A start-up is using organically grown rice to produce ethanol, a major component in many cosmetics.
Lina Sakai, president of Tokyo-based Fermenstation Co., quit her job at a financial firm about 15 years ago to study technologies for producing fuel from food waste at Tokyo University of Agriculture.
Around that time, a farmer in Iwate Prefecture came to her for advice about making fuel from rice, saying, "I want to use fallow fields and other land and produce rice that could fuel automobiles."
She made ethanol by fermenting rice, but gave up on the project because the selling price of the fuel became 25,000 yen per liter.
But she had faith in the fuel's environmental friendliness. She wondered if there was any other use for it.
She had an inspiration at a drugstore when she noticed ethanol is on the ingredient list of many cosmetics and aromatic oils.
At the time, organic vegetables with labels that showed the producer were very popular, and there were luxury cosmetic brands that sold organic products, but ethanol was not part of the trend.
"I thought women would respond positively to knowing where the ethanol was made, and out of what," she said.
She founded the company and began making ethanol out of organic rice from Iwate. While waiting for a sales permit, she began selling soap made out of moromi lees left over after ethanol distillation.
She also used the moromi lees as chicken feed, and made fertilizer from the chickens' manure. She discovered that cows will also eat fermented lees from making ethanol, although they turned their noses up at the strained lees from making cider.
Her business developed from organic rice became an industrial model for a self-sustaining regional system, and in 2019 her method was certified by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization as an excellent sustainable technology for developing countries.
Cosmetics makers, whose thinking about ethanol has evolved, have been inquiring about her product.
"I'm thinking about expanding into Europe, where people have a strong interest in sustainability," she said.
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