NSW has ordered MECCA and Sephora to pull their microbead scrubs, and professional brands are on the list too
At the end of September the NSW EPA ordered eight businesses, including MECCA and Sephora, to stop selling 12 exfoliating products that contain plastic microbeads, which have been illegal to supply in NSW since November 2022. It is the second round of orders in less than a year, and this time the products came from prestige retail shelves and from brands that professionals stock in their own treatment rooms.
If you make, import, distribute or sell a scrub, polish, cleanser or exfoliating gel in Australia, this is the moment to check your formulas rather than wait for a notice. The ingredients the EPA is calling out are not always the ones people picture when they hear the word microbead, and a few of them are sold to brands as the plant-based, biodegradable alternative.
The rule these businesses broke sits in the NSW Plastic Reduction and Circular Economy Act 2021, and from 1 November 2022 it has been an offence to supply rinse-off personal care products that contain plastic microbeads in NSW. That covers the obvious face and body scrubs, and the September orders show it reaches scalp scrubs, exfoliating bars and even industrial hand cleaners with grit.
The maximum penalty is $550,000, with a further $55,000 for every day the offence continues (Inside Waste).
What makes this tricky for national brands is that Australia still has no federal microbead law. The industry has run a voluntary phase-out called BeadRecede since 2016, and on top of that the states have each gone their own way. As of late 2025, NSW, the ACT, Western Australia and Queensland banned rinse-off microbeads, while Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania had no restriction at all (SBS News). That is how a product can sit legally on a shelf in Melbourne and attract a stop notice in Sydney, and why one marine researcher described these products as creeping across the border.
Whichever state you sell into, the risk lives in the ingredient list, and the EPA named three ingredients in its September action, which are polyethylene (also written as polythene), polylactic acid and cellulose acetate (NewsBeep). The first is the classic microbead most of us remember from the 2010s, but the other two are bioplastics, and they are often supplied to brands as the cleaner, plant-derived replacement for polyethylene. When it issued the November 2025 orders, CEO Tony Chappel said these materials "don't readily break down in the environment and are still defined as plastic" (SBS News).
CHOICE lists a wider set of plastic INCI names that are worth checking at the same time (CHOICE).
Name on the label (INCI) | What it is | Named by the NSW EPA |
Polyethylene | Conventional plastic, the original scrub bead | Yes, September 2026 |
Polylactic acid | Bioplastic often marketed as plant-based or biodegradable | Yes, November 2025 and September 2026 |
Cellulose acetate | Chemically modified cellulose, treated as a plastic | Yes, November 2025 and September 2026 |
Polyethylene terephthalate | Conventional plastic, sometimes used for glitter and texture | Listed by CHOICE |
Nylon (for example Nylon-12) | Synthetic polyamide | Listed by CHOICE |
Polypropylene | Conventional plastic | Listed by CHOICE |
Polymethyl methacrylate | Acrylic plastic | Listed by CHOICE |
The ban applies to rinse-off products, so finding one of these names in a leave-on powder or primer does not put that product in breach. In a scrub, cleanser, polish or wash, though, any of them is a reason to go back to your formulator and ask what form the ingredient takes and why it is there.
Those ingredients turned up across a surprisingly wide spread of products, and the September orders went to eight businesses, with MECCA, Sephora, ASOS and Ego Pharmaceuticals among those named, and covered 12 products across scalp, body, face and hand care (Inside Waste). EPA Director Claire Miles said that "retailers and skincare brands had a responsibility to ensure prohibited plastics were not supplied to consumers", which is a reminder that a retailer cannot rely on the brand having checked, and a brand cannot rely on the retailer catching it. Ego Pharmaceuticals noted that its QV product was not stocked by MECCA, Sephora or ASOS, so the orders reached pharmacy and supermarket channels as well as prestige beauty. MECCA and Sephora had not commented publicly in the coverage we found.
Product | Category | Round |
Arkive The Crown Scalp Scrub (180ml and 60ml) | Scalp | September 2026 |
Drunk Elephant T.L.C. Happi Scalp Scrub (180ml) | Scalp | September 2026 |
Tula Skincare Take Care + Polish (240ml) | Body | September 2026 |
Mutha The Nudist Exfoliating Body Bar | Body | September 2026 |
Exfoliating Body Granita Scrub (250ml) | Body | September 2026 |
QV Face Exfoliating Polish (125g) | Face | September 2026 |
Ella Baché Refining Exfoliating Gel (75ml) | Face | September 2026 |
Frase Skin Grub Scrub (100ml) | Face | September 2026 |
Santa Maria Novella Idralia Exfoliating Cream (100ml) | Face | September 2026 |
Chemron Rub Clean Gel with Grit (1kg) | Hand cleaner | September 2026 |
Chemron My T Hands Lemon Industrial Hand Cleaner (1L) | Hand cleaner | September 2026 |
Aesthetics Bio Fermented Triple Action Scrub | Face | November 2025 |
Jan Marini Bioglycolic Resurfacing Body Scrub | Body | November 2025 |
Jan Marini Cranberry Orange Exfoliator | Face | November 2025 |
Alya Skin Pomegranate Exfoliator and Exfoliating Sorbet | Face | November 2025 |
Dr LeWinn's Essentials Gentle Exfoliant Weekly Facial Polishing Gel | Face | November 2025 |
Natio Men's Purifying Face Scrub and Ageless Skin Renewal Exfoliator | Face | November 2025 |
KOi For Men Cleansing Face Scrub (Coles) | Face | November 2025 |
The September list is as reported by NewsBeep, and the November 2025 list is from SBS News. In that first round the EPA also worked with Chemist Warehouse and Priceline to clear the products from pharmacy shelves (Pharmacy Daily).
The names on that list reach well beyond retail, because Ella Baché, Jan Marini and Aesthetics are brands that sit on back bars and in clinic retail across the country, which means the professional channel has already been caught twice, and there is no reason to think the EPA will stop at the department store door.
If you own a brand, the most useful thing you can do this month is pull the INCI list for every rinse-off exfoliant in your range and check it against the table above, then ask your formulator or contract manufacturer for written confirmation of what each exfoliating particle is made from. A supplier spec sheet that describes a bead as biodegradable or plant-derived does not answer the question, because polylactic acid and cellulose acetate both fit that description and both have been ordered off shelves. If a product needs reformulating, it is far cheaper to do it now on your own timeline than to recall stock from every NSW stockist at once.
Distributors carry a slightly different risk, which sits with international lines that were formulated for markets where these bioplastics are accepted, and with national stock that moves freely between warehouses. A scrub that is perfectly legal in your Victorian warehouse becomes a problem the moment it ships to a salon in Newcastle, so it is worth flagging any affected SKUs in your system and holding them back from NSW, ACT, Queensland and Western Australian orders until they are reformulated.
Salon and clinic owners are part of this as well, because the ban applies to supply and the scrubs on your retail shelf count even though you did not formulate them. Ask your distributor to confirm in writing that the exfoliants you buy from them are compliant in your state, and give any product that lists one of these ingredients a closer look before you reorder. Your clients are reading about MECCA and Sephora in the news this week, and being able to tell them you have already checked your shelf is a far better conversation than the alternative.
Looking further ahead, two enforcement rounds in eleven months tell us the NSW EPA is actively testing what is on shelves, and that it is treating bioplastics as plastic whatever the marketing says. Until Australia has one national rule, every brand selling across state lines is effectively formulating to the strictest state, so the sensible move is to make your whole range NSW-compliant and stop worrying about where each carton ends up. The products being pulled are mostly old formulas that nobody went back to check, and the brands that come out of this well will be the ones who checked before the EPA did.
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