BRANDS PRODUCT WASTE
The beauty industry has an elephant in the room – product waste in the form of unsold inventory, soon-to-expire items and discontinued lines, which could end up in landfill, Amanda Pauley discovers
THE UGLY SIDE OF BEAUTY
T
here is an elephant sitting in the beauty industry that no one is addressing – and it can no longer be ignored. No, it is not packaging waste, the need for greater diversity or to source ingredients more sustainably, but the ongoing struggle of beauty product waste and how it is dealt with.
Although waste, in essence, is built into every beauty company’s business model, there are the ongoing challenges of what to do with unsold inventory, soon-to-expire or discontinued product lines, batches damaged in transit and formulations that have gone wrong, all of which could potentially get sent to landfill.
But why is no one talking about the problem publicly? “Waste is not a very sexy thing to talk about, it is much nicer to talk about something you can easily improve instead, like packaging,” says Marie Drago, founder and CCO of microbiome skin care brand Gallinée. “But, in my opinion, the waste of beauty products that we never see in the consumer world must be as big as the industry’s packaging problem.”
An internet search brings up a slew of articles explaining how the cosmetics industry produces 120 billion units of packaging every year, but there is no information readily available on how the sector’s product waste compares.
“It is because the waste never gets quantified by companies, and there is no measurement as to how the industry can actually quantify the waste behind
50 June 2023
the scenes because it varies from each business operation,” explains Liah Yoo, CEO at sustainable skin care brand KraveBeauty. “Plus, companies do not like talking about the product waste that they either throw away or sell to discount retailers, so there really is not enough visibility on the issue.”
HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM REALLY? Although we cannot pinpoint the exact numbers, looking at other sectors that are dealing with product waste can give a good indication of what the scope of the problem could be. It is estimated that almost 3 million tonnes of edible food – valued at £1.8bn – goes to waste on UK farms each year, found a report by WWF, while the US discards nearly 40 million tonnes yearly, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Then there is fast fashion. Of the 100 billion garments produced every year, 92 million tonnes of textile waste end up in landfills, reported
earth.org. That is the equivalent to a rubbish truck of clothes ending up on landfill sites every second. Beauty, much like fashion, churns out a lot of newness based on cyclical trends and fads, which is unfortunately one of the drivers of the problem. Then, waste is not only created by products not being bought, but generated by consumers under- using products. Almost two thirds of people in the UK have unused or partly used beauty products in their homes that they no longer want, reported the British Beauty Council (BBCo).
cosmeticsbusiness.com
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