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TREND #4


stations across 400 stores globally in 2021 and to all stores within five years. 12 of the brand’s most popular shower gels, shampoos, conditioners and hand washes can selected for refilling into aluminium bottles.


Last year also saw AmorePacific open the first refill station in Korea, as a trial in its new Gwanggyo store, while French hypermarket chain Carrefour became the word’s first retailer to offer Loop’s reuse system in-store, with Nivea being among the participating brands.


Online refillable container schemes are also gaining momentum. In the US, Ulta has become the first major beauty retailer to partner with Loop. “Guests can now shop at loopbyulta.com for beauty and personal care products in durable, sustainable packaging which will be refilled and reused,” a spokesperson tells Cosmetics Business, stating that participating brands include Burt’s Bees, Dermalogica and Mad Hippie with Oneka Elements, L’Anza and Plaine Products joining soon.


Green rewards


There has also been a marked uptick in the number of recycling schemes in beauty retail. Department store Nordstrom became the first major US retailer to offer a recycling programme for all brands of beauty packaging, and aims to take back 100 tons of hard-to-recycle beauty packaging by 2025. In the UK, Boots launched a recycling scheme across 50 stores that resulted in more than 100,000 beauty products being recycled through its drop off destinations in three months. John Lewis’ BeautyCycle scheme, which it launched in November 2019, has been “incredibly successful”, with over 46,000 customers recycling their empties, according to Megan Mosley, Beauty Business Manager at John Lewis. The department store donated a playground manufactured from the 100% recycled beauty empties to the Becton Centre for Children & Young People last month. And retailers are providing incentives to consumers to use the facilities, rewarding extra points on loyalty cards or offering money off products. Lush has expanded its recycling scheme to accept all Lush plastic packaging. Rae Stanton, Lush’s Earthcare Retail Lead, says: “Our packaged product fans can claim 50p towards their Lush shopping per item that they bring back.” L’Occitane’s new #MEGA Sustainability Concept Store, which has opened in Hong Kong, uses a different strategy. Shoppers can earn rewards by achieving ‘green tasks’, from recycling their beauty empties in the in-store bins to completing a three- minute personal carbon footprint evaluation. The store aims to engage its local community in environmental protection through events too, such as pop-up eco-themed workshops. There is also a possibility to test some more experimental services. As rental platforms take off in fashion and furniture, is there also a role for rental in beauty? Wizz Selvey, founder and CEO of


cosmeticsbusiness.com


Wizz&Co, believes that it could offer an additional revenue for salons as they build back their businesses following the pandemic. “They could certainly look at the hire option for beauty tools and devices. The sell on network for salons is huge, and a lot are local to where people live so they could easily be picked up and dropped off, or even used in the salon.”


Jo Chidley ‘‘


There is an opportunity for businesses now to be real drivers of positive sustainable change within


retail Jo Chidley, founder, Beauty Kitchen and Return • Refill • Repeat


Retailers can also use sustainable or recycled shop fits, says Selvey: “How your shop fit is created and what it’s created from is interesting to consider as some of the big stores spend a fortune on shop fits and change them quite regularly.” Holland & Barrett launched its most sustainable store yet last year. Its Chelmsford store fit is made with 100% recyclable materials. And Lush uses recycled acrylic in its stores, a material that can be indefinitely recycled, along with reclaimed wood and recycled yoghurt pot table tops. But what more can beauty retailers do to be leaders in sustainability? Stanton says that this a question that can be approached with real excitement. She explains: “The global cosmetics business is valued at over $500bn – this is a huge opportunity for creative thinking, innovation, start-up initiatives and reverse engineering. For example, what are the products actually made of? How are ingredients sourced? What are the possibilities for environmental and social regeneration through these supply chains? How can transportation and work spaces be reconsidered to encompass initiatives such as renewable energy, ‘green’ engineering and human interaction with nature? Quite simply, we can do everything differently – let’s shake up the whole market by inspiring conscious consumption – as manufacturers and retailers but also by influencing our communities and customers.”


1 in 3 consumers rank sustainability as a top three purchasing criteria


Source: Accenture study, How will Covid-19 change the consumer, August 2020


Chidley adds: “The real innovation lies in how we can reuse materials so that there is never any waste created or a need to create products and packaging from new resources. Such as, paper made from sugar cane industry waste, alternative fibres such as bamboo and banana leaf waste or even coffee fibre. The real innovation is within how we can reuse resources time and time again”


ACTION POINTS


We need to take a targeted approach, together, to work throughout our value chains to identify areas for immediate development – to reduce the waste we are creating, then to innovate our products and packaging to ensure responsible consumption of resources, and then provide our customers with accessible and genuinely beneficial refilling and recycling systems for used packaging. Rae Stanton, Earthcare Retail Lead, Lush


With 57% of UK shoppers becoming more mindful of their online purchases because of the distribution and packaging impact on the environment (source: Westfield report), online retailers should start offering more sustainable delivery options.


May 2021 cosmetics business 13


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