COSMETICS BUSINESS LIVE
only about safety. There is this big discussion about whether or not your chemicals are essential. And, as we know, the cosmetics industry hasn’t been viewed as essential in the past. Fotheringham: I don’t see the UK going down that route, so we will almost certainly end up with a safety assessment for the UK that matches the CPSR [Cosmetic Product Safety Report] format we have now and a new format for the EU, which will be completely different.
Regarding REACH, which issues are impacting beauty? Santoni: The issue we have been facing since Brexit is that, under the UK REACH version, we may end up re-registering substances. The main issue – and this is why there have been a lot of extensions – is that REACH is not just a science legislation, there is a lot of money involved. The biggest issue is not getting the data, it is how much you’re going to pay for the data and whether you will be able to use the same dossier submitted in Europe in the UK, because it has a lot of intellectual property to it that needs to be bought. So this could mean that it will be more expensive for the UK cosmetics industry.
Sarah-Jane Dobson: There was an ideal situation where the mechanism of the cosmetics sector was very obvious. But now, across product safety regulations generally, we are seeing this convergence and divergence at the same time, which is making it incredibly complex for the cosmetics sector to figure out how you’re going to comply across the EU and the UK.
So I know this is officially an ‘ingredients’ panel, but where do plastics reduction laws stand at the moment? Dobson: The concept of environmental impact has been embedded in cosmetics legislation and chemicals legislation for some time and what we’re seeing across sectors in product safety and product regulations generally is this leaning into ESG-type obligations. There are areas in which we’re seeing a proliferation of very specific legislation that isn’t necessarily cosmetics legislation, but really does apply to the cosmetics industry, such as plastics tax. The UK is a very unique jurisdiction, currently, in that it has this tax in place, which came into fruition and applied from April this year. And what this is doing is applying
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a tax on companies that use plastics if you do not have a certain recycled content for your product. So the threshold here is 30%. It is something that will proliferate throughout the rest of Europe. So, that’s the first aspect, which is disincentivising the use of certain types of products, plastics in this instance. Also the single-use plastics rules did have some impact for the cosmetics industry: again, another piece of legislation that is disincentivising the use of certain types of products or ingredients. But we obviously already have quite a lot of these products in circulation, so there’s another mechanism that’s in play, which is looking at the the circular economy, or looking at how we get rid of these products that are already in the supply chain. Here we see the Waste Framework Directive, which is an EU- based piece of legislation that already was implemented pre-Brexit (so it also exists in the UK), which is leading even more into this concept of making sure that waste is disposed of in an appropriate way.
On that note, let’s talk Brexit: are there any remaining pain points? Fotheringham: The biggest thing that everyone was gearing up for was the change in labelling requirements at the end of this year; everyone was moving towards adding the UK Responsible Person in addition to their EU Responsible Person. And the UK government just issued a three-year extension completely out of the blue. We’re now pushing the deadline all the way to the end of 2025, which is great if you haven’t already made the change. But, if you’ve been anywhere near responsible, you probably have made the change already. The worrying thing is it just shows how quickly the UK can implement enormous changes because
The panel pointed to the issue of simultaneous regulatory convergence and divergence creating confusion for cosmetics businesses in the UK especially
we’re not tied to requiring 27 member states to agree. The big pain point, however, is the portal: the UK SCPN. There’s been a recent substantive change to the way you notify products with exact formulations or with range formulations. Instead of allowing us to do the easy thing of uploading a formula in a PDF format, you now have to upload it ingredient by ingredient, and it is very painstaking. Plus this change was implemented with no industry discussion. Santoni: Whereas, beforehand, the UK was not that big on inspection of Product Information Files, from this July, we have had a lot of customers being stopped at the border asking to see the Product Information File. We are now seeing enforcement, which is good because they want to make sure that products are safe. Dobson: In the UK, we don’t appreciate the many layers we have potentially applicable to cosmetic products. So, across the EU, there really isn’t an EU-wide product safety regulator, and often the general regulator in each member state will act as the cosmetics regulator. Here in the UK, we have Trading Standards, who are the day-to- day enforcers, but we also have this ‘super body’ the OPSS that adds a layer of regulation. On top of that, we have the Competition and Markets Authority, who are getting more and more involved in topics like greenwashing or green claims, as well as the advertising authorities. So we really don’t appreciate, if we’re sitting here as the UK, that we do have a lot more layers of regulation and the fact that we are no longer part of the EU means that these regulators do, and will, enforce the powers that they have under their UK specific legislation. Therefore products that are on the market will be more scrutinised
December 2022 51
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