Bulldog makes the 'Good Scrub Guide' with commitment to microbead alternatives

12-Aug-2014 - Last updated on 13-Aug-2014 at 15:23 GMT

Following bans across the US on the tiny plastic particles in personal care goods, European brands like Bulldog Skincare for Men are promoting microbead alternatives in formulations, which suggests companies are keen to pre-empt any comparable ban on the continent.

Bulldog has become the latest to be listed on Fauna & Flora International’s (FFI) renowned Good Scrub Guide.

The skin care brand’s Original Face Scrub which contains Pumice and Coconut shell instead of the tiny plastic particles has been added to FFI’s database of approved products.

The Good Scrub Guide was launched in September 2013 to help consumers find microbead free products and features the most common facial exfoliators available on the UK market.

According to Bulldog founder Simon Duffy; “We have a strong set of ethics at Bulldog and we decided to eliminate microbeads when we started making the first key formulation decisions ahead of our original 2007 launch. We hope that this listing will motivate other brands to also remove these plastic beads from their exfoliators.”

Synthetic plastic microbeads are found in soaps and cosmetics, particularly in exfoliators, but environmental experts have raised concerns of plastic pollution in waterways, and there have been many moves of late to work them out of cosmetics, particularly in the US.

Other brands following suit...

Tesco, Procter & Gamble, Estée Lauder, Clarins, Superdrug and Sainsbury's have also declared they are committed to removing microbeads from their formulations, but have yet to volunteer a timescale for this.

Unilever and Boots have joined King of Shaves in pledging to end production by the end of next year, while L'Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, and Reckitt Benckiser are committing to eliminate the beads from products by 2017.

The Bulldog boss believes this is an important subject in the beauty industry that manufacturers should all support.

“We would love to see plastic microbeads banned and we hope that the renewed wave of media interest about the negative environmental impact will help motivate the big global brands that still widely use these beads to commit to more urgent deadlines for removing them from their formulations,” he told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com earlier this year.