PRODUCT WASTE BRANDS
what you approve in the initial formula is made in a small lab setting. So, now I am placing the minimum order quantity for the pilot production and scaling up when I am confident it is right.” Yoo launched a pop-up store called Waste Me Not in New York last year to sell the product and tell her story. “A lot of people from L’Oréal and Estée Lauder visited the pop-up and are wanting to do something similar. What will move the needle is when all these big guys join forces,” she adds.
WHY THE RETAIL EXPERIENCE NEEDS TO CHANGE
What can and cannot be stocked on retailers’ shelves is another challenging part of the puzzle. “Brands have to manufacture millions of products expecting them to be sold through stores, but retailers have to bring in innovation all the time. So these products are disposed of in certain cases by retailers every six months because they have to change the shelves,” says Chen.
The future could be to use retail spaces in a different way, with a bigger focus on beauty refillables, longer shelf times for products and, of course, making selling imperfect items more mainstream. “It is the retailers that are rejecting and sending back all these damaged carton boxes because it is not aesthetically-pleasing, but the product inside is completely usable and brand new. We need to change the consumer perception to make it okay for them to pick up a box that is a little bit damaged,” adds Chen.
The return product is another issue, especially in the US, explains Yoo. “I am not sure about the UK or EU, but in America it is very easy for customers to return any used product to beauty counters. Retailers then just kind of damage the product and throw it away because they cannot resell it for hygienic reasons and they are also concerned about employees potentially reselling them on the grey market, so the return issue is a really big problem from a product waste perspective.” Yoo believes a new commercial waste tax that brands are forced to pay to dispose of these items could be one way to force a change. “If the government enforced that type of regulation then I think it would be very effective, because brands do not want to pay to throw away things,” she says. “It would hopefully incentivise brands to reduce the amount of waste that they throw out.” Cosmetics Business reached out to retailers including Superdrug and Sephora, but received no commentary.
WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS? Formulators like Orean, a private label cosmetic manufacturing company, are also helping to reduce unnecessary waste in product batches by guiding brands on certain packaging and formulation types. “We offer 2,500 units for clients to help them manage their cash flow and make smaller runs more often so they have less product sitting in their warehouses,” explains Technical Director Laura
cosmeticsbusiness.com
Brands have an opportunity to rework failed formulations into new products
Kirkbride. “But the wastage on the run will be higher relative to if they had ordered 5,000 or 10,000 units, because to set up the production line, you have to prime the pipe work. Although some facilities are quite automated, we have the flexibility to reduce the length of that pipe work as much as possible.”
Orean is also supporting its clients in terms of looking at extensions to expiry date testing. “The way that cosmetics’ shelf life testing works is that we accelerate the ageing process through storing products at increased temperatures to predict a three-year shelf life, but that is a prediction rather than an absolute,” says Kirkbride. “So, we can repeat that testing using the same parameters and see if we can extend by another year to give extended product life, also taking into account efficacy testing and micro stability as well.” All of these initiatives are helping to reduce beauty product waste, but more needs to be done. Drago recommends “better industry forecasting so that brands can produce exactly what is needed”, while Yoo suggests “bigger brands selling these products at a discounted price”. Greater consumer awareness on product expiration dates and waste could also help, but “ultimately, the next step for the industry and consumers is buying less and buying smarter (ie, multi-purpose products),” says Brownlie. Whatever the solution, one thing is clear, we need to talk about it… and now
KraveBeauty (above) and Pure Culture Beauty (below) are aiming to reduce product waste
Glorious Beauty offers discounts on products from the likes of Trilogy, PÜR, Sweed and Stila in an effort to prevent them being sent to landfill
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