Nanocosmetics: future perspective

Abstract The continuous degradation and depletion of the planet’ natural raw materials with the increasing production and consume of nonbiodegradable plastics, used as packaging material for cosmetics also, are stimulating the growth of the so-called green movement of consumers who are finding more economic and sustainable products respective of environment and biodiversity. Consequently, worldwide customers, from Asia Pacific to South and Nord America, from East Asia to Europe, prefer to buy natural cosmetics made by life-friendly chemistry and processes, considering these products more healthy and safe because skin-friendly and eco-friendly. Thus the industrial necessity to recover new natural ingredients and carriers which, mimicking the natural processes, are able to load, transport, and release them at the level of different skin layers at the dose and time deigned and with a low consume of energy. Nature, in fact, does not waste energy eliminating materials that do not function adequately and economically. Among the raw materials polysaccharides such as starch, cellulose, lignin; pullulan and chito-oligosaccharides such as chitin and chitosan; as well as polyesters such as polylactic acid and polyhydroxyalkanoates seem to be preferred because obtainable from industrial and agroforestry byproducts at low cost. For these reasons, ingredients and carriers, obtained from waste materials and characterized for higher effectiveness and safeness, and based on biotechnological productive methods, are increasingly used. These new compounds and polymeric composites, recovered by innovative technologies, may be used to produce innovative nanocosmetics under the form of micro/nanoemulsions of cosmeceutical-tissues. On the one hand, the nanoemulsions require new and more intensive study necessary to obtain more stable emulsions produced by less consume of energy and at a lower cost. On the other hand, the smart tissues may be considered an innovative and new segment of the future nanocosmetics, particularly interesting because processed at low cost and made without the use of emulsifiers, preservatives, fragrance, colors, and other chemicals, often cause of allergic and sensitization phenomena. Moreover, these cosmeceutical-tissues seem able to restore the skin environment, increasing penetration and release of the right and selected active ingredients bound to their fibers, thus giving new life to aged and diseased skin.