LVMH Beauty partners with Dow in bioplastics shift for cosmetic and perfume packaging
20 Feb 2023 --- Dow and LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) Beauty are collaborating to accelerate environmentally sustainable packaging across LVMH’s perfume and cosmetic products. The companies plan on integrating bio-based and circular plastics into several multinational product applications.
LVMH Beauty is home to 75 luxury brands. The transition is a part of LVMH’s Life 360 program, an initiative to create products in harmony with nature that respect and preserve biodiversity and the climate, engaging and motivating all stakeholders.
“At LVMH, with our Life 360 program, we made the decision that our packaging will contain zero plastic from virgin fossil resources in the near future,” says Claude Martinez, executive president and managing director at LVMH Beauty.
“Collaborating with Dow in developing sustainable Surlyn [bioplastic] is key as this material is used in some of our iconic perfumes, starting with Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire. It is helping LVMH achieve our sustainability targets without any compromise on quality.”
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LVMH will make its packaging from bio-based and plastic waste feedstocks. These textiles will be used to produce Surlyn Ionomers. Surlyn is the name of Dow’s bioplastic made from polymers used to manufacture premium perfume caps and cosmetic cream jars.
The bio-based Surlyn plastic is made from raw materials such as cooking oil. LVMH Beauty says it will only utilize by-products from an alternative production process to create the plastic. The company continues that the raw feedstock materials will not consume extra land resources nor compete with the food chain.
The other type of Surlyn used to create the packaging for LVMH’s beauty products is circular Surlun. It will be made from hard-to-recycle mixed plastic waste through advanced recycling technologies.
The waste plastics are broken down into basic chemical elements using heat and pressure, creating raw material equivalent to virgin fossil feedstock. This circular process can be used in a wide range of packaging, giving waste that will otherwise go to landfills or incinerated a second life.
Circular solutions
Dow says the environmentally sustainable Surlyn portfolio will deliver similar crystalline transparency and freedom of design expected from the rest of Dow’s Surlyn range at a low carbon footprint.
“Creating a circular economy takes every player in the value chain to commit to ambitious goals and challenge the status quo. Dow looks forward to supporting the sustainability journey of a leading global luxury brand,” said Karen S. Carter, president of packaging and specialty plastics at Dow. 
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LVMH Beauty states the switch to more ecological packaging will maintain the functionality and quality of the packaging.
Environmentally friendly aspirations
Within 2023, some of LVMH’s perfume packaging will include bio-based Surlyn and circular Surlyn.
Perfumes such as the recent launch of Guerlain, a brand of LVMH’s collaboration with Maison Matisse, will be encased in bioplastic and circular solution packaging in the future.
This collaboration represents another key example of Dow’s continued effort to transform waste and alternative feedstock as per its Transform the Waste target announced in October 2022. Similarly, the transition to more ecological packaging is part of LVMH’s broader efforts to help the environment in its Life 360 program.
LVMH has said its brands are practicing environmentally sustainable alternatives to promote biodiversity. Parfums Christian Dior is working locally to perpetuate flower cultivation in the region regeneratively and reintroduce them into agricultural ecosystems.
Additionally, The Maison collaborated with Union for Ethical BioTrade to commit to certifying 100% of its 42 gardens and partner gardens worldwide as organic or regenerative by 2030, as well as progressively certifying field crops (notably beets, the source of the alcohol for its fragrances).
Edited by Sabine Waldeck
