With the news that L’Oréal and The Perfume Shop have joined forces to create a multi-brand perfume refill station, it’s a good time to recap on what refillable beauty is and how it’s faring.What is refillable beauty?
What is refillable beauty?
Refillable beauty’ is a sustainable approach to beauty packaging where rather than buying a beauty product in brand new packaging every time (that just gets thrown away), you can actually refill or replenish it with your favourite product instead. That means less waste, a reduction in single-use products and usually a slightly lower cost to the consumer.
Why is refillable beauty a thing?
According to the British Beauty Council around 95% of cosmetic packaging is thrown away. We hardly recycle any of it (14% or less) and most of it’s single use plastic, where it’s often liquid products and packaging’s used to stand out in a competitive market.
It’s better for the environment as it uses less resources and creates less waste. It also raises awareness of the waste around single-use plastics and encourages conscious consumerism. There’s also an argument that it helps to encourage innovation and creativity within the industry. Plus, it’s often cheaper for customers to buy refills and reuse packaging rather than buying brand new each time (only to throw it away).
Challenges with refillable beauty
All sounds great, right? Well there are some challenges with refillable beauty and some reasons why it’s not wider-spread in the industry:
- Consumer behaviour
- Initial costs of refillable products
- Logistics and infrastructure
- Standardisation and compatibility across
- Consumer trust and hygiene concerns
- Education and awareness
Beauty brands who do refillable products
Some beauty brands have been doing refillable beauty products for years, whereas others are newer to the concept. So if you want to check out some refillable products, or familiarise yoursel with what’s out there, then these are the beauty brands that are betting on refillable:
- Charlotte Tilbury
- UpCircle
- BYOMA
- OUAI
- Glow Recipe
- Kerastase
- Diptyque
- Molton Brown
- Guerlain
- Isle of Paradise
- The Body Shop
- Tata Harper
- Hourglass Skincare
- Fenty Beauty
- Rituals
- L’Occitane
- Mugler
- Beauty Kitchen
Search trends and stats on refillable beauty
📈 Google Trends (worldwide over last 12 months)
⬇Refillable beauty -9%
⬇Beauty refills -13%
⬆Refillable perfume +31%
⬆Refillable skincare +21%
⬆Refillable shampoo +11%
➡Refillable cosmetics stayed the same
📈Instagram (worldwide)
3.7k #refillablebeauty
📈TiKTok (worldwide)
refillablebeauty – 13.1m views
#refillableperfume – 4.5m views
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