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Sophie Benson
Microplastics and nanoplastics have been intentionally added to a host of products since the 1960s. They serve a purpose – often as low-cost fillers – but given that they're a product of fossil fuels and have been found to pollute everything from mountaintops to the deep sea, it's time for an alternative.
Life would be much easier if plastic was always simply labelled as plastic, but it's a material which hides behind many different names. If you're looking to target and remove or replace plastics, the use of "poly" within an ingredient is a tell-tale sign, but not a catch-all clue. Names to look out for include acrylates copolymer, acrylates crosspolymer, carbomer, nylon, polyacrylamide, polyacrylate, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyurethane, polyvinyl, methyl methacrylate copolymer, methyl methacrylate crosspolymer, PVP, and butylene. Madhuri Prabhakar of Beat the Microbead explains that the organisation has come across more than 550 microplastic ingredients and over 600 "sceptical microplastics" (for which not enough information is available) used widely in beauty products, all of which are listed on its website.
The many different types of plastic have a wide range of functions. They're used as fillers to bulk up formulations, as exfoliants, binders, dilutants, thickeners, film-forming agents, and preservatives. They can also be applied as an anti-static ingredient, for smoothing, to add waterproof qualities, and as an adhesive. Plastics' versatility within beauty likely explains why so many brands are reluctant to give them up.
Sunscreen, lipstick, nail varnish, toothpaste, foundation, mascara, highlighters, face powders, and hairspray are among the almost never-ending list of beauty products which contain plastic. And it's not limited to a niche selection of those products. In 2022, the Plastic Soup Foundation studied 7,704 cosmetic and personal care products from the ten best-selling cosmetics brands in Europe. It found that 87% of the products contained microplastics, the definition of which included solid, liquid, semi-liquid, and water-soluble forms, plus nanoplastics and "biodegradable" plastics.
As PlasticFree has often explored, microplastics have been found in every environment you can imagine. They're in the Great Lakes, freshly fallen Antarctic snow, tap water, breast milk, and human blood. Within a marine environment, they're persistent and impossible to remove, Prabhakar explains. They're often mistaken for food and ingested by fish, inhibiting their growth and development, impacting feeding and reproduction, and damaging their organs. They also pass up the food chain. It's early days for research on microplastics' impact on humans, but it's suspected that they may accumulate in the body, inflame lung tissue (which can lead to cancer), and interfere with the endocrine system. Nanoplastics, meanwhile, may penetrate cells and tissue — a "real concern" according to the highly regarded scientific journal Nature.
Bans on the sale of products containing microbeads are in force in countries including the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Italy, Korea, New Zealand, Argentina, India, Sweden, and the US. But further bans on microplastics are still in the works. The EU is expected to enact a restriction on intentionally added solid microplastics, as proposed by the European Chemicals Agency. The timeline for bans spans from four years after entry into force for microplastics in rinse-off cosmetics, to 12 years for the use of microplastics in lip products, nail products, and make-up. As well as taking a long time, the ban will let many microplastics including soluble, liquid, and "biodegradable" ones slip through. Many are calling for stronger rules, but it is hoped that it will — at the very least — spark other bans internationally.
BioPowder, founded in 2017, produces fruit stone powders and granules for use in a variety of industries, including beauty. Olives, almonds, peaches, and pistachios are all available as alternatives to microplastics and microbeads. Their most obvious application is as an exfoliant, but they can also be used as formulation base materials, viscosity enhancers, carriers, rheological modifiers, and binders.
They are manufactured as a by-product of the food industry in southern Spain and, as no chemical additives are used in the process, they are exempt from REACH, the regulation under which the microplastic ban falls.
