Dave Frattarelli • IFF 

“Clean beauty” is a significant topic in the beauty and personal care (BPC) industry. The surge in interest coincided with a remarkable shift in consumer behavior marked by a newfound appreciation for the scientific and clinical aspects of beauty and personal care products that was predominately driven by the pandemic. Despite its widespread recognition, the term clean beauty lacks a unanimous agreement on its definition.

In a 2023 survey based on US respondents, 53% of consumers equate clean beauty with non-toxic ingredients; while 50% defined clean beauty as natural or organic.¹ This dual interpretation, while focusing on a product’s ingredient panel, highlights the diversity of consumer perceptions regarding what constitutes “clean,” and may reflect a desire for transparency and simplicity in product formulations. Further market research also illuminated a significant knowledge gap, with 29% of BPC consumers admitting to not knowing what “clean” or “natural” actually means.² This may be partially due to an absence of a unified standard defining clean beauty formulations, and are often dependent on brands’ specific interpretation.

At the same time, for some consumers, clean beauty has come to be seen as an empty term that they challenge, especially where “greenwashing” such as “free-from claims” undermine consumers’ confidence and trust in the industry.

This ambiguity surrounding the definition of clean beauty poses a challenge, as it can be used to encompass a spectrum of attributes, including natural, wholesome or non-toxic ingredients. Moreover, the term can extend beyond ingredient characteristics, touching upon sourcing practices, safety and sustainability concerns. Clean beauty emerged as a quest for proven safety and efficacy, but also reflects consumers’ expectations on sustainability. 

Biotechnology Is the Future

Biotechnology can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of clean beauty. By leveraging scientific innovation, biotechnology can set a new standard of reference for clean beauty while addressing aspects such as ingredient purity and consistency, customization, safety and sustainability. 

In the beauty and personal care industry, “biotechnology products” refer to those manufactured with bioprocesses.³  One example is the fermentation process, which yields lactic acid that can help, for instance, to balance the skin microbiome.

At its core, biotechnology draws inspiration from nature. Sugars, for instance, serve as the building blocks of many natural polymers. Plants synthesize diverse polysaccharides from these sugars, but most of these biopolymers did not evolve specifically for BPC applications. 

One novel approach involves exploring these ingenious materials to develop improved biopolymers that can be designed and customized to meet desired performance needs and product specifications for specific applications. This can include varying the linkage, size and branching of the molecules to optimize performance and sustainability, including biodegradability. 

For this approach to truly have an impact, biotechnology must go beyond merely matching existing benchmarks, but strive to outperform today’s fossil-based polymers. Achieving this requires scalable processes that can influence and eventually replace large volumes of existing benchmarks.

Designed Enzymatic Biopolymers

Combining the scientific rigor with nature-inspired innovation, IFF has developed a biocatalysis process to enable the development of tailored polysaccharides. This innovation—Designed Enzymatic Biopolymers (DEB)—gives rise to a new-to-the-world class of alpha-glucan polysaccharides from the enzymatic polymerization of glucose. The alpha-glucan molecule has high purity, and because of the enzymatic polymerization processes, a multitude of tailored morphologies and functional modifications are accessible, including addition of polar/non-polar, ionic and other functionalities. 

The DEB manufacturing process operates at ambient temperature and pressure, allowing for the polymerization process to take place in mild conditions and eliminating the need for harsh solvents used in conventional processes. By doing so, DEB significantly reduces overall energy consumption, contributing to an improved environmental footprint. Additionally, the process creates a fructose co-product, which can be used for other applications to prevent sugar waste. 

DEBs deliver three important benefits:

1. Highly customizable. DEBs are a class of versatile polysaccharides which can be modified with a variety of functional groups including but not limited to hydrophobic, hydrophilic and charged groups. This means they can be specifically designed to be more formula compatible or to provide additional benefit, such as conditioning or rheology modification. 
2. Great structural uniformity. The precisely controlled enzymatic process ensures excellent structural uniformity for the DEBs. This offers high reproducibility and little batch-to-batch variation.
3. Designed for biodegradability. Being able to customize the structure allow DEBs to integrate performance parameters into the development phase and design a high-performing polymer that is still biodegradable. This is further supported by the excellent biodegradability profile of the alpha-glucan backbone. 

A Novel Biopolymer

With the capabilities of DEBs in mind, IFF set out to prove the potential for beauty and personal care. The first personal care ingredient enabled by the DEB technology is a skin and hair conditioning biopolymer: Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride. Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride is biobased, readily biodegradable and has been shown to be non-hazardous to the aquatic environment. 

In hair care applications, Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride significantly improves both wet and dry combability when compared to the incumbent technology. In addition to these benefits in haircare, a trained panel sensory evaluation was conducted to investigate the sensorial benefits of using Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride in bodywashes, using Quantitative Descriptive Analysis. The study showed a significant reduction in skin roughness when using products formulated with Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, compared to the base formulation. The study also showed a significant reduction in rinsing time when testing a foaming wash formulation containing Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride. 

Conclusion

In response to the ambiguity of clean beauty, a definition of clean beauty must encapsulate the multifaceted aspects consumers prioritize. This definition should increasingly shift toward a holistic approach, encompassing not only the absence of non-toxic ingredients for proven efficacy and safe use, but a commitment to sustainability. Biotechnology, with its ability to harness nature, holds immense potential in propelling the standard of clean beauty. Innovations like IFF’s proprietary Designed Enzymatic Biopolymers (DEB) technology and its novel skin and hair conditioning biopolymer, Alpha-Glucan Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, are prime examples of this potential. As the North American BPC market continues to evolve, these advancements underscore a commitment to meeting the diverse expectations of clean beauty. They represent a promising future where safety, efficacy, and sustainability are not mutually exclusive, but are the defining pillars of the beauty and personal care industry.

References

1. Mintel, Clean & Conscious Beauty – US, 2023 Accessed online: https://clients.mintel.com/content/report/clean-conscious-beauty-us-2023
2. Mintel, Ingredient Trends in Beauty and Personal Care—US, 2022 Accessed online: https://data.mintel.com/databook/1100379/#Q5
3. Kline, Specialty Actives in Personal Care: Europe Market Analysis and Opportunities, 2017

Dave Frattarelli is a global technology leader in Health and Biosciences at IFF, spearheading biopolymer research and development. As a leading member of the Home & Personal Care cross-functional leadership team, Dave lends his technical acumen to drive and deliver innovation for business success. www.iff.com