2023-11-23 21:00:36
Far too much cosmetics are produced and therefore destroyed unused.
The destruction of unsold products is on the map. After scandals at clothing brand Burberry and internet giant Amazon, in which millions of euros worth of unsold items ended up in landfill, EU member states are now negotiating stricter rules.
But one sector remains out of the picture for the time being: the cosmetics industry. Entrepreneur Sinem Tuncer wondered what happens to perfumes, shampoos and followingshaves that are not sold. During a dinner with friends who work in that industry, she decided to ask.
“They quickly said without batting an eyelid: we will destroy that,” says Tuncer. “And they said: I can’t tell everything. I will be fined ten thousand euros a day if I go public with this information.”
The cosmetics world is very closed
It is difficult to determine the scale of this destruction in the closed cosmetics world. Tuncer decided to start a company to combat waste in the cosmetics industry. “Denial is the biggest problem right now,” she says.
Estimates vary that 10 percent to as much as 40 percent of the annual production of followingshave, day cream and perfume ends up in landfill. Former employees of cosmetics companies that Tuncer approached told her that it would be more like 80 percent.
Billions of products burned
The waste of these care products is great. 120 billion cosmetic packaging are made every year, the British recycling company TerraCycle estimated in 2019. Even if it is ‘only’ 10 percent, it still concerns billions of products that end up unused in the incinerator every year.
In the latest episode of the Climate Issue Tuncer talks regarding a complex system of waste and overproduction, the problem of exclusive brands, and especially regarding how every player in this world seems to maintain this system.
You hear it the Climate Issue via trouw.nl/podcasts of via is a podcast app.
You can also listen via Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast players
The climate crisis, the energy crisis, the nitrogen crisis: it can make you depressed, but we don’t. Every week we tackle one question, as part of the big picture: a planet that will last another few millennia, with people on it: how do we get there? In the Climate Issue Nienke Zoetbrood and Hannah van der Wurff will take you along.
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