On any given day, most people around the world use one or more personal hygiene or beauty products for a range of purposes. These products are selected from a variety of company brands, and each promises better results than the others. In this study, the objective was to select one such product and explore its ecological, social, and economic impact. Pantene shampoo was selected for this study, and falls under the category of beauty products. According to D’Souza and Rathi, shampoos are used to clean the scalp of dirt, sweat, and other previously applied hair products. They are an important example of a beauty product because they help maintain an individual’s overall hair quality.
Pantene shampoo is part of the Proctor and Gamble Company’s line of products. Pantene, however, was originally founded in Switzerland in 1945 by Hoffman-LaRoche (Mahalli). Proctor and Gamble (P&G) acquired Pantene in 1985, and its products have since gained significant success as they are now sold in over 55 countries. In 1994, Pantene surpassed $1 billion in revenue, and it has been recognized as the world’s leading manufacturer of hair care products (Mahalli). There are three basic types of Pantene shampoo, which include clarifying, anti-breakage, and dry shampoos.
Raw Materials
There are a number of raw materials used in making Pantene shampoo. These ingredients affect people differently, which is why users should read the packaging to understand how they may be impacted by the products. Pantene shampoo contains panthenyl ethyl ether, cocamide MEA, xylenesulfonate, tetrasodium EDTA, sodium benzoate, trihydroxystearin, and ethylene glycol distearate (Pantene; Willet). Each of these listed ingredients has a unique function such as strengthening the hair, increasing the product’s shelf life, improving thickness, and maintaining the scent of the shampoo. The products also contain sodium nitrate and citric acid that help in maintaining the PH balance and the fragrance.
Manufacture and Packaging
Companies, in general, are becoming more conscious of how they manufacture and package their products because of the growing calls for environmental conservation. We can divide the manufacturing process into three main parts: Compounding, Quality Control, and Filling. The first step would be to develop the shampoo formula and test it to ensure that the product changes minimally over time. This type of testing is called Stability Testing, and it ensures that the color, thickness, and odor stays the same. It also points out any possible changes like microbial changes or anything related to performance. The idea is that the product in the lab should be the same as the product on shelves in any CVS, Walgreens, and other retail stores. During the manufacturing process, huge batches of shampoo are produced, and then filled into many individual bottles. As far as the three main steps are concerned, compounding is when workers known as “compounders” produce large batches of shampoo in a designated manufacturing area. All raw materials are delivered to the compounding area through forklift trucks, poured into the batch tank and thoroughly mixed (How products are made). Depending on the formula of the shampoo, these batches can be heated or cooled to help to mix the ingredients and accelerate the process. Everything is done by pressing buttons, and the batches can take from 1 hour to 4 hours, depending on the size. After all the ingredients are added to the batch, there is a quality control test (QC) to ensure that the product “meets” the ingredients labeled in the back of the shampoo. In these tests, they are able to see ph determination, viscosity checks, and appearance. If anything is out of the standard, they have ways to manipulate the solution and adjust it. After the batch is approved within the QC, it goes to a holding tank until the filling machines are available. Lastly, in the filling process, it starts with the manipulation of the bottles to ensure they are in the appropriate form and standing upright. After that, the filling carousel starts to fill these bottles with the batches of shampoo. The next step is the labeling machines, and they can either be adhesives or heat pressed. The last step of the manufacturing process is the boxing area, where these individual bottles are put into boxes – several at a time. These machines can do up to 200 bottles a minute, and they stay in pallets until trucks pick them up and take them to large distributors.
Going back to the discussion of environmental damage in packaging, P&G introduced the “beach bottle” packaging approach for shampoo (Mohan “P&G Unveils First Recyclable Shampoo Bottle”). These containers are recyclable, and they are made from collected beach plastic. The company works with TerraCycle, a company that collects and sorts plastic waste from beaches in France and the U.K. In addition, P&G came up with a way to improve water conservation. In 2016, it introduced Pantene shampoo packaging with a “ShowerGlass” embedded on the bottle (Mohan “Pantene Bottle Helps Save Water”). This five-minute shower glass acts as a timer and can help the consumer to conserve water. In addition, the shampoo packaging was designed to encourage the user to lather and rinse his or her hair out immediately. Nonetheless, the plastic bottle still pollutes the environment, especially if the customer discards it carelessly after its use. Consumers can also experience shampoo bottle clogging that significantly impacts its use.
Consumer Use
The ingredients in Pantene shampoo can have numerous negative effects on the health of consumers. The ingredients that provide its fragrance can cause irritation of the skin, eyes or lungs, as well as non-reproductive organ system toxicity and allergies. These issues depend on whether the user had any pre-existing allergies. The shampoo, however, can also cause an increase in existing allergies. Another problematic ingredient, known as Methylisothiazolinone (MIT), can have similarly damaging effects as the fragrance ingredients. MIT can also cause brain damage and lead to various manifestations of ecotoxicity. Some ingredients in the shampoo can also cause cancer and endocrine disruption. Methylchloroisothiazolinone (MCI), another chemical used in Pantene shampoos is toxic to the immune system, a skin irritant, an allergen, and can cause chemical burns. All of these ingredients make this shampoo extremely unsafe for daily use.
