Development of an LCA-based tool to assess the environmental sustainability level of cosmetics products

Abstract

Purpose: The depletion of natural resources and the downgrading of the environment, driven by globalization and consumerism phenomena, are worldwide pushing the interest in sustainable manufacturing paradigm and environment preservation. It is moreover clear to academia and practitioners that the cosmetics industry needs to update its current operations to face new sustainable requirements and norms due to its ever-growing size and massive consumption of natural resources. Different methodologies, metrics, and indicators have been and are being proposed for solving the complex issues of environmental sustainability evaluation of cosmetics processes and products. Methods: Among these approaches and methods, product-related assessment tools (e.g., life cycle assessment) are usually more focused on the environmental dimension of sustainability, and they are always based on the life cycle of the product. The core of this paper is on the development of a novel tool to classify cosmetics products based on the results of LCA: the eco-friendliness assessment tool (EFAT). The methodology of the work is structured into 5 main phases: definition of the scientific background of the work, definition of the tool requirements, tool development, testing of the tool, analysis of the results. The eco-friendliness assessment tool proposed is structured into two main parts: (i) process flow 1: environmental impact score and (ii) process flow 2: supplier environmental sustainability assessment. Results: The tool has been tested on a cosmetics product manufactured in a cosmetics company located in Italy. The acquisition of raw material process and primary packaging process are the two most critical processes resulting from the impact analysis of LCA methodology. The application of the EFAT tool shows the two possible most sustainable improved scenarios are as follows: (i) exploiting transportation of the primary packaging by sea and (ii) adopting the European location of the primary packaging supplier. The results coming from the tool application allowed the definition of the company product eco-friendliness. The eco-friendliness is symbolized by an alphabetical letter and a color. Conclusions: The paper proposes a practical tool to assess the environmental sustainability level of cosmetics products, with the intention to overcome two of the main literature gaps found in the state of the art: (i) absence of LCA methodology implementation in the cosmetics industry on makeup products, (ii) absence of tools that rely on the results of the LCA analysis of a cosmetic product for understanding its sustainability level of sustainability.