Personal care pulls away from synthetic polymers

The personal care industry has for years sought ingredients that can claim a natural origin, and part of that effort is finding alternatives to synthetic polymers. At In-Cosmetics Global 2025, a trade show for cosmetics and personal care ingredients held in Amsterdam this week, several chemical makers launched or featured biobased alternatives to personal care polymers.

Personal care formulators use polymers primarily as film formers, as fixatives in hair care products, and as rheology modifiers—ingredients that thicken formulas or otherwise alter the way they flow. The conventional choices, such as polyacrylic acid and silicone, are not biodegradable.

At In-Cosmetics, the chemical maker Lubrizol launched a rheology modifier based on modified cellulose that it’s calling Carbopol BioSense. The name is significant because, for decades, the Carbopol brand has been associated with high-performance polyacrylic acid ingredients. It is Lubrizol’s flagship personal care product line.

The BioSense version is a collaboration with the Brazilian pulp and paper company Suzano. Carolina Ferrarezi, global strategic marketing manager for Lubrizol, said her company is producing the ingredient on-site at Suzano’s eucalyptus mills. Because of the abundant feedstock and close supply relationship, she said, Lubrizol will be able to scale up output quickly as consumer product makers adopt the new additive.

The BioSense ingredient launched at the show will compete most directly with certain silicones, Ferrarezi said. “It’s not a 1:1 replacement for Carbopol,” which is a range of products with varying thickness and lubricity. But she expects the biobased version to flourish just as the polyacrylic acid line has since the 1950s, when it was invented at BF Goodrich.

At a networking breakfast at the conference, formulators said the biobased-polymer alternatives available so far have struggled with stability. Formulators can make a good lotion or shampoo using only natural ingredients, but the emulsions and suspensions can separate within months. Major brands want 3 or more years of shelf stability.

That limitation may be changing, because multinational chemical makers wouldn’t risk their reputations on an ingredient that doesn’t hold up, said Barbara Olioso, CEO of the Green Chemist Consultancy. And the market for such replacements is growing because of concerns about plastic pollution in the environment.

BASF, another major provider of personal care polymers, used In-Cosmetics to launch Verdessense Maize, a film-forming biopolymer derived from corn that the firm says can replace vinylpyrrolidone and vinyl acetate polymers in hair mousse, clear spray hair fixatives, and lightweight hair creams.

The Germany company also featured a blend of biobased ingredients that can take the place of polyacrylic acid in lotions and other thick, opaque formulations. BASF is approaching the problem by using specialized software to help clients select blends, often of two–five ingredients, that will do the job. An example formulation presented by Bianca Seelig, a chemist leading sustainable formulation design for BASF’s personal care group, used the plant polysaccharide glucomannan, the algae biopolymer alginate, and tara gum.

Other chemical makers said they are seeing heightened interest in alternatives already in their catalogs. Clariant shared new data to support its claim of complete composability for its partially biobased polyacrylic acid replacement, Aristoflex Eco T. And a Sasol representative said the firm is getting a lot of inquiries about its biobased n-dodecane, which it sells as a substitute for the cyclic silicone D5.

Ferrarezi acknowledged that Lubrizol is concerned about cannibalizing sales of its traditional Carbopol products. But at the same time, natural is where the market is headed. “We are the leader in rheology,” she said. “We want to keep being the leader.”