Plastic: the hidden beauty ingredient

Plastic: The Hidden Beauty Ingredient is a report of the first-ever large-scale study of the presence of microplastics in over seven thousand different cosmetic and personal care products. The data has been collected by Beat the Microbead app users that have scanned products with the app over the past years. We also looked into the transparency and commitments of several brands.

In the report, we present the results and discuss the upcoming EU restriction on intentionally added microplastics. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the proposed definition of microplastics and their shortcomings. In particular, we demonstrate that if this definition is adopted as proposed by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), it will have regrettable consequences.

With this report, we aim to invite the European Commission and the EU member states to close the loopholes and take the opportunity to deal with all intentionally added microplastics once and for all. We want to urge the cosmetics industry to look beyond the proposed definition by ECHA, to ensure the environmental and human health safety of the products they bring on the market. We want to encourage consumers to demand transparency from brands and accountability for the ingredients these brands put into our personal care and cosmetic products.

Get full access to the report and executive summary* below:

*Redacted May 25th 2022: Change in some information on pages 7, 34 & 35. A detailed explanation is available on page 58 of the report.

Full Report Here Executive Summary