New packaging concepts

COSSMA: How can material be saved in the packaging of cosmetic products?

Ruth Andrade: Cosmetics is one of the few categories of consumer goods where customers can sometimes be paying more for the packaging than for the contents of the product. Most companies will use primary, secondary and even tertiary packaging in an attempt to get the attention of the customers. So that’s an easy step to save material: stay simple, reduce the layers of packaging, and also use good design to make it lightweight.

However, from the beginning, we have taken an innovative approach and solved this issue by designing products that can be displayed and taken home with no packaging. Instead of making the packaging appealing, we have attached importance to make the product itself beautiful, colourful, and appealing. We invented things like the first solid shampoo, solid conditioner, naked deodorant, and bath bombs that are now sold by many other brands.

‘Shampoo bars’, that’s what we call our solid shampoos, alone directly saved 165.5 million bottles in the past 17 years, but our estimate is that based on the current market-wide sales, 40 million bottles a year are saved because of this one invention.

What are the basic prerequisites for a functioning reusable system in general?

We have had a return scheme for some of our packaging for over ten years and over the years it evolved it to be mostly a closed loop system where the packaging returned gets recycled in new packaging. This system has just been relaunched to include plastic packaging, and we have functioning closed loop systems in our biggest manufacturing markets: Europe, UK, Japan, and North America.

For the closed loop system to function, it was important to find plastic reprocessors, and a packaging manufacturer close to our manufacturing to also keep the impact of logistics tight. This triangle can ensure that washing, processing, and recycling of the materials happen close to where they’ll be used again as new packaging. We are working to slowly evolve this system to wash some of our packaging for re-use instead of recycling.

What are the challenges?

The biggest challenge is engaging the customer to return the packaging so that economies of scale for collection and processing are improved. Earlier this year, we launched the ‘Bring It Back’ scheme that offers customers a 50 cents (1 dollar in the US) money off their purchase for every item of plastic packaging from a full-size product that they bring to the stores. It is an attempt to create incentives to the customers to make sure their packaging has the right destination away from incineration.

Germany for example is still only at a rate around 20%, but we are hoping thisfigure will gradually increase. The UK is tracking at between 12 – 15%.

Logistics is also a complex issue: we try to reduce distances and optimise deliveries, but the collection from stores is still the most expensive and impactful part of the logistics overall.

Why is it so difficult to introduce a cross-brand reusable system in the cosmetics industry?

The main reason is probably that brand identity is so connected to packaging and the perceived value of products. There are some small pilots for cross-brand refillable systems, and we are in the planning stages of a pilot in the UK for a cross-brand refill and prefill system, where the same bottles and jars are used by more than one brand. 

The second challenge is microbiology. Especially with our products that have little or no preservatives and shorter shelf life, as we want our products to be gentler on the skin microbiome. So, we have taken the safest route, which is to grind and melt the plastics again, rather than washing. For any reuse model, it is necessary to ensure that the packaging being reused has no risk to the customers. 

Finally, a distributed network of washing facilities is indispensable and can deliver just in time to manufacturing places. Unfortunately, many cosmetics brands manufacture far away from their consumer markets. 

We are in the comfortable position to only sell through our own stores, have decentralised manufacturing closer to the biggest markets, so will continue to innovate in this space.

Which materials are suitable for a reusable system in the cosmetics industry and why?

Light-weight plastic in a minimalist design is the best for the types of cosmetic applications we have and the scheme we have in place where packaging should be returned to us to make sure the material gets processed and recycled close to our manufactu-ring sites. However, plastics are not infinitely recyclable. Although that is not an issue at the moment as there is still so much plastic in the mix that has only been recycled once – as recy-cling rates go up in the future, it may become a problem.

For washing and refilling, glass, steel or aluminium are better options. But glass has an impact on transport emis-sions, while steel and aluminium are hard to source 100% recycled with some degree of traceability. These ma-terials are easier to clean and can be recycled infinitely.

However, if those packaging items are not returned and re-used, they have a much higher footprint than their light-weight plastic counterparts. You need many uses out of an aluminium, glass, or steel bottle before it matches the low embodied energy of light-weight plastic packaging. 

Which cosmetic and skin care products would basically be suitable for sale in a reusable system?

With the current ‘Bring it Back’ scheme, all our liquids and creams are in 100% recycled packaging, which, if returned to us, will get recycled again often into new packaging. So called ‘naked’ products are also great. There are long-term storage items like tins that can just be refilled by the customer and leave no waste behind. 

For refill, the low hanging fruit are the products that have less microbiology risk like shower gels, shampoos and perfumes or alcohol-based products.

The return transport and cleaning of reusable packaging also costs energy and resources. How does this affect the eco-balance compared to the use of newly produced packaging? What is the difference here between packaging made from virgin material and recycled material?

