Sustainable solutions for hair styling

 Creating hair styling products that meet performance and cost requirements is a challenge, and trying to make them more natural has seemed impossible. All of that can change with Biostyle CGP polymer, a new hair fixative designed to create superior styling products with improved sustainability as compared to traditional gels and styling aids. Biostyle CGP polymer (INCI: Maltodextrin/VP Copolymer) is a newly developed hair fixative polymer designed especially for use in a variety of styling products, including clear hair gels, spray gels, creams, lotions and mousses. It provides exceptional clarity and consumer-preferred rheology – features that are normally associated with synthetic fixative polymers. Yet Biostyle CGP polymer contains more than 50% natural content, resulting in improved sustainability and renewability compared with synthetic fixative polymers. A proprietary, patented hybrid polymer formed by the reaction of nVP and maltodextrin, maltodextrin/VP copolymer represents a new way for formulators to create more natural and sustainable styling products while maintaining cost-inuse targets and without any sacrifice of performance properties. The new styling polymer provides the benefits that meet today’s formulating needs – offering the well-known styling performance similar to PVP K-30 and PVP/VA at equivalent costing – and is the first naturally derived styling polymer that allows the formulator to make styling aids more sustainable and renewable without any compromise on cost, gel clarity, product aesthetics or on-hair performance.

 Application areas

Maltodextrin/VP copolymer is a nonionic hair fixative polymer having greater than 50% natural content. It is a unique, patented graft polymer produced via the reaction of maltodextrin and vinyl pyrrolidone (Fig. 1). Maltodextrin/VP copolymer delivers performance equivalent to PVP K-30 and PVP/VA in hair gel formulations. Other features include: excellent compatibility with carbomer, which helps produce clear gels with consumer- preferred rheology, low turbidity resulting in exceptional gel clarity, performance at low use levels (hair gels: 4%-24%; mousse: 8%-24%; creams and lotions (4%-24%) making it cost-effective. It is a low viscosity liquid making it easy to use. Its performance is equivalent to that of PVP K-30 or PVP/VA, enabling excellent formulating latitude and broad range of use making it easy to incorporate into existing product formulations. Its compatibility with commonly used formulation ingredients results in robust and reliable performance and ease of formulation. It has an alcohol tolerance up to 15%, enabling broad range of use. It is nonionic, enabling excellent compatibility with commonly used gel ingredients, and no neutralisation is required, which helps streamline formulations and reduce cost.