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Emma Grace Bailey
From daily use products such as deodorant and toothpaste, to longer lasting items such as eyeshadow compacts and fragrance, the industry is rife with complex, multi-material packaging designs that are impossible to separate, let alone clean and dispose of responsibly in the home. While some brands and services purport to recycle these multi-component vessels, the reality isn’t quite as utopic, and the single-use packs, made predominantly from plastic, continue to plague our land for centuries to come.
One solution is refillable packaging, which empowers consumers to hold onto packs, replacing the formula inside, but not the plastic that holds it. Successful refillable packaging design has one thing in common - the pack is desirable and perceived as valuable, whether due to material choice, bespoke attributes or because it’s just so beautiful you want to keep it forever. Discover five beauty brands pioneering the at-home Refillution.
80% of Americans would buy a product without single-use plastic packaging if they could.
The refillable and reusable packaging market is predicted to reach a value of USD 53.4 billion by 2027.
Searches for ‘refillable fragrance’ grew by 431% over the 2021 Holiday period.
Single use deodorants are some of the biggest plastic polluters on our planet. Housed in ‘impossible-to-recycle’, multi-part plastic packs, their everyday use is adding to landfills at an alarming rate. Bite’s refillable deodorant proposes a new system, with refill capsules housed in paperboard that simply slot into a reusable Aluminium container that can be used time and time again.
In fact, Bite has designed the deodorant holder so it becomes battered and scarred overtime, embedding a personal story into its lifetime that transforms it into a cherished object. One that could even be handed down through generations if you so desired.
A make-up palette is only half useful. Consumers use just a handful of shades, never touching others due to skin tone or preference. This lack of choice means customers are paying for something they don’t actually want, and are stuck with the guilt of wasting not only their money but the product too.
MOB Beauty’s modular and refillable palette allows a consumer to choose the exact pans of colour they want, with removable components that can be replaced as and when they run out. The palette itself is made of plastic - although it’s far from single-use - but refills come packed in PCR-Paper clamshells and Aluminium pans for efficient recycling.
Make-up products such as lipstick, mascara and compacts are traditionally made of multiple components and multiple materials. Fused together and virtually impossible to separate, these daily-use products can’t be recycled kerbside and end up in landfill.
Kjaer Weis has been tackling this issue since its inception in 2010, offering an array of refillable products housed in luxury metal packaging. Pans or capsules of products can be pushed and pulled out of the outer casing, and a new one simply clicked into place. Refills comes in Paper packs, while a new range of card-based compacts offers a lightweight option for easier transportation.
Many of the beauty and personal care products we buy come in small volumes, designed to make transportation and storage easier. A downside to this system is that we end up going through countless products in a lifetime, and in turn we go through countless pieces of packaging.
Supersized refills help mitigate this waste, and Meow Meow Tweet’s refill system is based on the concept of ‘bulk buying’. Housed in 100% Aluminium bottles and tubs, supersized refills are available for an array of its products. Consumers buy the bulk product and use it to refill their regular sized packs at home, ensuring components such as pumps and droppers - which are impossible to recycle - can be used time and time again. The brand will even take empty bulk packs back, clean and reuse them.
The beauty industry relies on dispensers - pumps, droppers and so on that help get formulas out of a pack and into the consumer’s hand. The issue with these dispensers is that they’re usually made of plastic and metal components, impossible to separate and too small to be recycled.
Uni’s new refill system champions the concept of a Forever Dispenser - made from Aluminium and designed to be separated from the bottle and reused on the next. The brand’s range of body care comes in 100% aluminium bottles, over which the dispenser sits. When empty, they’re swapped out for a new one and sent back to the brand to be cleaned and re-used, or effectively recycled when no longer viable.