How do you minimize waste of materials?

[Bobby7]

Hey basenoters, I'm interested to hear some of your waste elimination hacks! Here's mine...

I had my stuff in storage for almost a year and it turns out the 1oz dropper bottles I ordered especially from the states are not evaporation proof after all! So all of my predulted materials are are now of unknown dilutions.

In order not to waste anything I've been making fragrances with what I have, adding alcohol to each material to to approximate what I think it should be. A fun experiment and better than it all ending up in the bin although I can't bring myself to make anything 'serious' until ive used up the bulk of what I have.

I start my formulas in drops, usually making 2ml ish per iteration using prediluted materials (this is what I normally do even when being serious lol) then to scale up I weigh the drops x 20 making approx 20-25ml and then multiply these weights depending how much I want to make. Although this may not seem professional (I am amateur after all) it saves a lot of waste because let's face it, a lot more ends up in the Millefluers jar than one would like. I can still convert to ppt or % if I wanted to but I rarely have done

How do you minimize perfumery waste?

 

[pkiler]

I guess that my best advice for you at this stage of your development is to never again use dropper bottles to work with.

 

[chyprefresh]

If you have a precise scale and get really good with pipettes you can do .005-.01ml drops by gently touching the pipette along the inside of the beaker face and gently releasing, cuts down on having to dilute many stronger materials. I do it all the time for trial formulas, just to get a general idea of the fragrance and quick iterations.

I also recommend labelling your pipettes and putting them on a pipette rack, especially for commonly used materials.

 

[jsweet]

I also recommend labelling your pipettes and putting them on a pipette rack, especially for commonly used materials.

Having done this, I now blame it for ruining two 80ml bottles of hedione due to contamination from the oxidized residue. I can't prove it, but I've decided that the risk of contamination is too high to reuse pipettes.

 

[chyprefresh]

Having done this, I now blame it as the cause of my hedione going off quickly, due to contamination from the oxidized residue. I can't prove it, but I've decided that the risk of contamination is too high to reuse pipettes.

I hadn't thought of this, but none of my common materials have turned yet and I've had them for over a year and a half now.

 

[jsweet]

Yeah, I may have overreacted a bit regarding contamination. And I'm in the stage of acceptance that my hedione is just going to start to smell like cheese over time. At least it's cheap.

 

[chyprefresh]

Yeah, I may have overreacted a bit regarding contamination. And I'm in the stage of acceptance that my hedione is just going to start to smell like cheese over time. At least it's cheap.

I have a Hedione bottle over 4 years old and it still smells like Hedione, maybe ever so slightly milky smelling but it's not 'bad' by any stretch. I leave it in my bottom drawer where it's cool in the room, I don't refrigerate any of my materials and very few of them have gone bad (noticeably). The oldest ones are nearing 5 years, the Anthamber and Clearwood have turned the most but I believe that's just the oxidized filament near the opening of the bottles.

 

[Saraiva]

I do this, I reuse the pipettes for the same product, but at the end of use I dip the pipette in alcohol and let it dry, I don't leave any residue on the pipette, this could oxidize and contaminate the product.

 

[Bobby7]

Thanks, I prefer to work with prediluted materials and happy with my system. It works for me as there's less room for error when scaling up. I like the idea of a pipette rack but I agree there's too much risk of contamination one way or another and it will take a lot of space too. I think there are dropper bottles made from a certain type of plastic that are evap proof if I'm not mistaken but I'd rather invest in materials for now and use the dropper caps I have but only during the time of working and not to store the diluted materials themselves. The hardest part for me is to know when a fragrance is finished and resist the temptation to add more, to have the patience to let it sit a while just as it is and wait before scaling up.