The first Aussie beauty company to partner with RedCycle

Sukin takes on soft plastic waste by design, partnership and education

We are pleased to announce that Sukin is the first beauty company in Australia to partner with REDCycle, a recovery initiative for post-consumer soft plastic.

The partnership was established as part of one of our newest innovation - Our 100% Biodegradable Sheet Masks.

The Sheet mask itself is made from 100% biodegradable COSMOS Natural, OEKO-TEX approved organic cotton mask and the serums are made with natural origin ingredients. The challenge from a sustainability perspective was on the sachet selection.

Why is Sukin’s Sachet unique?

The non-aluminum sachet uses a combination of plastics that provides the barrier that the product needs without using an aluminum layer. The bonding between the plastics is a new more ecological-friendly technology, which uses a solvent-free adhesive and a curing reaction.

Using this technology, we also contribute to:

(1) Non solvent emission:

No solvent volatilization and zero emissions in the whole compound process.

(2) Non solvent residue:

No residual solvent from the packaging process ends up in the sheet mask.

(3) Low energy consumption:

Solvent-free composite machine production temperature is low so the lack of a drying process reduces energy consumption.

The traditional approach in the market for such packaging is to use a lamination of aluminium as primary packaging. These sachets are, most of the time, a co-extrusion of aluminium and a combination of plastics to provide barrier properties to the product. However, the bonding between the aluminium and plastics makes the final packaging almost impossible to recycle as the layers cannot be separated during the recycling process.

The Sukin Packaging Innovation team worked closely with the REDCycle Program to understand the recycling process and to determine the suitability of the sachet to be recovered, with the Australian Institute of Packaging (AIP) to validate the recyclability of the materials and with the Australian Packaging Covenant (APCO) to ensure that the disposal process could be easily explained to the consumers using the new Australasian Recycling Label (ARL).

REDCycle has nearly 2,000 drop-off bins located around Australian supermarkets, making it easy for nearly 90% of the Australian population to keep soft plastic packaging out of landfill and our oceans. These plastics are transformed into great products for parks, gardens, traffic control, municipal road infrastructure, among many others. 

The Sukin Biodegradable Sheet Masks will also feature the ARL- Australasian Recycling Label- that takes the confusion out of recycling with easy to understand instructions on how to correctly dispose of every part of a product’s packaging.

Authors: Natalie Thomas- Head of Innovation; Anhely Millan- Innovation & Packaging Manager; Suzy Taguiam- Packaging Development Engineer