Forested Founder & CEO Ariana Day Yuen on Regenerative Ingredient Insets

Forested is making regenerative agriculture a more quantifiable and verifiable, nature- based solution to consumer brands’ net-zero targets. 

After two-plus years in management consulting in the US, Ariana Day Yuen’s 2015 move to Ethiopia to work with TechnoServe, a nonprofit focused on creating business solutions to poverty in the developing world, felt like a breath of fresh air. It also marked the dawning of a new perspective. 

“Just being on the ground in a place as lush and biodiverse as these landscapes in Ethiopia, you have this unique perspective of having been exposed to the corporate world and now you’re working with farmers and local government, and you ask yourself, ‘Why aren’t our market systems working in a way that better benefits smallholder farmers in East Africa and also protects and restores ecosystems?’” 

Day Yuen recognized that the separation between cosmetic business executives in New York City and the forests of southwest Ethiopia was much more than a matter of geographical distance.  

“It all started with this question,” she said. “How do we make more sustainable land use a lucrative investment for everyone?” 

Day Yuen founded Forested in 2019 while earning her MBA from Yale’s School of Management. The business began as a specialty honey brand “to show that nature has commercial value.” She worked with a network of around 100 Ethiopian farmers to harvest and process distinct flavors of honey from native trees and exported the products to New York for bottling. 

“We did the whole specialty food game. We did e-commerce, you know, the celebrity chef and Michelin star partnerships, lots of social media influencers – and that was fine. But at the end of the day, we weren’t going to conserve half a billion hectares of ecosystem by moving small jars of honey.” 

Following a friends and family fundraise in 2021, Forested 2.0 launched as a bee products-focused wholesale ingredient business. “The shift enabled us to grow from working with 100 to 1,400+ farmers in Ethiopia. They’re part of these traditional or indigenous communities who are already land-stewarding these incredibly pristine UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. We train them on better beekeeping in a way that’s more regenerative. We then purchase the honey, we process it in our factory, and then we export it to companies like LUSH Cosmetics.” 

Today, Forested continues to supply carrier and essential oils, dried botanicals, butters and bee products from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. However, its next phase of strategic growth is as a verified carbon insets business, enabling companies to invest in projects that sequester or reduce carbon within their value chains rather than buying carbon credits to offset their emissions. 

“We recognize that working with smallholders, on top of the cost of trying to emphasize sustainability in the production and processing methods, can be a lot more expensive,” Day Yuen said. 

“So we’re innovating to develop these Scope 3-reductions credits, in parallel to actually providing the raw material to buyers, so we can reward buyers who are investing in sourcing regenerative with the verifiable proof they need to claim the impact their investment is actually having on the environment.” 

While Forested was heavily food-focused at inception, Day Yuen has come to prioritize the beauty industry as a unique opportunity. This is due, firstly, to the greater diversity of ingredients sourced by the average beauty or personal care brand compared with a food or beverage company. “This diversity of ingredients actually better matches what we would love for smallholder farmers to grow to promote biodiversity in their own plots of farmland.” 

She gave the example of a coffee company that may recognize the good of sourcing multiple materials – not just coffee – to support and incentivize that biodiversity.  “But from a business case, they may not need vanilla, they may not need their spices.” 

Secondly, beauty economics, generally speaking, are more conducive to implementing innovative sourcing models. “It’s easier to pilot things and reengineer these agricultural supply chains with a partner who can take on a bit more risk to innovate than industries who are fighting tooth and nail for single-digit post margins.” 

Another key piece is the beauty consumer, who is shown to be motivated to try innovative brands and remain loyal customers based on factors beyond cost. 

Reflecting on shifting political winds and changing corporate attitudes in certain sectors regarding environmental, social and governance (ESG), Day Yuen questioned the wisdom of deemphasizing environmental goals at the risk of alienating consumers and future employees.  

“Politics aside, what the data show is that consumers – especially beauty consumers – really still care about the environment. That’s not going away.”