The advanced plastic recycler and the non-profit announced in a release a newly formed partnership to address the end-of-life for plastic packaging and create new solutions to close the loop on beauty packages.
While the partnership has not yet determined what those solutions will look like yet, Eastman cosmetics packaging segment manager Tara Cary said in the release the organizations are aligned in the goal to increase beauty-to-beauty recycling.
Eastman Renew is able to take any type of waste plastic and, using advanced recycling methods, create a resin that is molecularly identical to virgin plastic.
Pact Collective offers in-store and mail-in recycling solutions for hard-to-recycle plastic waste, and it often partners with beauty brands.
“What we like about Eastman’s technology is that it is true material-to-material recycling, not waste-to-fuel or energy,” said Pact co-founder Mia Davis in the release. “Eastman can help us keep plastic material in circulation, creating more recycled content that can be used in future beauty packaging and other items.”
Click through to read more about Eastman, Pact and packaging circularity.
Q&A
Pact Collective started around a year ago with a mission to help beauty become more circular, and the non-profit has several plans to tackle the industry's biggest waste problems.
CosmeticsDesign spoke with Pact Collective about how they are working towards a circular economy, why they believe that transition matters and what the challenges are.
Tell me a bit about Pact Collective’s mission around circularity in personal care and cosmetics.
The beauty and wellness industries generate over 120 billion packages every year, with most ending up in landfills or incinerators. The packaging is often too small, too flexible, or made of too many materials to be mechanically recycled through curbside recycling programs. Pact is on a mission to change this.
Haircare brand Herbal Essences announced they will be implementing a resin derived from an advanced-recycling technology which turns waste plastic in molecularly virgin plastic.
The P&G brand and the producer of the resin, Eastman Renew, announced in November five shampoo-conditioner collections would be on the market with the plastic beginning January 2022.
Herbal Essences principal scientist Rachel Zipperian said the adoption of the resin is part of the company’s goals to move 90% of major packaging platforms to recyclable or reusable materials and reduce in the use of virgin plastics 50% by 2025.
“Plastic is such a useful material, but it’s not useful to go to waste,” Zipperian said. “I’m a big dreamer and I see this as a big way to get plastic to more of a circular resource, and we know that not one approach is going to solve the problem.”
Q&A
Advanced-recycling plastic resin supplier Eastman Renew is expanding into France by 2025 with the support of five beauty companies committing to supply contracts. CosmeticsDesign spoke with to Tara Cary, segment market manager for Cosmetics and Personal Care Packaging at Eastman about the expansion.
Tell me a bit about what this expansion consists of.
President Emmanuel Macron and Eastman CEO Mark Costa jointly announced Eastman’s plan to invest up to $1 billion in a material-to-material molecular recycling facility in France that would use Eastman’s polyester renewal technology to recycle up to 160,000 metric tons annually of hard-to-recycle plastic waste that is currently being incinerated.
Plastic is both an important packaging material and a prevalent pollutant, and The Body Shop wanted to know what cosmetic plastic Americans throw away the most.
Personal care brand The Body Shop released a study on plastic waste earlier this year, looking into consumer habits in throwing away cosmetic plastics in the United States. The study covered what gets thrown away, how much and what the habits around cosmetic plastics are.
Microplastic pollution has been found across ecosystems, including waterways, in fish and on some of the high peaks in the world.
As the year rounds the corner to Plastic Free July, here are three of the key takeaways from The Body Shop’s “Body Plastic Pile Up” study.
Plastic packaging is important in the beauty industry and rePurpose Global wants to create impactful accountability for plastic waste made by personal care brands.
According to rePurpose, 91% of plastic waste doesn’t make it to recycling and ends up in the environment. Svanika Balasubramanian, CEO and co-founder of rePurpose Global, told CosmeticsDesign a major contributor to plastic in the environment is where the plastic in the recycling bin ends up.
Balasubramanian said rePurpose found that roughly 75% of plastic recycled in countries like the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland ends up in countries like India, Indonesia and Vietnam.
“These countries, unfortunately, don't have the necessary infrastructure to deal with their own domestic waste, let alone be this one giant garbage dump for the rest of the world,” Balasubramanian said. “That's why we're seeing so much of the waste leaking into nature.”
