Soapy Hollow

With sustainable packaging rapidly becoming a priority for cosmetics companies, the buzz is around renewable and eco-friendly materials like bioplastics.

However, Sterling Anthony, a packaging consultant who gave a presentation  this month’s HBA conference in New York suggests that just because bioplastics are deemed to be biodegradeable does not make investment in them automatically a good decision.

The decision to look for more renewable materials is being driven by the need for sustainability caused by the fact that resources are finite, for which bioplastics is a rapidly becoming a solution to this problem, Anthony says.  But it is not a straight forward equation, as bioplastics raise a lot of questions about sustainability and the manufacturing composition.

‘Are bioplastics always greener?’

Mr. Antony then went on to explain that bioplastics are often petroleum blends, most commonly consisting of around one third petroleum, which cannot be considered a sustainable or green resource.

Interest groups and companies involved in the bioplastics area would have us believe that the industry is a formidable force in the plastics packaging industry. “The reality is, that aside all the sometimes misleading information that is often propagated, the bioplastics category remains just a tiny part of the overall plastics packaging industry,” Anthony said.

He also pointed out that the potential for well designed and ethically manufactured bioplastics is enormous.

September 15th, 2008 | Tags: bioplastic, green tech, manufacturing | Category: Environment, IndustryNews |  Print This Post | Comments (3)

I think I’ve got the theme working correctly. Whoo!

September 12th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized |  Print This Post | Leave a comment

For some unknown reason, when people are trying to find older entries, like in the Make Your Own category, the category is only showing 5 entries, and thus about 3/4 of my entries are invisible.  I don’t know why this is happening, or how to fix it…so any suggestions are welcome.

September 11th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized |  Print This Post | Comments (2)

As a small manufacturer that ships a physical product, I’m always concerned about my ecology footprint when it comes to shipping. That’s also true for products that are being shipped in. For instance, if I have the choice of two vendors, and one has shipped products using polystyrene pellets, and the other has used post consumer/recycle friendly fill, and an appropriately sized box, my future purchases will tend toward the vendor that used the best secondary packaging.

Dennis Salazar argues that most secondary packaging is inefficient and detrimental to the environment.

Treehugger answers the question: What Can We Do With Our Used Styrofoam?

Jackie DeLise, Vice President of Zunda Group LLC, describes the current state of affairs, gives some terminology, consumer perceptions, and some paths forward.

August 29th, 2008 | Tags: Environment, green tech, packaging | Category: Environment, IndustryNews, manufacturing |  Print This Post | Leave a comment

It looks like Craftzine has picked up the bath bombs meme.  Bath bombs for everyone!

August 27th, 2008 | Tags: bath bombs | Category: Formulas, IndustryNews, Recipes |  Print This Post | Leave a comment

Beauty, they say, is only skin deep. But given the load of toxic chemicals in everyday products like shampoo, deodorant, and makeup, that superficial truth is still cause for concern. With increasing frequency, studies point to hidden dangers in the medicine cabinet: things like lead in lipstick, phthalates in baby lotions, aluminum in deodorant. While the amount of each toxic may be tiny on its own, the number of products most people use each day means we’re exposing ourselves to unnecessary risks — all in the name of looking and smelling good.

In 2002, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics — a coalition of health, labor, environmental, and consumer-rights groups — began fighting to protect people around the world from these risks, by pressuring companies to change their formulas and by raising awareness among the public. The latest tool in this effort is Not Just a Pretty Face, a book by CSC co-founder Stacy Malkan.

Malkan, a former teen beauty queen, first became aware of the impacts of routine chemicals on humans as a reporter in Colorado; after a stint in politics in Washington, D.C., she got involved in Health Care Without Harm, a global coalition working to reduce pollution in the health-care sector. It was there that she first learned of the dangers of everyday products. Now living in Berkeley, Calif., Malkan splits her time between HCWH and CSC; I spoke with her by phone about her Aqua Net-clouded past, how she’s getting the word out to women and men alike, and the most surprising thing she’s seen along the way.

question How did this book come about?

answer For five years, I was working with some of the top researchers and advocates in the field of environmental health, and seeing amazing stories, learning about the science, seeing many disturbing trends — and I just saw a great [chance to tell a story through the] people I was getting to know: women taking on big corporations, teenagers lobbying for political change, companies making safer products, chemists thinking of new, safer ways to create chemicals. There’s a lot of reason for hope, even though the topic can be overwhelming.

But it is upsetting to learn about all the toxins that we’re exposing ourselves to … through products we’ve trusted and used for years. When you start to think about all of the products you use in a day, or a week, the numbers are just staggering.

Read more for the remainder of the interview. More »

August 25th, 2008 | Tags: Cosmetics, CSC, Interviews, news, Stacy Malkan | Category: Cosmetics, IndustryNews, Interviews |  Print This Post | Leave a comment