A partnership of LanzaTech, Total, and L’Oréal has announced the production of the world’s first sustainable cosmetic packaging made from captured industrial carbon emissions. Under the partnership, LanzaTech uses a unique biological process to convert the captured carbon into ethanol. Total uses an innovative dehydration technology, which it developed with IFP Axens, to process the ethanol to produce ethylene and polymerize it to make polyethylene. L’Oréal then uses this polyethylene to make packaging that has similar quality and properties with packaging made from fossil-based polyethylene.
The partnership demonstrates a successful technological and industrial solution to use captured carbon emissions to produce value-added plastic packaging. The collaboration also highlights commitments from the three partners in developing a sustainable circular economy for plastics while cementing a way for new opportunities to capture and reuse industrial carbon emissions. The three companies now intend to continue the cooperation on scaling up the production of these sustainable plastics. They also look forward to teaming up with other companies committing to using the new sustainable plastics.
