Reusability and recyclability of plastic cosmetic packaging: A life cycle assessment

Abstract

The importance of product sustainability has become increasingly relevant, with several key stakeholders striving to improve the lifecycle environmental footprint of their products in various aspects. This sense of sustainable urgency has also been felt in the cosmetic industry, which contributes significantly to the global plastic manufactured and used worldwide. Design for Recycling and Design for Reuse are two different approaches which can be employed separately or concurrently. When designed for reuse, products are typically more robust in order to increase their probability to be used more than once. If reuse is not possible, it is essential that dematerialisation and recycling are applied. This study assessed the environmental impacts resulting from reusable, recyclable, and dematerialised plastic cosmetic packages, and attempted to answer the primary question: Is it more sustainable to design an extremely durable product that can be reused several times, or to apply dematerialisation but consequently create a less robust product which allows for less reusability potential? Life cycle assessments of different versions were conducted, to identify what features are responsible for such impacts. Findings showed that the positive effect of reusability out ways by far the effects of dematerialisation by 171%, and that removing resourceful materials which render the package to be reusable, resulted in a 74% reduction in environmental impacts only when the packaging materials are fully recycled. This study concludes that in such cases, reuse should be given prominence, as recycling would only depend on the user and the infrastructure in place.