DEA Series

Baralan's DEA series – airless glass packaging / Source: Baralan

AfricaAsiaBeautyDEA SeriesEuropeGlassInertLeak ProofLightweightNorth AmericaOceaniaOxygen Barrier PackagingRecyclableRigidSealableSouth AmericaTransparent

WHAT WE SAY:

Air-tight packaging is an imperative in the beauty industry. It helps prolong the shelf life of a product, ensures unstable, active ingredients aren’t exposed to oxygen, and protects formulas from skin contamination.

However, most airless packs are made from plastic – both the outer packaging and an inner plastic bag – as well as myriad components that mean the packaging can’t be disassembled and disposed of responsibly. Baralan is changing this narrative, and its new DEA series sees airless glass containers come to the fore. Formulas are housed directly in the glass, and the company has designed for refill to ensure small components such as pumps can be easily reused. Given that glass is inert and highly recycled, we’re amazed this hasn’t been done before.

DEA Series

WHAT IS DEA SERIES?

Baralan’s DEA series is a range of airless packaging solutions where the cosmetic formula is in direct contact with the Glass packaging. The DEA collection – which stands for Developing the Evolution of Airless – has no internal plastic container, and is suitable for a range of applications across skincare, hair care, and bath and body care.
Available in two styles – classic and premium – the bottles are designed with a limited number of components to facilitate disassembly and recyclability. With a pared back but luxury design, all containers are transparent, allowing the formula to be visible, and come in 15, 30 and 50 millilitre sizes.
The bottles are fitted with a standard GPI 18/400 neck finish, which makes them compatible with a wide range of commercial pumps. This allows for further modularity, different decoration techniques and product customisation.
The range can be both single-use and refillable. The refill bottles allow customers to simply replace the formula-filled glass container, reusing tricky-to-recycle, plastic-based components such as a pump time and time again.
Thanks to the use of glass and a smooth dispensing piston, no internal lubricant is needed to help ease the formula out of the pack. Lubricating agents – most often made from crude oil – are frequently used with plastic to limit friction between differing materials. Crude oil contaminates soil and water and accumulates on plant tissue – according to British campaign group Oil Care, just one litre of oil can contaminate as much as one million litres of water. Swapping plastic for glass removes the need for lubrication.

KEY PROPERTIES:

Inert
Leak Proof
Lightweight
Oxygen Barrier
Recyclable
Rigid
Sealable
Transparent

INDUSTRY:

Beauty
Packaging

AVAILABILITY:

Commercially Available

DIVE DEEPER:

Waste is built into the beauty industry – and by that we mean product waste. Unsold, returned, expired and discontinued products all end up in landfill – not to mention the millions of products sitting in consumers’ homes, never to be used. According to estimations from the CEO of beauty brand Prose, this equates to between 20% and 40% of all beauty products – a colossal amount of resources, time and money just thrown away.
One packaging innovation that’s attempted to stem the flow of this waste over the years is airless packaging – designed to keep active, unstable ingredients fresh and effective for as long as possible. Their popularity has grown exponentially, thanks in part to a rise in demand for more potent products. The downside, as ever, is the packaging, with airless containers notorious for being impossible to disassemble, made of multiple types of plastic and therefore not recyclable in any kerbside waste stream. And, if we’re honest, they’re not being recycled elsewhere either.
This is what makes Baralan’s solution so impactful. With a mono-material glass bottle and a reduced component pump and extraction mechanism, the design allows for easier disposal at the end-of-life. Consumers simply twist the pump off the neck of the bottle, clean and dispose of the glass container within their household collections. Data from Close the Glass Loop shows that collection of glass containers reached 78% in the EU in 2019, making it a heavily recycled material in some parts of the world.
Baralan’s refill option pushes the concept even further, encouraging the reuse of hard and impossible-to-recycle components such as pumps, which can be twisted off a finished bottle and fitted to a new one.
Despite being made of glass – which is often criticised for its weight and subsequent energy expenditure – Baralan says the packaging is lighter than normal due to its reduced use of additional components.

The bottles come in a range of sizes / Source: Baralan via Luxe Packaging

Baralan DEA range / Source: Baralan

KEY FACTS:

20-40%

of all beauty products end up as waste, according to the CEO of beauty brand Prose

78%

of glass containers were collected in the EU in 2019

Key Questions to Ask:

Can you create a mono-material airless container?

While Baralan has done a brilliant job of removing components from the mechanism, it still relies on plastic pumps to work. Pumps continue to be the bane of the industry, and thus far no one has successfully made one without plastic. Could potent, active ingredients be dispensed in a different way that mitigates this need, or, as is the case with Sbtrct, formed into solid products?

How can you encourage users to keep the pump while recycling the glass jar?

Behaviour change is a necessary hurdle in the quest for the ‘refillution’, and Baralan’s solution requires not only the reuse of the pump, but the correct disposal of the bottle too. Hygiene concerns are likely to arise in relation to the pump, and brands should prioritise the communication of cleaning instructions to ensure these are mitigated. Better yet, design a pump that can be easily rinsed without the need for cleaning tools. Supplying the refill through the right channels is also imperative. If only available online, offer a subscription-based service – negating the need for consumers to remember to reorder. If launching into brick-and-mortar stores, a prefill business model would suit.

What’s the recycling rate of glass in your targeted territory?

As with all materials, there is variability in recycling rates between regions. Recent glass collection rates in Australia, for example, have been as low as 46% compared to Europe's 78%, so it is essential to know your audience. Despite these variable numbers, they are still significantly higher than plastic’s collection rate, so glass shouldn’t be discarded offhand.