Sustainability in Luxury Packaging
Sustainability in Luxury Packaging
A product’s packaging often delivers the first high-touch moment for our consumers, providing a sense of prestige and luxury right at their fingertips. At the same time, packaging must protect the products inside, which means it must be sturdy and durable. Prestige packaging presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation because it plays such an important role in consumer experience. Incorporating sustainability concepts into packaging designs is a strategic imperative, and we believe our creativity and inventiveness can help advance solutions for our brands and for the personal care and cosmetics industries at large.
Packaging Sustainability Guidelines
The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is focused on reducing potential environmental impacts of a package across its lifecycle. In fiscal year 2020, we launched Packaging Sustainability Guidelines for our package developers, marketers, and procurement teams. The guidelines contain an overview of our approach, definitions, material selection guides, and FAQs. In addition, the guidelines provide direction for design that enhances packaging sustainability. They outline our priorities, which include:
Reducing and removing packaging where possible
Designing packaging that is reusable and refillable
Building designed-in recyclability
Increasing amounts of Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) material in packaging
Replacing petroleum-based plastics with bioplastics (if the bioplastic can be recycled and does not contaminate the traditional recycling streams)
Reducing Plastic Use
At ELC, we have developed internal plastic guidelines to help drive the reduction of virgin and nonrecyclable plastic across our business. The guidelines aim to advance our commitment to incorporating more sustainability concepts into our packaging, products, offices, retail stores, and other facilities. Read more in our Plastics viewpoint.
Luxury Packaging Sustainability Partnerships
We approach packaging with a spirit of collaboration and innovation. We engage with companies, academia, and consortiums to help further our collective understanding of sustainability in packaging for the benefit of everyone involved.
Sustainable Packaging Initiative For Cosmetics (SPICE)
We are members of the Sustainable Packaging Initiative for Cosmetics (SPICE), a cohort of organizations in the cosmetics industry that are collectively shaping the future of sustainable packaging. Our membership allows us to maintain voting rights, ensuring we have a voice in important discussions; in this way, we can co-create methodologies and tools to drive the future of sustainable packaging for cosmetics.
EUROPEN
Since fiscal year 2022, we have been members of the European Organization for Packaging and the Environment (EUROPEN), an industry association representing the packaging value chain in Europe, advocating for a harmonized policy framework for packaging and packaged goods.
Material ConneXion
We are members of Material ConneXion, which provides a global library of sustainable packaging material alternatives. This resource supports our packaging developers and teams in advancing innovation in packaging design.
Strategic Materials INC
We are members of Strategic Materials Inc. (SMI), a leader in the recycling market that processes recycled glass and plastic for use in a wide array of products, creating efficiencies for consumers while aiming to conserve natural resources. Through this partnership, we published findings from a cosmetic glass recycling case study to help drive responsible packaging innovation and advance circularity in the cosmetics industry.
