Skincare Plastic Waste: Environmental Cost & Solutions

How Plastic Waste from Skincare Is Piling Up on our Planet

The COP28 meeting held in Dubai, UAE discussed the broader subject of reducing CO2 emissions and the wider problem of climate change. Very little was said about the increasing amount of plastic waste from skincare and beauty product production. The skincare industry is a huge global polluter. Despite innovations from some smaller players in the market, little of the packaging that we find on our bathroom shelf ends up being recycled. Even fewer manufacturers are using new technology to remove plastic waste from skincare product packaging altogether.

In this post I will be looking at the issue of plastic waste in the skincare industry and where brands should be going to save our planet. As consumers we have few choices at the moment. Is it time we demanded change?

Why are skincare products put into plastic?

There's a lot of reasons why skincare product manufacturers choose to use plastic in their production processes. In a lot of cases, moving away from plastic is quite problematic for a number of reasons.

Plastics, like PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and HDPE (High-density polyethylene) are the two main plastics that are used to package our skincare products. They are cheap to produce and are sturdy and stable. By this, I mean that once they are filled with product, they play a role in maintaining the stability and integrity of the products inside. Both PET and HDPE are resistant to changes in temperature. They also resist being broken down by chemicals that are contained inside the products. This last point is very important, as we as consumers expect products to have a very long shelf life. In fact unlike the food industry, skincare products are expected to stay fresh inside their containers for years.

PET and HPDE containers are also cheap to transport. They are light-weight and easy to package without breaking. Compared to the alternatives like glass and aluminium, they are much less costly to haul over long distances.

What are the alternatives to plastics?

Solid Bars

Many of the bigger brands are moving towards generating less plastic waste. They are trying to achieve this in a couple of ways. Many are reformulating their products into bar format. So instead of a plastic bottle with a liquid product inside, they are removing a substantial portion of the water. They then press the remaining product into a bar shaped format. Think of a traditional shampoo, now available as a shampoo bar. One example of this concept is Faith in Nature Shampoo Bars. Faith in Nature started out making ordinary soap bars and other personal care products without many ingredients flagged as irritants. If you want to know more about fragrance in skincare products and skin sensitivity , look at two posts I have made about these topics.

The emergence of refill pouches?

Refill packaging is often made of difficult to recycle plastics like LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene). Currently in the UK, Local Council recycling collections do not accept these. It is down to the consumer to contact recycling initiatives like Terracycle to deal with this type of plastic waste. So whilst the creation of a new bottle has been avoided, companies have created an even bigger waste issue because many consumers won't be bothered to contact other waste recycling companies to recycle these pouches. Consumers will place anything not able to be collected at the kerbside, into their general waste bin. Most, sadly will end up in the residual waste bags and sent to landfill.

Refilling existing bottles

Several companies are now expanding their refilling stations, where you can take back your bottle to be refilled with the same product. Whilst this is probably the best environmental solution. Despite being around for a few years now, it has yet to take off. Primarily because it relies on the consumer to physically go to a refilling location and to refill the product bottles. A change in our behaviour is needed if this is to take off in a bigger way. And possibly a system where products can be refilled inside of a traditional supermarket or skincare store setting.

One big concern about this method however is contamination of the product. When a product is manufactured, it is often put through several hygiene processes to kill off any bacteria and viruses. It is then filled into a hygienically clean container and sealed. This can preserve the product contents as the process is relatively germ-free to begin with. If we are taking our used containers back to be refilled, there are many contaminants that can be still inside the old bottle. Even after washing it out thoroughly, many contaminants can still be inside the old bottle. The refilling stations are also not located in totally sanitised locations, so these germs present in the air will inevitably find its way into the refilled bottle. It is then down to the product preservatives to attempt to kill off these so they don't grow inside the product.

In my opinion, this is the biggest risk, as even with thorough cleaning, microbes can still survive and this applied to the skin can cause serious issues and even death. In the last decade there have been numerous product companies that have been issued with warnings about microbial growth inside their products. So even when products are filled inside a sanitised factory and in a controlled air-space, microbes can still find their way into a product and have the potential to cause us harm.

Bioplastics - Could they solve the problem?

