The Carbon Footprint and the Water Consumption of Easy-Rinse Foaming Face Wash

Abstract

Objective. The environmental hot-spot of a product for cleaning the face and washing hair, such as face wash and shampoo is in the use stage. This is due to the fact that the amount of water or hot water required for rinsing off is significantly higher than the amount of the product contents. The contribution of these cleansing products in organizational GHG emissions is the largest among the personal care products business due to the carbon footprint of individual products and sales volume. For this reason, reduction of the environmental burden at the use stage of the cleaning products has been a big problem for personal care sector industry. Shiseido Company, Limited launched the easy-rinse foaming face wash which has the improvement on reducing the volume of rinsing water by the dispersibility of dirt into the water. In this study, we selected the easy-rinse foaming face wash as a research target, and evaluated the reduction effect on life cycle GHG emissions and water consumption compared to the paste type product or the conventional foaming product.
Result and Discussion. This study clarified that the target product reduces 1.40 kg-CO₂e and 1.96 kg-CO₂e of GHG emissions respectively, compared to the paste type one and the conventional foaming type one on the premise of a functional unit: “164 times of washing faces” with 40℃ hot water. The functional unit is defined based on the actual usage in the market. Also, on the water consumption, it can reduce 0.282 m³ and 0.404 m³ respectively throughout the product life cycle. However, in the case of under 21℃ or less of rinsing water, the GHG emissions of the target product becomes always higher than that of the paste type face wash. The use condition is affected by various factors such as consumer habits, social infrastructure, as well as the climate in the market area. When we aspire reducing the environmental burden of a product, it is important for product developer to reflect more effective option onto a product design based on detailed analysis taking the local and unique circumstances into consideration.