Sustainable beauty packaging is at a turning point. On September 26, 2025, industry leaders gathered at the French Ministry of Ecological Transition for the Beauty for Good conference, co-organized by Marie Claire and the FEBEA, to map out what cosmetic packaging will realistically look like in the years ahead. The answer involves paper-carton, refillable formats, enzymatic recycling, and a hard look at consumer behavior — all framed by Europe's tightening regulatory pressure.
The beauty industry has long relied on elaborate packaging as a core part of its identity. Glass bottles, layered secondary cartons, oversized caps — these are the codes of luxury and aspiration. But the environmental cost of that aesthetic is no longer sustainable, and the sector knows it. The question now is not whether to change, but how fast, and through which innovations.
The Beauty for Good initiative, launched in 2024, brought together brands, consultants, and scientists to accelerate that shift. The September 26 event, held at the Ministry of Ecological Transition in Paris, was its most visible moment yet, gathering voices from L'Oréal France, L'Occitane en Provence, Kenzo Parfums, Interparfums, MyBlend, Aroma-Zone, and beyond.
Sustainable beauty packaging is reshaping industry standards
The French cosmetics sector adopted its "Plastic Act" back in 2021, a roadmap built around four pillars: reduce, reuse, recycle, and reinvent. Four years later, the results are uneven but real. The European PPWR regulation (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) now adds a legal layer to what was previously voluntary commitment, forcing brands to rethink their entire packaging strategy.
Amélie Debaye, Head of Beauty at Kantar, presented findings from a study conducted in June 2025 for the FEBEA and Marie Claire. The numbers reveal a market in transition — but not yet in revolution. 59% of women surveyed had purchased at least one refillable cosmetic product in the past year, a significant share. Yet only 15% consider refillability an important purchase criterion, and just 1 in 3 consumers favor eliminating secondary packaging for skincare products.
According to the June 2025 Kantar study, 30% of consumers say they are sensitive to packaging they can “empty completely” — a simple usability factor that directly aligns with reduced waste.
The cosmetics sector's sustainability scores range between 65 and 77, placing it ahead of fashion and automotive but behind the agri-food industry. Marie Audren, Director of Public Affairs and Communication at the FEBEA, frames this as both a recognition and a challenge: the industry is doing better than many, but the gap with food remains a benchmark worth closing.
The EcoBeauty Score as a transparency tool
One concrete response to consumer confusion is the EcoBeauty Score, described at the conference as the "Nutriscore of beauty." The concept mirrors the food sector's labeling approach, giving consumers a quick, standardized read on a product's environmental footprint. Whether brands will adopt it broadly — and whether regulators will mandate it — remains an open question, but its development signals a shift toward accountability that goes beyond marketing claims.
The refill model: real gains, real friction
Refillable beauty products are no longer a niche concept. L'Oréal France's Barbara Bressand Sussfeld pointed to the Elsève haircare line as a case study: switching to refills across just 4 products delivered a 35% reduction in the carbon impact of the entire range. That figure is striking, and it demonstrates that refillable haircare formats can carry measurable environmental weight, not just symbolic value.
MyBlend goes further in its material choices: 100% of its carton packaging is recycled, its primary packaging uses glass and aluminum, and plastic represents only 6% of the range. Guillaume Lascourrèges, Directeur développement responsable at MyBlend, describes this as a deliberate constraint that forced creative solutions rather than compromises.
But the refill model faces structural obstacles. Visibility in retail is poor — refill stations are often poorly positioned or absent from mainstream distribution channels. Price perception is another barrier: consumers frequently assume refills cost more, even when they don't. And the practical concern of spillage during transfer keeps some buyers away entirely.
- Up to 35% reduction in carbon impact (Elsève example)
- At least -80% energy savings vs. remanufacturing
- 59% of women have already tried a refillable product
- Low in-store visibility of refill formats
- Price perception often unfavorable
- Spillage risk discourages some consumers
- Secondary packaging still seen as essential for fragrance and makeup
Reuse and deposit schemes: the Circul'R and Aroma-Zone experiments
Beyond individual refills, the reuse economy is being tested at scale. The Circul'R project, led by consultant Paul Prévot, has recovered nearly 12,000 containers through in-store collection points. Return rates currently sit between 7 and 12% at points of sale — a number that sounds modest but is considered a viable starting point given the infrastructure is still nascent.
