The beauty industry creates a significant amount of waste, with packaging the biggest culprit. Unfortunately, a lot of beauty packaging can’t be recycled including nail polish bottles, mascara tubes and eyeshadow palettes.
As consumers become more informed, they are demanding more earth-friendly options when it comes to the packaging of their makeup and skincare products. Korean beauty brand innisfree is exploring ways to create more sustainable packaging options. This has led to the creation of a limited-edition Green Tea Seed Serum housed in packaging made with 51.8% less plastic — how good!
The new Green Tea Seed Serum (Paper Bottle) packaging is made with an outer paper mould, a lighter inner plastic liner to protect the formula and 10% recycled plastic used for the cap and shoulder of the bottle. While it’s not completely plastic-free, this is a pretty ingenious invention for a liquid product.
Once you’ve finished using the product, you simply peel off the label and pull the two halves of the moulded paper shell away from the thin inner plastic container to recycle separately. The Green Tea Seed Serum is innisfree’s best selling moisturising serum and this limited-edition update to the packaging is sure to be a hit with beauty lovers.
The brand also offers an in-store recycling program, so you can take your empties back and be rewarded with 50 points added to your My innisfree loyalty program. The empty products are then sent on to TerraCycle — a recycling company that deals with hard-to-recycle waste.
This is a much-needed step towards the use of more sustainable packaging made with less plastic, but unfortunately, in this case, it is only a limited-edition product. This is something innisfree are working on, says Nikki Novakovic, Marketing Manager for innisfree Australia.
“We are committed to seeking alternative and more sustainable packaging solutions. There are undoubtedly plenty of simple opportunities to reduce the use of plastic,” Novakovic said in a press release.
“The Green Tea Seed Serum paper bottle is a small but a significant step towards more sustainable beauty, and from here, we will strive to further develop product packaging that has a positive impact on our environment and the Earth.”
innisfree aims to have 100% of its plastic waste reusable by 2030 and, to further support sustainability efforts, the brand will continue to reduce the amount of plastic and vinyl usage in stores.
We applaud innisfree on this move and hope to see more movement from other brands in the beauty industry in order to reduce the amount of unnecessary packaging waste being produced.
You can purchase the Green Tea Seed Serum (Paper Bottle) in-store at innisfree from September 1 for $54.