Chelates can complete eco-friendly formulations

Chelants perform a multitude of vital tasks in personal care formulations; helping products to remain stable, preventing unwanted side-effects and increasing the effectiveness of biocides, even reducing the quantities required. And crucially they play an important role in making wash-off products – which will eventually leave deposits in our eco-system, causing potential long-term damage – that much safer. It is an opportunity to give consumers better products and the environment a better chance. So it is all good then? Well there is a twist. The question is why are so many formulators reluctant to switch from old-technology chelates such as EDTA [ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid] and other such materials with their frankly inadequate environmental performance, when an effective alternative with proven environmental credentials currently exists and is now widely available. The answer is not technical or performance related; there is an ocean of evidence to support that. Virtually all key technical data would demonstrate that the biodegradable alternative EDDS [ethylenediaminedisuccinic acid/INCI Name: Trisodium Ethylenediamine Disuccinate] is a technically better solution – more on that later. No, the most probable reason is cost. But that is arguably the most defenceless motive of all. In reality the cost difference on a typical 500 mL personal care product is less than 0.1%, hardly something that will cause the typical consumer to protest or reach for the next brand. A product that can claim to have a full suite of biodegradable benefits, with strong additional claims on better performance, will present a powerful proposition to consumers that such an offer is more substantial and attractive. The reluctance could lie not with formulators but with ingredient buyers, who may identify the bulk cost difference between say EDDS and EDTA as being sufficient to reject the switch. Formulators and marketers should try harder. The value case can be substantiated and minute cost difference readily absorbed by both market share retention or price premium if environmental and active product differentiation is realised. Too many personal care products currently make claims about environmental compatibility when not all of their ingredients would separately pass the acceptability standards. It causes doubts when certain components contain chemistry that has the capacity to cause damage. In small quantities it might be considered that these ingredients are too insignificant, but when their accumulation is calculated the outcome could be far-reaching.

EDDS background

EDDS is a biodegradable chelating agent that offers an alternative to EDTA, of which 80 million kilograms are produced annually. EDTA has been shown to be non-biodegradable in municipal wastewater treatment plants and so passes through into river waters. There are concerns that at high concentrations EDTA can remobilise heavy metals from river sediments back into the environment. As an environmentally friendly alternative, EDDS can be used as a substitute for EDTA in a wide range of applications. These include; hair colorants, shampoos and conditioners, bath and shower washes and creams and lotions. When you tot up the volume that these products account for in terms of their eventual contact with natural water systems their chemical composition becomes a legitimate area of scrutiny. But in the hard-nosed world of competitive personal care product marketing, benefits have to stack up against the cost of improved ingredients. And there is the rub. Where fractional cost increase for improved ingredients move across the financial radar, the effect can mean rejection, even though the impact on unit cost and margin is relatively untouched. Maybe formulators and marketers should toughen-up and manage this equation of cost versus better performance and environmental advantage more robustly.