I think it’s important to note that we still have an imperfect system, which will require economies of scale to deliver all the potential environmental benefits. 

Let’s start with virgin vs. recycled material. 42% of all virgin plastic is used for packaging, so it is paramount to find ways to recycle more and better. There are many parameters to be considered, including whether to attribute all the energy expenditures of the extraction of the fuel used in the feedstock only in the first use of that plastic material (cut-off method), or divided over further uses (open loop).

For the first, recycled plastics have between 79% (PET) and 88% (PP) lower embodied energy, or 39% (PET) to 44% (PP). Lush UK uses over 588 tonnes of plastic across the business (includes moulds, transport, and product packaging) and 69% of all the plastic used is made from recycled feedstocks.

When it comes to collection and processing, we have been working on refining our numbers, and there are many factors that affect the energy used in the washing or processing of the recyclates.

When we looked at the numbers for Germany, for example, collection and transport represented a large part of the impact, currently 80%, shared between the delivery from the stores back to a centralised point, for example, our factory in Dusseldorf, and then delivery to the recyclers. We have installed crushers and ways of stacking the pots in the stores to reduce volumes, and when transporting the materials from one factory to another, we try to prioritise the empty spaces on existing transport routes, although that’s not always possible. It is still about 59% less than using virgin plastic and 55% less than incineration. As transport becomes more electrified, the contribution of transport to the overall footprint of the scheme will also reduce. 

It’s important to also take into account the fact that half of plastics from Europe are exported and recycled in Asia or incinerated locally, and when compared to that impact any local collection, re-use or closed loop scheme has a much lower footprint.

Your company has already introduced a reusable system in some countries. What are the first experiences? How well is it accepted by customers? Are there regional differences?

We have had a return scheme for just our black and clear polypropylene pots in the vast majority of our markets for over ten years. Last year, we launched the ‘Bring it Back’ scheme to collect more items of plastic and offer a financial reward to encourage more customers to return. This new scheme is now in 25% of our markets and in all our major markets like North America, Japan, UK, Australia, and Germany. We have seen an increase in the number of items returned, but the increase in percentage return has been slow. Japan has always been the strongest market, with return rates above 30%. Germany is also better than France or the UK, at around 20-21%. We are investing in communication and engagement strategies, as the customer behaviour is absolutely key to the success of this project.

In Japan, there is a bigger sense of community in the culture and in Germany, greater awareness around environmental issues, but also customers are used to deposit schemes, while in other markets like the UK, there is a bigger gap in the behavioural change needed.

How should the development continue? Which countries will follow?

The way we have set up the scheme is so that it can also work with other modes of reuse, like refilling or prefilling. Our aim is to roll ‘Bring it Back’ in all our markets and slowly pilot refill strategies in our largest consumer markets. 

Could this system also be transferred to other brands and manufacturers or even be applied across regions or nations, for example?

More brands have been taking packaging back; however, it’s often not for closed loop recycling and with little transparency or traceability over what happens to the material. In the UK, in 2015, we set up our own recycling and reuse centre called the ‘Green Hub’, to make sure that we can process materials ourselves and ensure their end of life. We have just invested another £2 million in a new recycling centre, and we are planning on collaborating with local governments and local businesses on shared infrastructure for recycling and reuse. For a circular economy, we need wider collaboration and better shared infrastructure.

Having the support of policy and legislation is also important, for example, why not a deposit scheme for more items of food and cosmetics packaging? 

How much could you already save in energy and resources?

We have not been running the scheme for a full year in our main markets yet, so have not calculated all the numbers for the energy and carbon savings, but in terms of plastic, we have so far collected over two million items and 40 tonnes of plastic.

What could a reusable system for the cosmetics industry (ideally) look like in the future? What percentage of packaging could be saved as a result?

The ideal scenario and one where there is much more shared packaging between brands, customers can pick up a product and drop the packaging at many different collection points. There are decentralised washing facilities that can provide just-in-time clean and washed packaging to manufacturing or filling warehouses as locally as possible.

Packaging is seen as an asset that is only lent to the customer, tracked, and returned. With the use of technology, it is possible to track how many uses the packaging has had, when it is time to retire, all the legal information required for that product, and even other information around environmental and social impact, for example.

Let us not forget that a large reduction in packaging can also come from the wide-spread adoption of things like soap, shampoo and conditioner bars, solid deodorants that require little packaging in the first place. 

So, a combination of both would deliver significant benefits. Globally, 60% of our sales come from products that are sold naked. Adopting a pareto principle, if 80% of sales come from 20% of bestselling products, we could see substantial reduction in packaging by focusing on the 20% where there are economies of scale. 

It may sound utopic, but there are many players working to manifest exactly that¹. It is all about making it convenient for customers to adopt environmental shopping behaviours, and to remove barriers for brands to adopt this vision.