There are hardly any legal requirements to reduce the environmental burden of cosmetics in the EU. In contrast to surfactants in detergents and cleaning agents it is not a laid down by law that those substances in cosmetics have to be easily degradable. The Cosmetics Regulation addresses only the safety of the products for humans, but here too is still room for improvement.
The Ecolabel closes these gaps by setting strict requirements, for example:
- the ingredients must be biodegradable and must not be toxic to the environment
- endocrine disrupting chemicals are prohibited
- only very small amounts of sensitizing chemicals are allowed
- perfume is prohibited at all in baby or children's products
In addition, the packaging weight must be low and the packaging materials used must be recyclable.
More information, documents, fact sheets, user manuals can be found on the website of the European Ecolabel.
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecolabel/