Natural and Sustainable Raw Ingredients for the Personal Care Market

Designing a Green Product

The design of a green product starts with selecting raw materials. For ingredient selection, manufacturers have to consider the nature of the product itself, whether it is an organic or inorganic material, and its environmental impact. Furthermore, the process of producing the raw material has to be examined.

Formulators should turn to their suppliers for insights on these parameters. For example, Cognis developed a classification concept that involves rating products with up to four green leaves, indicating the proportion of natural, renewable components and how it is processed. These ratings for the company's personal care and home care ingredients and products help manufacturers to determine the degree of greenness for their end-products.

As an example, consider alkyl polyglycosides, such as coco glucoside, which are surfactants obtained from renewable, plant-derived raw materials, making them suitable for products where mildness to human skin, environmental compatibility and high performance are a must. Alkyl polyglycosides can easily be removed from wastewater in sewage treatment plants and are well tolerated by aquatic organisms. In addition to their ecological footprint, alkyl polyglycosides have a high level of stability across a wide pH range and their unusual flexibility and polyfunctionality mean alkyl polyglycosides can be used in an enormous variety of formulations.

Cognis supplies alkyl polyglycosides (APG) surfactants that are fully aligned with all the 12 principles of green chemistry. For example, the Plantacare® and Plantaren® product lines are exceptional nonionic surfactants with a balanced combination of foam volume and dermatological properties. They are suitable for use as a base surfactant or a co-surfactant in cosmetic cleansing preparations. In addition, the combination of excellent cleansing with proven mildness allows the formulation of facial wash products with proven deep pore cleansing effects. Given these properties, they are widely used for eco-labeled formulations.

A new innovation is a combination of an APG with a citrate ester (Euperlan® Green) that, when combined, produce a green pearlizer for use in body wash and shampoo. With this pearlizer, green formulations are getting a luxurious appearance, which, in the past was only achievable with synthetic ingredients.

Environmental Sound Manufacturing

The second phase of a product's life cycle is the manufacturing phase. One significant way to reduce the environmental impact of the production process is to use cold-processing. Cold-processed face care prototypes have been proven to exhibit the same sensorial parameters as the hot-processed benchmark. With cold process, as much as 90 percent of the energy and time allocated can be saved during production—leading to a more efficient use of resources.

The greening of the personal care market has created new challenges and opportunities for formulators. If manufacturers in the personal care segment are to be successful, they have to offer products that deliver high performance, a holistic product experience and, at the same time, serve the green consciousness. Manufacturers have to decide based on their brand positioning how green they want their products to be and which labels they are interested in obtaining. To make an informed decision, manufacturers need transparent and reliable tools as well as product specific data, that enable them to exactly meet consumers' demands. By knowing the opportunities as well as the limitations, manufacturers can develop new products with a holistic approach to being green.

Ulrich Issberner, MD, is senior marketing manager Care Chemicals-Personal Care NAFTA for Cognis Corporation.  He joined Cognis in 2000 after working with Henkel for three years in their Research & Development department. At Cognis, Ulrich Issberner has worked as head of Technology Skin Care, Germany and in various marketing functions before he joined the U.S. marketing team.

Ulrich received his medical degree from University of Bonn, Germany, where he started his career with a residency in Dermatology.