstock and the Share.

You should end up with a formula like the one presented in the image below

Adding the packaging of the product

In the same way we have added the ingredients of the product, we need to add the packaging of the product. Likely there will be more components that the ones presented below, but in this case, we will simplify and add only three components, two primary  (a cap and a tube), and a secondary (a carton box).

Follow these steps to add them:

1. Navigate to the Packaging section, and click on the ➕ button, once per component. You will see how the list of packages enlarges accordingly on the left menu, and how a new row is added in the Table view in the main section.
   
   

   As we saw before and if you prefer, you could also use the ➕ Add row button on the upper right corner to add different packaging components.

2. Fill the packaging information, for example for the Cap we will:
   1. Fill in the name column with Cap
   2. Select Primary as the Typology
   3. Select Closure as Type
   4. Select 1 as the quantity
   5. Select False in the Recycling disruptors
   6. ... and then, open the component page via the first button  to fill the information regarding its composition. Click on the ➕ Add row button to add the following single material.
      1. Name: PP
      2. Material: PP
      3. Mass: 4.7
      4. Recycled content: 0%
      5. ... and we can leave the rest columns with the default values. They related to the packaging manufacturing processes which will be populated according to the material type. But, if needed, we could change them.
         
3. Fill the other components following the same procedure, for example:
   1. For the Tube:
      1. 1. Fill in the name column with Tube
         2. Select Primary as the Typology
         3. Select Tube as Type
         4. Select 1 as the quantity
         5. Select False in the Recycling disruptors
         6. ... in the materials, Fill in the Name with LDPE
         7. ... in the materials, Fill in the Material with LDPE
         8. ... in the materials, Fill in the mass as 7.22 g
         9. ... in the materials, Fill in the %PCR as 50
   2. For the Carton box:
      1. 1. Fill in the name column with Carton box
         2. Select Secondary as the Typology
         3. Select Carton as Type
         4. Select 1 as the quantity
         5. Select False in the Recycling disruptors
         6. ... in the materials, Fill in the Name with Carton
         7. ... in the materials, Fill in the Material with Carton
         8. ... in the materials, Fill in the mass as 10.45 g
         9. ... in the materials, Fill in the %PCR as 80

Once we are done, we should end up with something like the following. Notice the package components (light blue) and its materials (purple).

Visualising other information

On the left menu, we can see many other entries that correspond to different life stages of the product. They will be populated with read only values according to the EcoBeautyScore methodology but they are presented to the user so you explore them.

We cover them briefly here:

• Pack. manufacturing: contains information about the process used to manufacture the packaging. You cannot change the values here but you can via the Packaging > Material as we saw in the previous section.
• Ing. supply to manuf. site: contains information about the distances traveled by the ingredients composing the product formula.
• Pack supply to manuf. site: contains information about the distances traveled by the packaging components used to contain directly (primarly) or indirectly (secondary) the product.
• Product manufacturing: contains the information the product and that has been provided already in the description.
• Distribution: contains information about the distribution of the packaged product to retailers and end customers.
• Use phase: contains information related to the consumption of energy and water during the product use.
• Packaging EOL: contains information about what happens with the packaging components after their disposal.
• Water EOL: contains information about the water used at the end of life stage.
• Ingredients EOL: contains information about the impact of the ingredients at the end of life stage.

Viewing the results

At any time in the process we can see the impacts and scoring of our product in the results tab. To open the results tab you can click on the arrow in the upper right corner which will expand the results column.

The results column contains four tabs which allow us to display the results in different ways: a grid, a graph, a stacked graph and, finally, the EBS scoring.

By default the results will display the Grid tab and the Aggregated Footprint (used to calculate the score) but we could select any LCA indicator that we wanted in that grid. We can see them aggregated by stages, and it gives a clear overview of which stage, or Ingredient, or Packaging have a bigger impact.

The Graph and Stacked chart, will present the results in a visual way, allowing the user to see the Grid values in different visual charts.

The EBS score is presented in the last tab  Scoring.

We can see how our face cream has an EBS score of A, the highest score available.

That's it, you have managed to get the score from a product created from scratch...  Congratulations on making it until here!

Do you want to explore further what you could do from here? You could export the results in a spreadsheet to create additional charts and share it with third parties. This is covered in the specific guide https://help.pilario.com/how-to-export-the-results-of-your-ebs-products See you there!