Plastic is Dead, Long Live Plastic!
Mechanical, chemical and biochemical tomorrow: plastic recycling processes are constantly improving. This is excellent news for the beauty sector, which has high standards concerning the purity of recycled plastics.
This is the quantity of plastic packaging consumed each year by the cosmetics sector in France, i.e., 5% of total plastic packaging. Vials, bottles, lipsticks…. Polymers are everywhere. And French companies in the sector seem to have realized this: in 2021, the Federation of Beauty Companies launched its ’Plastic Act,’ which aims in particular for 100% recyclable.
The European Commission has included in the objectives of its ‘green pact’ an obligation to incorporate 30% recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030. In this regard, the most widespread method today is mechanical recycling, says Jean-François Gérard, deputy director at the CNRS Institute of Chemistry and professor at the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA). “It’s a fairly simple process that was essentially developed for PET (polyethylene terephthalate),” an ubiquitous plastic in cosmetics (lids, bottles, jars, etc.).
We clean it, melt it and filter it. This makes it possible to regain its initial properties, without degradation,” continues the scientist, “unlike other polymers such as polyethylene [used in particular for the microbeads present in exfoliants and toothpastes] and polypropylene [present in certain cosmetic jars] which deteriorate in the process.
