Life cycle assessment of multiple dispensing systems used for cosmetic product packaging

Abstract

Worldwide, the packaging industry for consumer product goods, including personal care and beauty products, generates over $25 billion in sales. An extremely high environmental impact follows the large demand in the industry. Almost 70% of the plastic waste generated in the cosmetics market is not recyclable. Sustainability in the beauty industry is complex and multifaceted, requiring an evaluation of all factors. Packaging plays an important role in the cosmetics market, and considering the amount of waste it generates, it is essential to understand packaging dispensing systems from an environmental perspective. This study investigated the environmental impacts of three dispensing systems commonly used for cosmetic product packaging: the general dip‐tube pump, the airless pump and the bag‐in‐bottle format. A cradle‐to‐grave life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to quantitatively analyse the environmental burden of those three different dispensing systems, using a facial cream as a test case. The LCA analysed the environmental impacts generated by the packaging materials and incorporated the environmental impacts created by the facial cream residue left behind in each dispensing system. The system boundary of this LCA included the material production, intermediate processes, distribution, use and end‐of‐life phases of the packaged facial cream products. The LCA complied with the ISO standards, 14,040:2006 and 14,044:2006, and LCA software SimaPro v 9.0 was used to analyse the results. The life cycle inventories used in this LCA included US‐EI 2.2, USLCI and Ecoinvent 3. TRACI 2.1, including ten mid‐point life cycle impact categories, was chosen as the life cycle impact analysis method. Comparative and contribution analyses were conducted to interpret the LCA data. The comparative analysis demonstrated that the airless pump packaging system had less environmental burden than the other two packaging systems for all the life cycle impact categories. The bag‐in‐bottle alternative had the highest environmental impact for eight of the ten impact categories. The contribution analysis results revealed that the packaging material production phase most contributed to the environmental burden of all three packaging formats, followed by the lotion residue.