Cosmetic products are growing rapidly. There are various forms and variations on the market. One of them is nail coloring product or nail polish which mostly uses chemicals as the basis of manufacture.

Students of the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine (FPK) Universitas Airlangga have succeeded in making a new innovation of healthy nail polish products with natural ingredients: seaweed. Why seaweed? It has good antioxidant content to maintain healthy nails. The product was named “Reds Nail Polish” and was able to minimize the use of chemicals in nail polish.

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“Since our team members are women, we decided to explore innovations in the field of beauty products. Then an idea to make a nail polish came up. We want to reduce the use of chemicals contained in nail polish as a new innovation in the cosmetics for safe long-term use, “said Iis Suryani, leader of the innovative team.

Beside Iis Suryani, the team members joined in the Entrepreneurship Student Creativity Program (PKMK) are Neneng Apriliasanti (2016), Rino Putri Munziatih (2016) and Depril Meriza Astutik (2015), all of them are students of UNAIR FPK.

Described by Iis, the benefit of this seaweed nail polish is from its less chemical content. From the business point of view, the seaweed nail polish has good potential and promising prospect as it uses natural material. It can improve awareness of consumers on the side effects of chemically produced nail polish.

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“Seaweed has fairly complete nutritional content,” said Iis Suryani, while detailing that seaweed contains water (27.8%), protein (5.4%), carbohydrates (33.3%), fat (8.6%) Crude fiber (3%) and ash (22.25%). In addition to these elements seaweed also contains enzymes, nucleic acids, amino acids, vitamins (A, B, C, D, E and K) and macro minerals such as nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, selenium and micro minerals such as iron, magnesium and sodium.

“The content of amino acids, vitamins and minerals in seaweed reach 10-20 times compared to land plants. This nail coloring can also be used as a cancer prevention because the content of vitamin C in seaweed contains antioxidants that prevent cancer symptoms and treat the nails to be healthy, “added Iis.

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Product “Reds Nail Polish” has been designed in a practical, simple and easy to use. In terms of marketing is still promising, because seaweed in carrageenan as nail polish is a new idea, so this product can improve seaweed producers and marine natural resources in Indonesia.

“The selection of this main ingredient may attract people’s interest, especially women to live healthy by reducing the use of cosmetics from chemicals,” she added.

‘Reds Nail Polish’ is affordable so it can be used by all. The shape is relatively small, so it is portable. The main raw material is originally from diversity of Indonesian waters, thus supporting the conservation of natural wealth will make us love our nation more.

Source: www.unair.ac.id