Bioplastics have been touted by many in the skincare industry, as a greener way forward. Supposedly, these plastics made from biomass materials are able to be broken down much more rapidly than their traditional plastic counter-parts.

Bioplastics are made from plant based oils, instead of mining oil to produce the traditional plastic materials. Sugarcane, corn, seaweed and soy have all been suggested as source materials for these oils. Each material has its own set of environmental issues. In the case of land-based plant materials like corn, soya and sugar cane, competition for land space to grow these at scale has been linked to massive deforestation. Not the best solution to solving climate change. Also growing these types of crops to use them in product production, reduces the amount of land available for crops. Potentially creating a crisis for food production. Not to mention destruction of virgin forests to keep up with supply demands.

Seaweed based bioplastics also require massive tanks to grow the seaweed materials in sufficient quantities to produce enough oil to be used to make the plastics. Harvesting this from the ocean is not sustainable, as seaweed is a major carbon capture plant in the sea. We could be just creating another form of destruction of our oceans if we are farming it in the same way we extract massive quantities of fish and shell-fish, natures “clean-up crew”. At the same time as releasing all that captured carbon into the atmosphere.

Some would also compare this collection method to cutting down trees in the rainforest. Both collecting seaweed and cutting trees will release captured carbon. Both resources are considered renewable, but only seaweed takes a few months to grow. Whereas trees take many years to grow back.

Lastly the issue of how to recycle these bioplastics is a huge concern. Bioplastics can be composted and will breakdown. Their components eventually returning to the earth. However they can't be reused like plastics can. Also the issue of these ending up in landfill is still a major concern beacuse as they break down, they release methane and other gases.

What the experts are saying about Bioplastics

According to an article published by Jim Robbins of Yale University's School of the Environment

“While both of the bioplastics now in use can be broken down by microorganisms and become part of the natural world again in a short period of time, this only happens if the plastic is collected and composted in carefully controlled, high-temperature industrial composting facilities — and there aren't many of those, especially in developing countries where the problem of plastic pollution is most severe.”

If these end up in landfill, then the problem is even worse. Landfill won't break down the bioplastic and will release vast amounts of methane gas.

So what can be done to reduce the use of Plastics?

At the moment the best solution seems to be “Recycling More, Using Less Virgin Plastic”. At present only about 42% of plastic is recycled in Europe. That figure in the USA is significantly less at about 8.4% getting recycled. And this figure is set to get worse, especially with policy shifts or a lack of strong environmental leadership from some major global powers like President Donald Trump, who is an openly vocal Climate-Change denier. With recent comments about climate change like:

It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you’re involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling.

Unfortunately this is not the whole story though. Plastics used in skincare products need to be food-grade. There is a huge shortage of this type of recycled plastic and competition to source it is extremely high. The problem begins at the disposal stage because vast quantities of what we recycle is contaminated with old products or food waste. This is costly to clean sufficiently to get it back to food-grade.

We need to put pressure on Governments to force product companies to be responsible for cleaning up their own waste. If the big companies were forced to pay for new recycling plants and also for expanding the types of materials collected from the kerbside then change would start to happen. At the moment skincare product producers are creating more waste and not being made to take responsibility for what they are putting into the environment.

We need to get better at educating ourselves what can and can't be recycled and influence brands to change their packaging to 100% recyclable alternatives. It's only with consumer pressure and government sanctioned penalties that real change will happen.

My Final Thoughts

I'm not suggesting that we can remove plastics completely from our skincare products. But we can all make conscious decisions about how much we buy, and how we dispose of it once it's finished. Governments all over the world need to regulate and force plastic producers to be the main drivers in reusing that plastic by increasing recycling rates. Ideally we should be reusing 100% of our plastic, as there is currently enough plastic produced every year to sustain the product packaging industry for decades to come.

Introducing a deposit return scheme is an excellent first step that could be implemented very quickly. And evidence that this works is there, just look at how attitudes to single-use plastic bags changed once a charge was forced on the retail industry to charge for new bags.

Finally, think carefully about what personal care products you need. I've advocated with my clients for many years that carefully chosen and targeted skin care products that get results are all you need. In these pages, I'm trying to help you choose from the myriad of products out there, to choose ones that would be effective for you. Therefore wasting less. I also aim to write more on greener skincare product choices.