Beauty brands are embracing sustainable packaging

With extrav­a­gant pack­ag­ing designed to draw in con­sumers, the beau­ty indus­try has long been reliant on the con­cept of con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion. But times have changed, and brands are now being pres­sured to cre­ate inno­v­a­tive pack­ag­ing solu­tions that are both lux­u­ri­ous and good for the envi­ron­ment.

The uptake of refill­able beau­ty prod­ucts requires a shift in con­sumer behav­iour

Accord­ing to a report by Zero Waste Week, 120 bil­lion units of pack­ag­ing are pro­duced glob­al­ly by the cos­met­ics indus­try each year. With engaged 25 to 34-year-old con­sumers push­ing for beau­ty to become a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, com­pa­nies can no longer shy away from such sta­tis­tics.

Refillable packaging as a design solution

In the age of call-out cul­ture, beau­ty brands that are not seen to be active­ly tack­ling the prob­lem are at risk of dam­ag­ing both their rep­u­ta­tion and cus­tomer base. Aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing pack­ag­ing is now a must if you want to ensure user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent online, but a major predica­ment con­tin­ues to lie in the bal­ance between sus­tain­abil­i­ty and design.

“Brands are embrac­ing the nat­ur­al dis­coloura­tion that comes with using PCR [post-con­sumer recy­cled] mate­ri­als, by either using it as a mar­ket­ing tool to show off their sus­tain­able cre­den­tials or sim­ply incor­po­rat­ing the dis­coloura­tion into the design of the pack­ag­ing,” says Simon Chidgey, sales and mar­ket­ing direc­tor at RPC M&H Plas­tics.

At the lux­u­ry end of the mar­ket, refill­able prod­ucts are bridg­ing this gap for brands that place greater empha­sis on expe­ri­en­tial pack­ag­ing. Make-up brands such as Hour­glass Cos­met­ics and Sur­ratt Beau­ty offer refills at low­er prices, with pack­ag­ing that’s designed to be a keep­sake. This mod­el is com­mon­ly seen with liq­uid prod­ucts, such as sham­poo and show­er gel, that have a high­er repur­chase rate. For exam­ple, nat­ur­al beau­ty brand L’Occitane’s 500ml hair and body care refill pouch­es boast up to 90 per cent less pack­ag­ing weight.

The uptake of refill­able beau­ty prod­ucts, how­ev­er, requires a shift in con­sumer behav­iour, which brands are tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion before imple­ment­ing these changes.

“In-store refill­able sta­tions for liq­uid goods can often be quite messy, so many con­sumers won’t be pre­pared to go that extra step, espe­cial­ly if there’s extra waste cre­at­ed at the taps,” says Rachelle Strauss, founder of Zero Waste Week. As a result, there are brands cre­at­ing alter­na­tive refill expe­ri­ences for the con­sumer, such as By Kil­ian, the Estée Laud­er Com­pa­nies-owned fra­grance brand, which offers four-piece refill kits includ­ing a drop­per and fun­nel.

The future of refillable beauty products

Set to launch lat­er this year, cir­cu­lar shop­ping plat­form Loop, cre­at­ed by Ter­ra­Cy­cle in coali­tion with con­sumer goods com­pa­nies includ­ing Unilever and Proc­ter & Gam­ble, shows where refill­able beau­ty prod­ucts are head­ed. It also exem­pli­fies the impor­tance of expe­ri­ence for the end-user.

“Loop address­es one of the major rea­sons for dis­pos­abil­i­ty: con­ve­nience. Con­sumers can opt to receive auto-replen­ish­ments based on their rate of con­sump­tion, fur­ther improv­ing the user expe­ri­ence,” explains Stephen Clarke, head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Ter­ra­Cy­cle Europe.

He says the beau­ty and per­son­al care sec­tor has an impor­tant role to play in build­ing momen­tum towards a more cir­cu­lar econ­o­my for plas­tics. “Con­sumers con­nect with prod­ucts that use recy­cled mate­r­i­al or com­mit to being recy­clable, report­ing a will­ing­ness to pay more or switch brands for ones that do. This is impor­tant to note because brands stand to ben­e­fit from mak­ing these com­mit­ments,” says Mr Clarke.

