Olay trials refillable packaging for mass retail in beauty market

19 Jul 2019 --- Olay is remodeling its Olay Regenerist Whip moisturizer with a refill pod made from recyclable polypropylene that fits within its jar. Brand-owner Procter & Gamble (P&G) says the beauty brand project will save over 1,000,000 lbs of plastic, per 5 million jars sold. The packaging concept is set to debut in October 2019 and will run until the end of the year.

Consumers will be able to purchase the refillable Olay Regenerist Whip package that contains one full jar of Olay Regenerist Whip and one refill pod of moisturizer that can be placed inside the jar once it is emptied. The package will be sold and shipped in a container made of 100 percent recycled paper and will not contain an outer carton in order to reduce the use of paperboard. The pods are also recyclable.

Innovation in the booming e-commerce market must, arguably, go further than recyclability. Within the online groceries market alone, growth is occurring at a double-digit rate in the past years. However, the levels of waste in e-commerce packaging remain high, which coupled with extended fuel usage for personal deliveries, makes it a market with sustainability issues. 

“The ultimate goal is to find and adopt many more sustainable packaging solutions, and the refillable Olay Regenerist Whip package is the first step of that journey,” says Anitra Marsh, Associate Director of Sustainability and Brand Communications for Skin and Personal Care at Olay. “It’s really important for us to get it right because only then can we bring this concept to market at scale.”

Olay will test its refillable Olay Regenerist Whip moisturizer on Olay.com in the US and UK and through select retailers online for a three-month period. Furthermore, the brand plans to evaluate the consumer trends to inform future packaging decisions. The brand is particularly interested in the way consumers interact with refillable beauty products, such as in the case of whether or not consumers like the idea of refillable skincare products, and whether such design concepts are intuitive. Over time, the refills could be sold separately.

P&G was the first CPG company to respond to TerraCycle’s innovative Loop concept, in which popular products are delivered directly to the consumer, returned and refilled in premium packaging.

Reducing the amount of virgin plastic is a key ambition of companies pushing to green-up their portfolio this year, which is in part enabled through innovative refillable packaging concepts. For example, Unilever recently launched Cif ecorefill – a new home technology that allows consumers to refill and reuse their Cif spray bottles “for life.” Made with 75 percent less plastic, Cif ecorefill attaches to the current Cif Power & Shine bottles and seamlessly releases the super-concentrated product into the bottle, which is filled with water at home. 

Unilever states that 62 percent of consumers have said reusable packaging is even more important to them than recycling. Meanwhile, 83 percent of people wish they had access to more refillable products and, furthermore, only 16 percent are currently buying refills.

In-line with this trend, high-end UK grocer Waitrose and Partners launched a refillable zone in one of its stores as part of its “packaging-free” grocery concept. Shoppers can bring their own containers to transport dried goods such as pulses, frozen fruits and beverages, and pick up packaging-free fruit and vegetables, among other stripped back offerings.

By Benjamin Ferrer

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