Database/Preservative/Sodium Sorbate
Mostly petroleum · ISO 16128

Is Sodium Sorbate natural?

Mostly not. Sorbic acid is industrially made from petrochemical ketene and crotonaldehyde, not extracted from rowan berries commercially; only the sodium counter-ion is natural.

INCI nameSodium Sorbate
CAS7757-81-5
FormulaC6H7NaO2 · 134.11 Da
FunctionPreservative
FeedstockCommercial sorbic acid is synthesised from ketene and…

How we scored it

MW 134.11: Na 22.99 (natural mineral) / sorbate C6H7O2 111.12 (synthetic, ketene+crotonaldehyde route) -> 22.99/134.11=0.17.
What counts. ISO 16128-2 scores the atoms that remain in the final ingredient. Reagents, solvents, catalysts and protecting groups used during manufacture leave no mass behind and are not counted.

Where it comes from

Commercial sorbic acid is synthesised from ketene and crotonaldehyde (petrochemical route); the historic rowanberry extraction route is not commercially practised. Neutralised with mineral-derived sodium hydroxide to form the salt.

In plain English

A preservative that stops mould and yeast growing in cosmetics. It is the sodium salt of sorbic acid, which today is made synthetically from petrochemical building blocks rather than extracted from berries.

CosIng definition: Sodium Sorbate is the sodium salt of Sorbic Acid that conforms to the formula:

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Structure

2D structure of Sodium Sorbate

sodium (2E,4E)-hexa-2,4-dienoate

PubChem CID 23665582 ↗

References

  1. 1ISO 16128-1:2016 and ISO 16128-2:2017 — Guidelines on technical definitions and criteria for natural and organic cosmetic ingredients and products. ISO, Geneva.
  2. 2Sodium Sorbate. PubChem CID 23665582. National Center for Biotechnology Information. pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ↗
  3. 3SODIUM SORBATE. CosIng — European Commission cosmetic ingredient database. ec.europa.eu/cosing ↗
  4. 4SODIUM SORBATE. CosIng u2014 European Commission database for information on cosmetic substances and ingredients. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/cosing/search?search=SODIUM%20SORBATE