Any beauty editor will tell you one of their biggest pet peeves about the beauty industry is brands’ tendency to over-pack their product. Send a tiny little product inside a box, inside another box, buried beneath polystyrene beads and inside an even bigger box and just see how much editorial coverage you get. But with more and more focus being placed on our treatment of the environment, it seems beauty brands are beginning to pay more attention not just to what’s in their products, but also how they’re packaged.
Nick Bez is the research director for Mobium Group, a marketing research company that conducts the annual Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) consumer survey. He says that while recycled packaging is a nice to have” for consumers, it’s not a make-or-break factor in their purchasing decision. The key things consumers look for is efficacy of the product, then the brand, then the price,” he explains.
Bez says that in comparison to many other countries, Australia has a fair way to go when it comes to developing recycled packaging. Australia typically is not a leader in this area. Most of the larger companies are taking their cues from overseas, which we reap the benefits of.”
One such company is Burt's Bees, which has a sustainable philosophy that was born with the company around 26 years ago.[Burt’s Bees founders] Burt and Roxanne were the original re-users,” says Emma Atkinson, general manager for Burt’s Bees, Australia and New Zealand. They originally started packaging products like our lip balm in terracotta pots, for instance, and the idea behind those was that people could then use them in their garden.” Now, the company not only uses post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic wherever possible, but the company’s entire US factory runs – very impressively - without contributing anything to landfill.
Another company doing its best to minimise its packaging footprint is skincare brand . Of the brand’s product boxes, 95 per cent are printed on 100 per cent recycled stock or FSC (forest stewardship council) certified stocks. Natasha Mathers, head designer for endota says that recycled and recyclable packaging is the perfect fit for the brand. It compliments our certified organic skincare range and it meets our environmental philosophies,” she explains.
Marianne Knutson, vice president of global marketing for says the brand users PCR materials wherever it can. We also minimise packaging as much as possible while adhering to strict quality and environmental standards. We also do without cartons wherever we can and never add elements solely for the sake of aesthetic,” she says.
With so many benefits for the environment and an improvement in the way consumers’ view your brand, anyone could be forgiven for assuming there must be some limitations to using recycled packaging. It’s not easy at times when you’re thinking about designs,” admits Atkinson. When using vegetable inks, for instance, you get some colour differences and you can’t necessarily get that super-shiny, glossy look. You have to be prepared to make it work for you rather than see it as a problem.”
Knutson says that while recycled packaging is becoming more competitive, it can still affect manufacturing costs. Depending on the material, manufacturing process, overall design direction and production run quantity, costs can fluctuate,” says. Some recycled materials are more costly, while pricing on others – like paperboard – has become competitive.”
Recycled and FSC-approved stocks now come in various price ranges – from premium to the more economically priced,” reiterates Mathers.
Atkinson says it’s all about weighing up the cost with your company’s values. When we launched in Myer, all of our displays were made with materials using a very high PCR content and soy ink. That meant that instead of launching in every store, we had to select stores as the cost was almost double,” she says. And it was a good decision.”
Like anything to do with beauty, it’s not as straightforward as being recycled packaging or not. Bez explains there are three things in packaging that need to be considered – can it be recycled, is it made using recycled materials and how much packaging is used?
Louise Henderson of Living Nature explains that with the D-shape of many of their products, it can be difficult to package them together without wasting valuable space, and therefore packaging and travel costs. We pack them so that there is no air in the box,” she says. We’ve done all we can to eliminate that space, and we use cartons in a way that we don’t have to use a million polystyrene chips.”
Looking to overseas markets, a lot more environmental responsibility falls on the retailers than in Australia. In the US and Europe, [packaging standards] is a very big issue for us,” says Atkinson. In Target in the US for instance, above their section of natural products, not only does it talk about what’s in the products, but how they’re packaged. Wholefoods has similar criteria, and even Walmart is moving towards that space.”
Overseas, the big retailers are really pushing hard with sustainability agendas,” agrees Bez. We’ve seen Australian retailers express interest in the past, but at the moment it has given way to a focus on driving prices as low as possible. There’s no doubt Australian retailers will follow, but unfortunately it’s not high on their agenda at the moment.”
