For most perfume makers, ingredients to make it smell great are the most important feature. But for Stafford Sheehan, a cofounder and chemist at Air Company, the most important part of perfume-making has no scent at all.

New York-based Air Company uses technology that converts planet-warming carbon dioxide into ethanol, which is then blended with essential oils and water to produce perfume. While the pale yellow-color Air Eau de Parfum is about 50% more expensive than Coco Chanel’s signature No. 5, Sheehan says his product is uniquely valuable: Every 50-milliliter bottle uses 3.6 grams of CO2 that otherwise would have been released into the atmosphere. Its package reads: “Turning CO2 into something beautiful.”