In The News:Lubrizol launches silicone alternative, Element adds captured carbon to beauty packaging

Photo by Gleb Makarov on Unsplash

🧪💋Lubrizol’s Latest Launch

This month, the Ohio-based chemicals’ manufacturer introduced SilSense™ Bio 5 to the cosmetics and personal care ingredient marketplace.

The new emollient is meant to replace D5 Cyclopentasiloxane in hair care, skincare, sun care, and color cosmetic applications. And, according to a media release the team at Lubrizol shared with me, SilSense™ Bio 5 “is a sustainable bioalkane chemistry, derived from a non-GMO, 100% vegetable oil.”

The release notes that the silicone alternative is COSMOSapproved and compliant with vegan, halal as well as kosher standards, and that the “volatile emollient…provides a lightweight and nongreasy soft feel to the hair, scalp, and skin.”

In hair care applications SilSense™ Bio 5 promises volume and frizz control benefits. And it provides scalp care benefits as well: moisturization, enhanced skin barrier protection, and pH maintenance. In color cosmetic (and germane skincare) applications, the emollient is said to offer “good pigment dispersion” and “less transfer of makeup.”

🧴💨Plastic & CO2 Join Forces

Element is teaming up with Canada-based Oco, an environmental sciences company dedicated to thinking creatively about single-use packaging and waste reduction.

“Our partnership allows us to make packaging with fully sequestered carbon which also increases durability, recyclability, and material performance,” explains Nick Gardner, Co-Founder of Element, in a press release the company shared with me.

“We are primarily integrating it into packaging that will most probably - if not certainly - end-up in landfill,” he acknowledges. “We are currently using it with LDPE and HDPE (Low Density and High Density Polyethylene), and PP (Polypropylene), but the possibilities are infinite,” says Gardner, adding that, “We focus on applications with tubes, deodorant sticks, tottles, PP mascaras components, which are less likely to be recycled because of the sheer physical size.”

Oco works with partners, like Element, on polymer engineering and carbon utilization, essentially using captured carbon dioxide to supplement materials. In this case, Oco has developed a powder of captured carbon and an ‘inorganic feedstock’. This, mixed with plastic, “increases tensile strength, longevity and durability. It is extending the lifespan of recycled plastics by at least 4 times when mechanically recycled,” according to the Element release. All told, “the additive actually improves the molecular structure of plastics, allowing for recyclability and integration into current recycling streams.”

As Madison Savilow, Co-Founder of Oco, explains it, “We're upcycling waste instead of introducing new virgin materials to the world.”

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