Rising up within the Netherlands, System Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier discovered the worth of recycling plastic from an early age. Nevertheless, the prevailing tradition of single-use plastics she skilled in international locations like the UK and the USA was in stark distinction to the practices within the Netherlands.

With a profession background as a Chartered Environmentalist and a biologist, Lorraine is finely tuned to any cosmetics companies’ claims about sustainable packaging, plastic-free alternate options and different inexperienced credentials. Whereas many huge gamers are shifting in the direction of extra accountable packaging methods, a urgent query stays: what actually occurs to our recycled plastics? Is the labeling of sure plastic beauty packaging as recyclable, blindsiding us and akin to greenwashing?

In final week’s podcast, Lorraine interviewed Dr Suvi Haimi, Co-Founder and CEO of Sulapac, who delivered to gentle the parable of plastic recyclability, revealing that some plastics can solely be recycled as soon as. In immediately’s Inexperienced Magnificence Opinions, Lorraine explores this significant situation.

“Even when all of us get rid of our plastics considering they’ll be recycled, what really occurs to them? We have to problem the parable of plastic recyclability.”

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Key takeaways from this episode on plastic recycling:

• The fact of plastic recycling: regardless of efforts, the recycling charges globally are removed from ultimate. As an example, solely 5% of plastic waste was recycled within the US in 2021.
• The constraints of recycling plastics: not like aluminium or glass, recycling plastic degrades its high quality, typically resulting in “down-cycling” slightly than the creation of latest, comparable merchandise.
• The reality about PCR plastics: post-consumer recycled plastics utilized by some beauty manufacturers should not infinitely recyclable. Manufacturers utilizing PCR plastics typically make sustainability claims that don’t necessitate client recycling or composting after use.
• A name to scrutinise beauty packaging: perceive the supplies utilized in your beauty packaging and take into account this in your future magnificence product selections.
• Shifting past appearances: prioritise sustainability not simply in product look but additionally in packaging.

 
Should you loved this episode on beauty packaging and alternate options to plastic in magnificence, do delve again into the podcast archives. Go and pay attention to those associated episodes and subjects:

Episode 143: The model creating mascara tubes to final 2,500 years.
Episode 117: Ought to magnificence go plastic free?
Episode 118: Plastic just isn’t the enemy – we’re.
Episode 115: The microplastics hiding in your cosmetics.
Episode 112: The soiled enterprise of magnificence waste.
Episode 93: Progressive magnificence packaging with mushroom and seeds.

 
Thanks for becoming a member of us for this episode of the System Botanica Inexperienced Magnificence Conversations podcast. Should you loved listening, please share, subscribe and overview this episode on iTunes, Spotify or Youtube in order that extra folks can benefit from the present. Don’t overlook to comply with and join with us on Fb, Twitter and Instagram.

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Lorraine Dallmeier is a Biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and the CEO of System Botanica, the award-winning on-line natural beauty science faculty. Learn extra about Lorraine and the System Botanica Group.