Pantene shampoo is also harmful for the environment when it is discharged down the drain after usage and is allowed to seep into the public water supply. It contains the chemical dioxane, which has been deemed a “likely carcinogen for humans” by the EPA. In high concentrations, dioxane is hazardous to marine life as well. Pantene shampoos also include dimethicone, a substance that makes your hair feel soft, but is not biodegradable and is harmful when discharged into the environment.
Phthalates, used to make shampoo fragrances, are also released into the watershed when shampoo is improperly disposed of. This chemical harms the reproductive systems of marine life and is responsible for the steady decrease of reptilian species around the globe. Pantene shampoos also contain a chemical called Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), which can be harmful to wild animals.
Decomposition
Pantene shampoo is typically packaged in plastic bottles which can be extremely harmful to the environment. 80 billion plastic bottles from shampoo and conditioner products are disposed of into the global ecosystem each year. Only 9% of all plastic is recycled. Much of it is dumped into the ocean and is eventually consumed by aquatic animals. It is estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. Plastic, when dumped into the sea, breaks down into tiny pieces and can mix with plankton, which is an important part of the ocean’s food chain. Plastic consumed by aquatic animals can be fatal as a result of starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning, and entanglement. Seabirds that feed on the ocean surface are especially prone to ingesting plastic, floating debris. Plastic on average takes 450 years to decompose. In addition, over time, these plastics can release toxic chemicals into the environment.
Proposal for sustainable change
Packaging is the element that leads to the most obvious environmental damage as a result of shampoo consumption. The plastic in the bottles used to hold the shampoo is extremely harmful for the environment as it takes so long to decompose. Hence, we believe that the packaging of shampoo needs to change. Pantene should consider reusable aluminum bottles for its products. Such bottles could be returned to local retailers after their usage and refilled. This would eliminate plastic waste and lead to the company having to produce significantly fewer containers as consumers would simply reuse their existing bottles. The bottles could also be cleaned and reused to hold other products and eliminate wastage even further. These bottles may be more expensive to produce initially, but they could be reused repeatedly and thus decrease long term costs. Also, the boxes used to transport large shipments of shampoo bottles could be made of recycled material such as cardboard.
Pantene should also explore the possibility of manufacturing so-called shampoo soap whereby the shampoo is made in the form of a solid bar rather than a liquid. This is a method that has been used by other eco-friendly shampoo companies to reduce the negative environmental impact of more traditional forms of shampoo. As such, one bar of shampoo soap could potentially eliminate the production of three shampoo bottles as solid forms of shampoo typically last longer. The soap could also be made with natural ingredients, avoiding such harmful chemicals as dioxane, dimethicone, and Methylchloroisothiazolinone. Solid soaps also do not contain environmentally harmful foaming agents such as SLS. Shifting to a soap form reduces the amount of water used, as 80% of liquid shampoo is made of water. The packaging could be made from recycled biodegradable materials as well.
Pantene should also donate a small percentage of their profits to charities which look after the health of the world’s oceans. This would bring the ecological theme full circle by helping to undo the previous damage its products had done to the environment. After reviewing some of the evidence used in this study, several recommendations were developed that can help the company to better preserve the environment and protect the consumer. First, environmental pollution through the wastage of plastic packaging is common. Therefore, P&G should focus on manufacturing and donating garbage disposal bins to be placed in cities around the world. These bins would help the consumer to more easily dispose of the plastics after their use. As a way of boosting customer loyalty and environmental cleanliness, Pantene should consider introducing a point-based system whereby customers earn points when they return shampoo’s packaging after its use. The points would then be redeemable for free or reduced-price products when they get to a specified number of points.
Works Cited
D’Souza, Paschal and Sanjay K. Rathi. “Shampoo and conditioners: What a dermatologist should know?” Indian Journal of Dermatology, vol.60, no.3, 2015: 248.
Mahalli, A. “Pantene Review 2019: The Most Powerful Brand in Hair Care Explained.” Maple Holistics. Web.
Mohan, A. M. “P&G Unveils First Recyclable Shampoo Bottle Made with ‘Beach Plastic’.” Greener Package | Knowledge Exchange for Sustainable Packaging. 2020, Web.
Mohan, A. M. “Pantene Bottle Helps Save Water.” Packaging World. 2017. Web.
Pantene. “Shampoo & Conditioner Ingredients.” Pantene | Hair Products For All Hair Types. 2020. Web.
Willet, B. “Pantene Shampoo Ingredients.” Our Everyday Life. 2017. Web.
“Shampoo.” How Products Are Made, Web.
“Manufacture of Shampoos.” Manufacture of Shampoos – US, Web.