The beauty industry is currently experiencing a packaging “glassification,” with more brands replacing plastic packaging with glass to better appeal to environmentally and health-conscious consumers.
This has been partially fueled by daunting statistics about the overall ecological impact of the beauty industry, which creates around 120 billion units of trash each year, according to environmental watchdog TRVST. cream jar packaging
While climate change, extreme weather, and water and food shortages are U.S. consumers’ biggest environmental concerns, according to a consumer study released in September by Mintel market research company, recycling is the most common way in which consumers practice sustainability.
American consumers have two main options for beauty packaging recycling: in-store take-back programs, like those from Pact Collective and Terracycle, which are funded by brands and retailers, or municipal curbside recycling.
Consumers have also become increasingly aware of plastic packaging degradation, which can create microplastics. They’ve been found just about everywhere, from in the sea to inside human bodies, and are linked to potential health effects. Partially because of this, the majority of American consumers surveyed in Mintel’s study perceive sustainability as a public health issue with the health benefits of a purchase becoming more important each year, according to the study.
As data and studies continue to point eco-conscious manufacturers in the direction of glass, many people wonder just how much better it is for the environment. To find out, Estée Lauder Companies partnered with Strategic Materials, North America’s largest glass packaging recycler with 43 recycling plants across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The two companies collaborated on a four-year study to learn how different decorations, colors and formats impact the recyclability of glass CPG packaging. ELC hopes the study, released Thursday, will act as a guide for product developers, package designers, suppliers and brands across industries to help advance glass circularity.
The U.S. and Canada have single-stream recycling systems, which means all items are collected together and then sorted in a recycling center, before being sent to a secondary processing center for that material. Glass is infinitely recyclable in theory, but in practice, materials being properly sorted is the biggest challenge facing glass recycling in North America today.
With that in mind, the study yielded three main takeaways for the industry, said Laura Hennemann, svp of sustainability and corporate affairs at Strategic Materials. They center on glass type, coating and transparency.
The first two are simple: Hennemann recommends that brands use soda lime glass over borosilicate glass, both of which are commonly used in beauty, and suggests they avoid using silver or gold metallic coating or lettering. “Metallics are considered a contaminant, from a chemical perspective,” she said. Surprisingly enough, the thickness, size and color of glass, however, don’t impact the recyclability of the product. That vastly differs from plastic, which is harder to recycle when made in dark colors or small sizes.
But the biggest learning from the study was around the impact of a product’s visible light transmittance value, which rates how transparent the packaging is. “The No. 1 best practice [for beauty manufacturers] is getting familiar with the light transmittance value at the beginning of the design phase,” said Hennemann. The study found that packaging that allows for less than 5% visible light is recycled less since it cannot be spotted in the single-stream sorting facilities used in North America.
“Making subtle changes doesn’t have to sacrifice design, and it will increase the likelihood of recyclability,” said Hennemann.
Educating consumers about these nuances could impact the growth of glass packaging, despite it being slightly more expensive to make and ship than plastic. “People are incentivized by providing an impact,” Ukachi Anonyuo, global vp of innovation strategy, portfolio management, technical readiness and new brands at ELC, told Glossy. “Anything they’re going to do that provides an impact, they feel good about.”
Part of Anonyuo’s work in technical readiness has included a replacement for metallic inks that limit recyclability. So far, her team has found alternatives for secondary packaging, like paper and cardboard. “There are so many innovative inks that are now coming around that it affords you the flexibility to design and add disruptive elements that the consumer may not even realize,” she said. “We have cold foil stamping that is recyclable, so that gives you the metallic finish, without it being metal.” The ELC packaging team is currently training its designers and product developers on the key criteria of the case study to implement more sustainable practices and solutions.
The glass packaging sector of the cosmetics industry is currently tracking at a 3.5% compound annual growth rate, according to market research company Future Market Insights. The firm estimates that the glass cosmetic bottle market is currently valued at around $3.2 billion and is expected to reach $4.6 billion over the next decade, while many other sectors chart far higher. For example, single-use cosmetic packaging, which is rarely recyclable, is estimated to grow by 4.7% CAGR to reach 4.3 billion by 2031. Meanwhile, the global compostable plastic packaging material market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.2% between 2023 and 2033, totaling around $3.1 billion by 2033.
“There’s more work to be done,” said Hennemann. “The exciting thing is much of the work that we’ve done with Estée Lauder can be translated into other glass packaging categories. So, formalizing [these recommendations] is next on our radar.”
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