It sounds beautiful: packaging cosmetics in recycled plastic. The huge mountain plastic waste grows and grows, while we immediately throw away from most packaging when we come home. Can we use as much plastic reuse useful and, for example, make new packaging? That is less simple than it seems.
There are so incredibly many different types of plastic that it is hardly sense to talk about plastic as one material. There are hard plastics, soft plastics, liquid and bendable. All those types have other properties (and added substances to strengthen those properties). A food package is often made of a different kind of plastic than a cosmetics wrapping or bag. Yet all these species belong together in the plastic container.
Unfortunately, a large part of the plastic waste collected is not processed at all to new plastic, but burned. That is cheaper than further sorting and processing it into a new material. The plastic that is recycled is often less firm and stable, partly because it has been processed under such high temperatures that some 'positive' properties have been lost. They are also added to those different plastic species in their first phase of life that makes it difficult to recycle.
Food, cosmetics and medicines may not be packed in recycled plastic in the EU. In itself, that is good, because it is important that packaging is stable and safe. They may not break or discolor and it is also not intended that substances end up in the product from the package. At the same time, the reuse of plastic is trimmed as a result, because it does not pay to set up the plastic collection process differently.
Another solution could be plastic from renewable sources such as corn or sugar cane. The difficult with this type of plastic is either suitable to pack cosmetics. Cosmetics must be able to stay well after packaging up to three years. That cannot guarantee that manufacturers of plastic on renewable resources.
In short, it is absolutely necessary to use fewer plastic and look at alternatives such as recycling and / or plastic based on renewable sources. Yet it seems that these options for Cosmetics still future music.