Aroma-Zone offers a parallel data point from its deposit scheme for food supplements: return rates climbed from 15% to 20% as consumer habits adjusted. Agnès Coste, RSE and Impact Manager at Aroma-Zone, is candid about the challenge: viability depends on market maturity. The economics of reuse only work once enough consumers participate consistently. Reuse delivers at least 80% energy savings compared to remanufacturing a new container — making the environmental case unambiguous — but the commercial case requires patient investment.
Célia Rennesson, co-founder of Réseau Vrac et Réemploi, noted that large-scale distribution remains a key battleground. Getting reuse formats into mainstream supermarkets, not just specialty retailers, is where the real volume shift will happen.
Paper-carton and material innovation are converging
One of the most concrete announcements at the Beauty for Good conference concerned packaging materials. A consortium of 15 competing brands, coordinated by Géraldine Poivert's agency (Re)SET, has been jointly developing paper-carton packaging solutions for cosmetics. The target: having these new formats on retail shelves within approximately one year of the September 2025 event, meaning around late 2026.
The collaboration between competitors is unusual in an industry that guards formulations and aesthetics closely. But Delphine Fauchère, President of eco-design agency Bonté Divine!, argues that packaging innovation is a pre-competitive space — no single brand has the R&D budget to crack paper-carton for cosmetics alone, and the regulatory pressure is shared.
Material innovation is not limited to paper. L'Occitane en Provence has limited its plastic use to just 2 types across its range, a deliberate constraint designed to simplify sorting and improve recyclability. David Bayard, Director of R&D Packaging at L'Occitane, is also looking further ahead at enzymatic recycling as a pathway for plastic types that current mechanical recycling cannot handle effectively. This approach uses biological enzymes to break down polymers — a technology still scaling but already attracting serious investment.
minimum energy savings from reuse compared to remanufacturing a new container
There are aesthetic trade-offs that brands are learning to navigate. Recycled glass and aluminum are less transparent and less uniformly brilliant than virgin materials — a real tension for fragrance brands whose identity is built on visual impact. Kenzo Parfums addressed this directly: Armel Yver, Global Sustainability Integration Manager, described the decision to reduce the cap size on one of the brand's iconic fragrances as a negotiation between heritage design and material reduction. The result uses less material without abandoning the bottle's recognizable silhouette.
Interparfums faces an additional layer of complexity. Jeremy Toledano, Packaging Development and Purchasing Manager, highlighted the challenge of navigating divergent regulatory environments across global markets — what qualifies as compliant packaging in Europe may not meet standards elsewhere, making a unified sustainable packaging strategy genuinely difficult to execute at multinational scale.
The urgency behind the industry's transformation
Alexis Rosenfeld, photographer and explorer behind the Fondation 1 Océan, brought a visceral counterpoint to the conference's technical discussions. His next documentary mission targets Aldabra, an atoll in the Seychelles designated as the most plastic-polluted site on Earth. The images from that mission, when they arrive, will inevitably frame public debate around cosmetic packaging waste — a reminder that the 4R framework and the PPWR regulation are responses to a physical reality accumulating on coastlines and ocean floors.
The EcoBeauty Score, the paper-carton consortium, the deposit schemes, the enzymatic recycling research — none of these exist in isolation. They are pieces of a sector-wide effort to reconcile beauty's cultural role with a credible environmental posture. Axel de Marles, Director of the Institut Senseva, noted that consumer sensoriality remains central: sustainable packaging cannot sacrifice the tactile and visual experience that makes a product desirable, or adoption stalls.
Electronic beauty devices — LED masks and similar tech-forward products — present their own unresolved challenge. Questions of lifespan, repairability, and end-of-life management for these products remain largely unanswered, and they sit awkwardly within a framework designed primarily for traditional packaging formats.
The cosmetics industry's sustainability scores between 65 and 77 suggest meaningful progress. But the gap with the agri-food sector shows there is structural work still to do — on material choices, on consumer education, on retail infrastructure for reuse, and on the kind of cross-brand collaboration that the (Re)SET consortium has demonstrated is possible. The packaging of tomorrow is already being designed today, in labs and meeting rooms, by brands that have accepted the constraint as a creative brief rather than a regulatory burden. Whether that pace matches the urgency Aldabra represents is the question the industry cannot yet fully answer.
