Sustainable Packaging Innovations: Brands - part 4 Recover
Beauty and wellness brands are rethinking and redesigning “greener” packaging solutions with refillable formats and using renewable or upcycled materials in new and interesting ways.
This 4-part series of reports highlights all the most innovative and interesting packaging concepts launched in the last 12 months from mass to luxury brands, split into the 4R’s:
Part four, Recover, focuses on next generation materials such as mycelium and packaging made from upcycled contents.
Compostable or Biodegradable Packaging
Mirror Water
Mirror Water has developed a fully biodegradable box from Mycelium, a material derived from mushrooms and mixed with agricultural by-products.
Why it’s interesting? The box can be easily dispose of and will biodegrade in 45 days. However, it can also endure up to 30 years if stored in dry conditions. The UK brand worked with Maxipos to design the box.
Market: UK
Launch: August 2023
Solidu
Solidu is a waterless beauty brand that offers solid products - shampoos, conditioners, and body butters - shaped in a hexagonal for easy to grip design. Products come in upcycled bamboo boxes, which are fully home-compostable in 45 days.
Why it’s interesting? Packaging is plastic free and paper free, produced from starch, bamboo and charcoal. The SOLIDU box is made from offcuts from the production of bamboo chopsticks instead of virgin bamboo. The bamboo is combined with natural starch. The boxes are “backyard compostable” and is said to be good for the soil as the starch is a soil nutrient.
Market: Lithuania
Launch: December 2022
Haeckels
The brand's new packaging for its skincare line blends ocean and lab aesthetics with blue-grey coloured jars and cylinders.
Why it’s interesting? Made with a bio-polymer called Vivomar, an innovation developed by Shellworks. Vivomar is all-natural, vegan and produced by microbes. It is home and industrially compostable and will naturally degrade in the environment.
Market: UK
Launch: September 2022
Eauso Vert
Eauso Vert is a luxury female and Latinx-founded fragrance brand that focuses on compostable packaging. The brand offers five fragrances, including Purple Noon and Vanilla Embers.
Why it’s interesting? The bottle comes with a compostable cap made from natural wood and patented cork inner system, which removes the need for glue or plastic.
Market: LATAM
Launch: July 2023
Ffern
Made-to-order seasonal fragrances packaged in biodegradable boxes.
Why it’s interesting? The brand only releases four perfumes per year and focuses on eliminating plastic from its packaging. All packaging elements are 100% paper. Fern uses mycelium bottle trays grown from organic waste materials, which are 100% home-compostable packaging.
Market: UK
Launch: June 2023
Half Magic
Half Magic Beauty, founded by Euphoria makeup artist Donni Davey in 2022, created a 100% recyclable cosmetic palette for its packaging.
Why it’s interesting? The Paperfoam palette is made from potato starch and cellulose and is the first beauty brand to use Paperform as its primary packaging to hold the formula. Paperfoam is a sturdy, lightweight and biodegradable material making it ideal to use for beauty packaging.
Market: US
Launch: January 2023
Upcycled Materials
Refresh
An innovative and sustainable deodorant designed by Elanur Aslan with a refillable format and designed with waste plastics.
Why it’s interesting? Gives new purpose and a second life to discarded materials, the Refresh deodorant is made from upcycled waste plastic. Marrying form with function, the ergonomic design provides effortless and easy application. The inner chamber of the deodorant is easily refillable and replaceable.
Market: Global
Launch: September 2023
Ole Henriksen
The brand’s new CC Stick features limestone-based material in its packaging. It was developed by Japanese supplier TBM.
Why it’s interesting? For the launch of the brand’s Banana Bright+ Vitamin CC Stick, the company opted for primary packaging made from Limex pellets - a material that contains more than 50% inorganic material like calcium carbonate. The secondary packaging is made of recyclable FSC-certified cardboard.
Market: Global
Launch: March 2023
Lumene
Finnish brand Lumene unveiled a new bio-based jar and label for its Nordic-C Glow Moisturizer. It is said to be one of the first brands to launch a biobased packaging application with both the jar and label made with UPM’s innovative wood-based material, and processed by SABIC.
Why it’s interesting? The new bio-based jar and label claims to cut 60 tonnes of fossil-based plastic every year. Lumene is the first to launch a bio-based packaging application in which both the jar and the label are made with renewable sourced material comprising side streams from the Finnish forest industry.
Market: Europe
Launch: May 2023
EDO
Men’s skincare line focuses on minimalist and sustainable packaging using eco-friendly materials.
Why it’s interesting? Meticulous care was put into every detail of the design from colour to size and texture on the packaging. The packaging is made from wood fiber-based composite.
Market: Nordic
Launch: June 2023
Biobrush
The everyday toothbrush gets a eco-modern brand design.
Why it’s interesting? Looks like plastic, but the biodegradable toothbrush is made of bioplastic from wood waste. 96% biodegradable, the brushes are produced from wood residues from sustainable local forestry.
Market: Germany
Launch: May 2023
Tangle Tweezer
The UK brand has launched a plant-powered hairbrush called Plant Brush, which is made from 85% sustainably sourced plant-based materials.
Why it’s interesting? The brush’s material started life as a bean and the sustainably grown and harvested castor beans are transformed into bioplastic. The brush can be sent back to the brand for recycling, free of charge.
Market: UK
Launch: May 2023
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Mainstream brands are using mushrooms or mycelium and agricultural by-products for beauty packaging.
- Beauty brands are also investing in natural materials that are good for the soil when composted at home. Packaging materials that regenerate the soil will grow popular.
- Explore new material innovations like vivomar, an all-natural material produced by microbes. Take inspiration from Haeckels’ new skincare line.
- More and more beauty brands are upcycling waste and/or discarded materials to create new packaging. Explore wood waste like Biobrush who has developed a toothbrush that is made from wood residues from sustainable local forestry.
Click on the below to access and read our other Sustainable Packaging Innovations: Brands reports in the series:
Sustainable Packaging Innovations: Brands - Part 1 Reuse/Refill
Sustainable Packaging Innovations: Brands - Part 2 Reduce
Sustainable Packaging Innovations: Brands - Part 3 Recycle
