Bioplastics and the Skincare Market

With sustainable packaging rapidly becoming a priority for cosmetics companies, the buzz is around renewable and eco-friendly materials like bioplastics.

However, Sterling Anthony, a packaging consultant who gave a presentation  this month’s HBA conference in New York suggests that just because bioplastics are deemed to be biodegradeable does not make investment in them automatically a good decision.

The decision to look for more renewable materials is being driven by the need for sustainability caused by the fact that resources are finite, for which bioplastics is a rapidly becoming a solution to this problem, Anthony says.  But it is not a straight forward equation, as bioplastics raise a lot of questions about sustainability and the manufacturing composition.

‘Are bioplastics always greener?’

Mr. Antony then went on to explain that bioplastics are often petroleum blends, most commonly consisting of around one third petroleum, which cannot be considered a sustainable or green resource.

Interest groups and companies involved in the bioplastics area would have us believe that the industry is a formidable force in the plastics packaging industry. “The reality is, that aside all the sometimes misleading information that is often propagated, the bioplastics category remains just a tiny part of the overall plastics packaging industry,” Anthony said.

He also pointed out that the potential for well designed and ethically manufactured bioplastics is enormous.