Silicones | Making products even more environmentally friendly and saving resources is high on the agenda. One of the latest developments is the possibility of using recycled silicone polymers as ingredients. Alexander Selig talks about these ground-breaking results.
COSSMA: ‘Neo-ecology’ is described as a mega-trend for the 2020s. What does this mean?
Alexander Selig: ‘Neo-ecology’ de- scribes the transformation to a resource-efficient, sustainable economy that is taking place in society. Product characteristics that bring together added value and longevity are decisive factors that influence purchase decisions. In particular, the new generation values the sustainable ideals of swapping and reusing, especially when it comes to preserving the value of a product or to save the environment.
What impact does this trend have on the cosmetics industry?
The sustainability topic is one of the biggest challenges for the cosmetics industry. The consumers expect high quality, top performance on the one side and on the other side it should be safe for the environment and save resources. The current approach is to use as many ingredients as possible from natural source to cover the sustainability expectation. The consequences are losing in performance and open a new topic regarding water footprint, deforestation of rainforest, and all the risks which industrial farming brings. The future for new development will be a look on the complete picture of ingredients, packaging, and production energy.
The synthetic ingredients will play an important role as depending on the type of polymer they have advantages like a good water footprint, do not touch the food industry and often only a few amounts are needed to gain good performance. The circular economy will be an important topic for the synthetic ingredients. All in all, the future will be a mix of ingredients made from natural sources in combination with synthetic ingredients to have less in total in the formulation.
What role does the circular economy play in this?
The principle behind a circular economy is that products are reused for as long as possible or recycled. This extends the lifecycle of products, leads to a reduction in waste and ensures that the full value of the resource can be utilised. The circular economy as well as climate protection are part of the global targets for sustainable development that have been published by the United Nations in the Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 12 – responsible consumption and production – sets out demands for more environmentally compatible handling of chemicals and waste as well as a significant reduction of waste volumes through reuse and recycling.
Silicones still play an important role in hair care. What possibilities are there in terms of a sustainable production?
Silicones require a lot of energy in the production. Their production is an im-portant part of the sustainability targets – even of the energy-intensive pro-cess. The reason is that silicon, which is the result of the process, is used in many applications which save more energy than it requires to make. For ex-ample, silicon is the key raw material for solar panels. Silicones made from silicone are used in potting materials for LED and electric cars. Silicones used in hair care are highly efficient and compared to organic polymers much lower quantities are needed.
The silicone industry is trying to use sustainable sources, e.g., electricity hydropower, for the energy-intensive process to contribute here. We are using in the main plant for silicone production energy from biogas and have just started to set up solar panels at other production sites.
Is a kind of recycling conceivable?
Silicones are an integral part of additives in consumer care products. To fully exploit the value of this resource, end-of-life silicone products can be recycled. As a result, today’s silicone waste can be used to produce an important alternative raw material for tomorrow. This approach to silicone recycling follows the waste-to-value process. The end-of-life polymers are catalytically split into silicone monomers, then modified, and finally polymerised into e.g., a new modified silicone in virgin quality, which can be used for hair care.
How difficult is it to transfer results from the laboratory to practice?
That depends on the kind of development. As an example, sugar modified silicone made from recycled silicone raw materials, took us a few years from the idea to the launch. The way of synthesis was quickly found, the fine-tuning of it took the longest time besides the stability test. Before the process for the first production was initiated, a lot of detailed application tests had to be done. Assessments of compatibility in shampoo formulations with different surfactant bases were done including combing test vs reference products.
The last puzzle part of the project was to create marketing tools with a story including application information with starting point formulations. As this is a novelty on the market as an ingredient for hair care, a lot of explanation is necessary. The real implementation in the practice is still ongoing and will take another few months.
The hair care formulators have the same challenge before they can launch a product based on our recycled silicone. They must assess stability tests, performance evaluation and the option to use the recycled silicone as a marketing claim. All in all, it is a long way from the first idea to implemen-tation into practice and we easily talk here about at least three to four years.
Alexander Selig,
Global Head of Application Service Consumer Care, CHT,
Tübingen, Germany, www.cht.com