New Material （PCR, Green PE, PLA) Study
December 22, DongZhi, is one of the most important festivals in China; it’s the first one in 24 solar terms. Well, Dongzhi in Chinese means that the winter has come. In the passing years, Dongzhi would be very cold and came with heavy snow, but we may feel hot at present due to the global warming. In a TV show, someone visited the Arctic and people in Norway showed them the changes of glacier 20 years before and now, they can hold to cry. The feeling is like we are not far from the day human being disappear.
Therefore, many people are fighting to change the ways we live, less carbon emission, less pollution; for example, a 16 years old girl (Greta Thunberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg) is doing the speeches to call people’s attention to the environment problem. But we think, to change the situation and save our life, we need the industries to work harder to reform.
Auber cares the environment many years ago (Check what we keep doing: https://www.cosmetic-tube.com/uncategorized/what-auber-keeps-doing-to-be-eco-friendly) and now we are doing the study to change the cosmetic tubes material to be more eco-friendly. Here is the information we collected recently. We may not mature in material study, if you happen to be professional to the green material, we welcome you greatly to leave the comments or give suggestions.
PLA ( Polylactic Acid)
Polylactic Acid (PLA) is different than most thermoplastic polymers in that it is derived from renewable resources like corn starch or sugar cane. It’s widely used for tableware, cup, plastic films, bottles, biodegradable medical devices, etc. It’s biodegradable.
If we can use PLA for squeeze tubes, consumers can just drop the packaging into the dustbin with the food waste when used up the hand cream. But will PLA react with the cream? And moreover, the PLA will corrode the machine after using for a few months, and then we need to fix the machine and change the components more often than the machine running with normal plastic. Thus PLA now may not a mature for cosmetic tube.
PCR (Post-consumer resin)
Post-consumer resin (PCR) is an environmentally-friendly packaging option that many manufacturers are using in support of recycling programs, consumer demand, and to reduce their impact on landfills. They are the recycled materials from existing PET bottles and other plastics.
It may the greenest method to reduce the plastic in the ocean, and it should be promoted to everyone before the scientist found the greener method. You know the cost for PCR is much higher than new plastic resin, that’s why most of plastic packaging factories still prefer using new resin. But if people can do better classification in the daily life, it can help reduce the recycle cost and lower the price of PCR, and additionally, if the demand for PCR packaging increased, it can also help the market to balance the supply, and when more supplier get involve into PCR, the prices can also come down.
After testing, now Auber can add 30% PCR in the inner layer of cosmetic tubes. You may wonder, why just 30%? Many other suppliers pronounced that they can make 100% PCR tubes. The ingredient of PCR and new plastic resin are the same basically, but since they are reused resin so they will contain some ingredients we won’t know, we are afraid the unknown ingredients will react with the cosmetics. Moreover, even we heat them and stir them evenly, there will still be with some granule. We can see they clearly under the light and it will definitely not a good feeling to the consumers.
Green PE
Green PE is a plastic produced from plant, a renewable raw material, while the traditional polyethylene uses fossil sourced raw materials such as oil or natural gas. It’s said that to produce, the factory need sugarcane, and sugarcane captures and fixes CO2 from the atmosphere during its production, helping to reduce greenhouse gases emission.
When we search on Google about the function of green PE is same as the normal plastic resin, but we are told by some people that as a new material, it’s not sure that whether the green PE will react with some elements containing with cosmetics, and it needs thousands of tests to approve it. And since we are not the cosmetics factory so it will be hardly for us to process the tests, for safety and taking the case that the green PE may corrode the machines into consideration, we will just add 30% green PE in the outer layer of cosmetic tubes. We will welcome someone to tell us more processional information about green PE.
During the searching, I also find some creative & green ideas for packaging; I will share them in my next article. Thank you for reading.
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To learn more cosmetics packaging, pls visit our website: www.cosmetic-tube.com
