The Body Shop (London / UK; www.thebodyshop.com) has teamed up with sustainable materials company Newlight Technologies (Costa Mesa, California / USA; http://newlight.com) in an R&D partnership aimed at introducing the latter’s “AirCarbon” biomaterial in The Body Shop’s packaging range. AirCarbon is a high-performance, long-chain thermoplastic material created by the combination of air and carbon emissions and is a suitable replacement for oil-based plastics. Developed by Newlight over the course of a decade, AirCarbon is said to be more competitively priced than fossil-based plastic, while matching its performance.

The material was first commercialised in 2013, and is manufactured by Newlight at the world’s only commercial-scale greenhouse gas-to-AirCarbon manufacturing facility, located in California. The translucent polymer pellets are produced using methane collected from farms and natural gas refineries, which is brought into a reactor and treated with enzymes that absorb the oxygen and the carbon and rearrange the particles into a solid thermoplastic matter. Founded in 2003, Newlight says its production process “is carried out at a yield that is over nine times higher than previous technologies.”

According to local news reports, The Body Shop – which became part of L’Oréal (Île-de-France / France; www.loreal.com) in 2006 – is currently testing the material to ensure it does not deteriorate during the product’s shelf life. The cosmetics goods producer has reportedly requested that AirCarbon be non-biodegradable, as it prepares to launch a reuse scheme for its packaging. In switching to this type of packaging, the UK group hopes to reduce its use of fossil-based plastics by 70% by 2020.