Global Cosmetics and Personal Care companies’ Microbead commitment ranking

[Howard Dryden]

Global Cosmetics and Personal Care companies’ Microbead commitment ranking

Microbeads are a type of microplastic that can be found in our personal care products such as toothpastes, face washes, scrubs and shower gels. They are tiny plastic particles that are added for their exfoliating properties, but sometimes purely for esthetic purposes only.
Greenpeace East Asia decided to survey the personal care sector as a whole, to get a systematic and comprehensive global picture of their progress to date stopping the use of microbeads in their products. The world’s 30 largest personal care companies1 were surveyed and scored on their microbead commitment, on the basis of four main criteria, to enable customers to understand better which brands are protecting the oceans, and which are not.

The four main criteria we used were;

1. Commitment & information transparency: Does the company have commitment on microbeads? Is it publicly available and easy to access?

2. Definition: How does the company define microbeads for their commitment?

3. Deadline: When will the company meet their commitment?

4. Application scope: Does the commitment cover all products in all markets?

We scored each company based on their their responses to a Greenpeace survey, as well as any

publicly available information. Each criteria was weighted equally and scored out of 100, to give a final

maximum score out of 400.