Natural Plastic Resins Emerge in Cosmetics Packaging

William Hitchon provides an update on new green-sourced resins available in the beauty market.

By William Hitchon

The year 2011 is a milestone for the cosmetic packaging industry with new green-sourced resins available on the beauty market.

The main innovation is a thermoplastic resin, called Gaïalène, made from a non-food resource grown in France, usable for extrusion blow molded bottles, injected parts and film multipacks.

This new generation of plastic obtained from starch, biosourced up to 50% minimum, has the characteristics of polyolefins. Its main interests are numerous: local farming, no GMO, recyclability, much better carbon footprint. The more oil prices increase, the more the up charge is reducing.

The Gaïalène resin is also enabling the manufacturing of 40 micron thin shrink film for multi-packing solutions.

France’s chemistry’s industry is well advanced in terms of non-food vegetal technical valuation. The country has one of the most advanced food-industry, in link with clusters and research institutes of worldwide reputation. Demonstration has been made of a synergy between the food industry, plasturgy and the packaging sector—areas where France has a leading role.

In the family of polyolefins, thermoplastic PE green resins have been introduced into the cosmetic market in 2011, resins made from 100% cane sugar ethanol, which have identical mechanical and aesthetic properties of the by-products obtained from crude oil.

Other thermoplastic resins so-called bio-pet should be soon used in cosmetic packaging. These resins blended up to 20% or 30% are today on the shelves for liquids such as water and soda bottles. Being only available from a restricted number of suppliers worldwide, these materials do meet marketing objectives of brands willing to highlight sustainable practices.

Other advantages for packaging manufacturers: These new vegetal plastic materials do not change production rates, and therefore tooling can be used in similar conditions. Bio-sourced plastics have sometimes been controversial upon their ecological impact versus plastics derived from crude oil. At present of the French environmental labeling initiative, life cycle analysis (LCA) of bio-sourced materials will demonstrate their positive impact on climate, air, water and biodiversity.

Within the first half year of 2011, vegetal plastics have gathered the attention of packaging professionals during exhibitions such as PCD in Paris, SINAL in Châlons, INTERPACK in Düsseldorf and FIP in Lyon.

The Union of Chemical industries’ objective for 2017 indicates that for France, renewable resources should represent up to 15% of chemical specialties. It’s an incentive for the cosmetic industry to demonstrate its pioneer role in making durability a reality. It’s well established that green-renewable resins will create new categories of green materials opening large perspectives for the plastic packaging industry.

These new vegetal plastics also should help in sustaining the increase of cosmetics and beauty products’ consumption.

AUTHOR BIO: William Hitchon was the plastics cosmetics’ sales manager at Bormioli Rocco BU for nearly five years and prior to that held the position of business development manager at Soupletube.