The gentle revolution: Reinventing the beauty experience with mild surfactants
Delivering on Clariant's purpose »Greater chemistry - between people and planet.«
This story is an example of how Clariant delivers on its purpose-led strategy.
There’s a gentle revolution going on, one that you’re probably part of. If you’re like many consumers, you’ve had shampoos or body washes that left you feeling frizzy and dried out, and perhaps even checked their labels.
Formulators, the experts behind these products, are working hard to make things better. But in a world turning away from the ingredients they know; this can be a challenge. That’s why Clariant has compiled »gentle giants« – an exceptionally effective range of mild surfactants supporting the gentle revolution, along with an easy tool for guidance.
A quick surfactant 101
We use them every day, often without realizing it. Surfactants are the tiny ingredients responsible for the cleaning and foaming action of anything from laundry liquids to facial cleansers. Their full name is »surface-active agents«, and they break up water tension, lift off dirt, and also play a major role in creating bubbles.
All surfactants have one end that loves water and one that doesn’t. But that is pretty much where similarities end. Surfactants come in various charges, lengths, and structures, and while many are still petroleum-based, they can also be made from natural materials. The properties of surfactants define their effects, including how they feel on our »surface«.
Goodbye sulfates, hello gentle
Two of the most common surfactants in personal care products are sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and cocamidopropyl betaine (CAPB). For a time, they were considered a surfactant dream team, providing cleansing, conditioning, and plenty of nice foam. However, especially the cleansing part has lost some of its former shine. Sulfates have become known for potentially being harsh on skin and hair, causing dryness, itchiness, or even irritation.
What consumers are increasingly seeking instead are products that leave them feeling fresh and clean while also taking good care of their skin and hair needs. All this is part of a larger trend towards more sustainable, self-aware, and self-caring lifestyles. And it brings considerable new challenges to formulators.
Juggling foam, feel, and viscosity
Formulating personal care products is a bit like cooking – you can’t just swap ingredients around and still expect a tasty meal. While there are milder surfactants out there, they often play havoc with the rest of the recipe. The results? Gels that pour out like watered-down soup, conditioners stuck in the bottle, and foam that either doesn’t form at all or feels like thin whipped cream.
With challenges like these, it’s hard enough for formulators to keep up the status quo, let alone captivate consumers with exciting new textures and more natural compositions. This is where Clariant’s gentle giants come in. They provide a versatile range of mostly highly natural surfactants that blend great mildness with outstanding performance.
Gentle giants with great powers
Some of these gentle giants are indeed quite large, at least on a molecular scale. Take GlucoTain Sense, for example. Made from sunflower oil and sugar, this glucamide has a nice long alkyl tail creating terrifically rich foam that’s ultra mild to the skin and leaves it feeling extra conditioned. At the same time, it still washes off easily, is almost completely biobased, and, a critical point, easy to incorporate into formulations.
Apart from glucamides, the gentle giants include isethionates, glycinates, taurates, glutamates, and several other chemistries. So far, the offering comprises two dozen different products, all specifically designed to elevate formulations from cleansing to caring. Along with effective foaming and cleansing, they introduce a whole new dimension of mildness, naturalness, and luxury to the personal care experience – truly a gentle revolution.
Choosing giants made easy
Clariant’s gentle revolution is already underway, redefining what we feel in our care routines, baths, and showers. To make it as easy as possible for personal care makers to join, we’ve created a selection tool for guidance. With filters for properties like level of mildness and foam structure, as well as detailed product info, it offers a convenient way to find the perfect surfactant for each application.
While all this may seem like much ado about a bit of foam, some aspects actually go more than skin-deep. Take rinsability, for example, i.e. how easily the lather created by surfactants can be washed off skin and hair. Surfactants that rinse quickly and don’t cling save us time and effort, that much is obvious. But they can also save much more.
Saving water and CO2 with surfactants
Getting all the shampoo out of our hair can take patience, particularly if we have a lot of it. Even ridding our body of clingy washes can significantly extend our shower time. This means we use more water and, in most cases, more heat and CO2. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, cutting US shower times by just one minute would save over 60 billion liters of water per year, plus all the energy needed to make it available and warm.
Lab tests using repeated rinsing showed that the lather produced by our surfactant GlucoTain Sense washes off six times faster than foam from SLES. By reducing average shower time, this can save considerable amounts of water and energy.
This, in addition to biobased sourcing, is the green side of the gentle revolution. Gentle giants are not only bringing more care to our cleansing routines. As most of them are easier to rinse than traditional surfactants like SLES, they can also help reduce shower times. With more and more people joining the gentle revolution, and using our gentle giants, the savings made can be … gigantic.
