WGSN Beauty

The Key to
Sustainable Packaging
We highlight the key strategies that
fashion, beauty and food brands
are using to reduce packaging
environmental impact.

Verso
 Make your packaging
recyclable and returnable
What's your e-commerce packaging made of?
Most likely plastic or cardboard – two failsafe,
hardy and relatively cheap materials that are the
go-to for brands across the world. What happens
to that packaging once it's been delivered to the
end-consumer? It's probably torn open and thrown
away, sent to landfill or perhaps a recycling plant
that may not have the technology or capacity to
deal with it.
That's the reality for the majority of online
deliveries today. The box, envelope, container
or bag a product is sent in has a short and limited
lifespan – used once then never thought of again.
Add to this the amount of excess tertiary
packaging often stuffed inside, such as styrofoam
and pellets, and consumers are presented
with a range of confusing materials they don't
know what to do with and that quite often
cannot be recycled.
Tide
There are two ways to tackle this problem. First
up is creating fully recyclable packaging for a
circular supply chain. Mono-material solutions are
a growing area of interest, where all shipping
packaging used per delivery is made from the
same material family, such as cardboard and
paper, so it can be easily recycled in one go.
Biodegradable materials are another great step
forward, with brands starting to experiment with
biowrap instead of normal plastic.
A mushroom-based padding material from
Ecovative Design could also replace styrofoam.
Requiring only one-fifth of the energy to produce
compared to normal plastic foam, the material
will break down completely in 30-60 days, unlike
polystyrene, which takes more than a million
years to disappear.
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'Sustainable E-Commerce Packaging & Delivery'
report. This report is part of the innovations and
trends to create compelling and sustainable
packaging, found on WGSN Beauty.

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 Manage your dead space
More often than not, the box an item is shipped in
is far bigger than it needs to be. This 'dead space',
filled with air, increases the monetary cost of the
shipment as well as its carbon footprint.
The latter occurs on three levels. For every box
made bigger than necessary, more material is
required. When that excess is multiplied hundreds
of thousands of times, the amount of extra
material used becomes astronomical. Secondly,
any dead space inside the box has to be filled
with packing material to protect the product being
shipped – more material means more waste.
Finally, the bigger the parcels being shipped, the
less of them will fit on a pallet and in a delivery
van, meaning more vans and more fuel will be
needed to fulfill the orders. If your delivery boxes
are half-empty, you are paying to ship air.
Limiting the amount of dead space in your
packaging is a key and relatively easy way to
become more sustainable and save money.
Brands are tackling the issue in a number of
ways. Adore Beauty is an e-commerce cosmetics
brand that has recently invested in new
warehouse management software to help cut
down its packaging through volumetric
calculation. More than 13,000 products have
been scanned for their dimensions and weight,
and inputted into the system. With this
knowledge, the software can calculate the
smallest box possible for every order placed,
ensuring excess packaging is limited and more
orders can be shipped in one go.
Elsewhere, brands are eradicating the need for
external shipping containers entirely. The new
Tide Eco-Box from Procter & Gamble is a highly
concentrated detergent that uses 30% less water
and 60% less plastic than the original Tide
product. It's also lighter and rectangular in shape,
and is shipped in its own container that fits neatly
onto pallets, rather than needing to be placed in Adore Beauty
another box for shipping.
Packaging that effectively shrink-wraps to
the exact dimensions of a product is another
cost and carbon-saving initiative. Lil Packaging's
Twistwrap does just that, providing a protective
outer layer that tightly follows the contours
of a product.A second solution is returnable
packaging that's reused by the brand time and
time again, thanks to schemes that incentivise
consumers to post it back. LimeLoop, available
in the US, UK and Canada, offers retailers
upcycled, reusable vinyl packages that are
lightweight, waterproof and last up to 10 years.
Each one comes with a pre-printed returns label
so consumers can easily post it back. One bag
used 100 times could save 1,300 trees and 4,000
gallons of oil.

RePack is similar, and the company also offers

global free returns, cleaning, and redistribution
of all packaging supplied by them to a brand.
Ease of return for the consumer is a plus-point,
with custom-made reusable bags that require
no breaking down, that can be sent back in one
easy step.
"Items that ship in their own container will be the next big
change – no more plastic clamshell packaging, just the
product in a safe and secure cardboard box. This will
reduce the need for an over box, saving resources, time and
money for retailers. It should also work out to be a better
customer experience, as the packaging must be certified to
keep the product safe, reducing the rate of damages
incurred during the fulfilment process."

David Martin
Business Manager, Flywheel Digital
 WGSN Beauty gives you the right information, at the
right time, to develop your next generation of
instant-hit and long-term hero products.

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