Consumer demand for recyclable materials

As such, brands are chal­leng­ing dis­pos­abil­i­ty and mov­ing to PCR plas­tics. One such com­pa­ny is Ave­da, with more than 85 per cent of its skin­care and hair styling PET (poly­eth­yl­ene tereph­tha­late) bot­tles and jars con­tain­ing 100 per cent PCR mate­ri­als.

“To ful­ly elim­i­nate the use of vir­gin plas­tic, we are explor­ing using oth­er mate­ri­als, includ­ing bio­plas­tic made pri­mar­i­ly from sug­ar­cane, which we cur­rent­ly use in com­bi­na­tion with PCR in some of our pack­ag­ing, sea­weed and cow waste, which will very soon pro­vide viable alter­na­tives to vir­gin petro-based plas­tics,” says Edmond Irizarry, exec­u­tive direc­tor of pack­ag­ing devel­op­ment at Ave­da.

Cham­pi­oning recy­clable mate­ri­als has become an inte­gral part of brand DNA in almost every sec­tor, not least cos­met­ics. Soaper Duper uses recy­clable plas­tic for their entire range of nat­u­ral­ly derived bath and body prod­ucts, and has recent­ly includ­ed the use of 100 per cent recy­clable met­al-free pumps. While nat­ur­al and organ­ic make-up brand Antonym use sus­tain­able bam­boo for its com­pacts and box­es print­ed on For­est Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil-cer­ti­fied paper.

The future lies in greater inno­va­tion

These mate­ri­als are lead­ing the charge for a more sus­tain­able future, as Geor­gia Barnes, busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er for beau­ty and well­be­ing at the Soil Asso­ci­a­tion, attests. “Inno­va­tion in the indus­try is work­ing, and more and more brands are mak­ing the switch to non-plas­tic options, such as bio­plas­tics, sug­ar-cane deriv­a­tives, alu­mini­um and glass,” she says.

The key­word is inno­va­tion. Mr Chidgey at RPC M&H Plas­tics explains the impor­tance of the new pack­ag­ing ini­tia­tives that enable more mate­ri­als to be used. “Take, for instance, near-infrared black colourants, which allow sort­ing facil­i­ties to sort black coloured plas­tic instead of them pre­vi­ous­ly pass­ing by the sort­ing machines and end­ing up in a land­fill,” he says.

L’Oc­c­i­tane’s refill pouch­es are a tenth of the weight of its stan­dard pack­ag­ing

Beauty brands also tackling waste in their packaging

Along­side reusable, refill­able and recy­clable pack­ag­ing, efforts are also being made to reduce the amount of excess waste in online and in-store beau­ty pur­chas­es.

“Beau­ty prod­uct pack­ag­ing is often com­posed of a vari­ety of types of mate­r­i­al. For exam­ple, mir­rored glass, card­board sleeves, paper inserts, expand­ed plas­tic foam, and more, have been known to be used in cos­met­ics pack­ag­ing,” says TerraCycle’s Mr Clarke. This makes it dif­fi­cult to be ade­quate­ly sep­a­rat­ed and recy­cled, so many brands are cut­ting down.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty stal­warts Lush have had notable suc­cess with their min­i­mal-to-zero pack­ag­ing options and oth­ers are fol­low­ing suit. Dior have removed cel­lo­phane and exces­sive prod­uct leaflets, as well as print­ing with nat­u­ral­ly sourced ink. Direct-to-con­sumer brand Glossier recent­ly pledged to intro­duce a lim­it­ed pack­ag­ing option for online orders as a result of cus­tomer back­lash.

The future of sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing in beau­ty looks bright as it becomes a larg­er con­ver­sa­tion in the indus­try, but brands must play their part in edu­cat­ing con­sumers along­side their pack­ag­ing inno­va­tion.

“Sta­tis­tics show that while peo­ple recy­cle real­ly well in the kitchen, they don’t think to do that in the bath­room. The key thing to remem­ber is that plas­tic beau­ty pack­ag­ing is recy­clable, it’s just that most con­sumers aren’t aware that they can,” Ms Strauss of Zero Waste Week con­cludes.