Creating microplastic-free beauty products

This biodegradable material helps to clean up cosmetics

Spotted: Synthetic textiles may be the main culprit of ocean microplastic pollution, but these tiny particles are also commonly featured in beauty products. Many solutions incorporate microplastics as cheap fillers or for their effective exfoliating properties, but once washed off or thrown out, these particles enter landfills and water courses in huge volumes.

To combat this, bioplastics company Teysha Technologies has created a renewable, fully biodegradable plastic substitute designed specifically to be used in cosmetics and similar products. Its new material, AggiePol, is derived entirely from natural feedstocks, including farming or food waste, and readily biodegrades into natural sugars.

But the company’s technology is more than just a single material – its natural product polycarbonate platform also serves as a “plug-and-play” system, which can use various modified natural product monomers, as well as extra solvents and additives, to alter the properties of a final polymer network. This allows Teysha Technologies to create a variety of biodegradable products, from cosmetic additives to packaging, which can be used with existing plant machinery and have low capital costs.

Although the UK banned the use of plastic microbeads in cosmetic products in 2018, microplastics from other sources including thickeners, film-forming agents, and stabilisers continue to be prevalent. Instead, AggiePol can be used as a biodegradable polymer replacement for use in these products.

Teysha Technologies has recently raised £1.2 million in investment, supported by Angel Investment Network (AIN). The funding will be used to conduct specific prototyping for different applications and secure contracts. Teysha, which launched in 2017, owns two patents for its technology.

Written By: Lisa Magloff