DutchNews, April 7, 2022
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| Photo: Depositphotos.com |
Personal care and
cosmetic products are riddled with plastic ingredients, with nine in 10 popular
brands using them, according to research by the Netherlands’ based Plastic Soup Foundation.
The EU is poised to take steps to control the unnecessary use of
microplastics but most will be exempt, particularly those used by the cosmetics
industry, the organisation says in a new report.
The campaign group looked at
the ingredients in 7,704 cosmetic and personal care items from the 10 most
popular European brands.
Of them, 87% contained microplastics, defined as ‘all
possible synthetic polymers, whether added in solid, liquid, semi-liquid or
water-soluble form, as well as nanoplastics and biodegradable plastics’.
The
foundation said it approached L’Oreal, Beiersdorf, Procter & Gamble and
Unilever to find out about their current and future plastic policies.
‘All four
have indicated that they want to do more against plastic pollution, but they
focus only on microplastics in solid form. They follow the limited definition
of microplastics as proposed by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).
The ECHA
says every minute, over seven kilos of microplastics from cosmetics and
personal care products end up in the European environment, but this would be 25
times higher using the wider Plastic Soup definition, the campaign group said.
‘We want to urge the cosmetics industry to look beyond the proposed definition
by ECHA, to ensure the environmental and human health safety of the products
they bring on the market,’ the campaign group said.
‘We want to encourage
consumers to demand transparency from brands and accountability for the
ingredients these brands put into our personal care and cosmetic products.’
Two
weeks ago, researchers at Amsterdam’s VU university reported finding
microplastics in human blood for the first time.
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