How Beauty Brands Are Rethinking Packaging

Why Plastic Belongs in the Beauty Industry

Plastic is a go-to material for beauty packaging because of its performance. It protects formulas from contamination, oxidation, moisture, and light exposure in ways that few other materials can match at comparable weight and cost. Its design flexibility allows brands to create precise dispensing mechanisms like airless pumps and fine-mist sprayers that glass and metal can’t replicate. When shipping products globally, the weight advantage over glass alone has meaningful consequences for transportation emissions and breakage rates.

There’s also the growing importance of clean and low-preservative formulas, which place additional demands on packaging. When a product contains fewer chemical preservatives, the container becomes its primary defense against contamination. Plastic’s ability to be engineered for specific barrier properties makes it particularly well-suited to this trend.

None of this means plastic is beyond scrutiny. The beauty industry produces an estimated 120 billion units of packaging every year, and only 9% of it is recycled. The industry’s biggest players are making investments to tackle this issue and improve circularity.

Consumers Are Paying Attention

Consumer expectations of sustainability are steadily growing. NIQ’s clean beauty analysis shows that conscious consumers are actively choosing brands whose values align with their own, and roughly 73% of consumers say packaging sustainability influences their purchase decisions. In many markets, especially among younger shoppers, recyclable packaging has become a baseline expectation.

Demand for refillable skincare options is now essentially universal across demographics. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s (SPC) 2026 refillable packaging research found that virtually every skincare user surveyed expressed interest in refillable options, regardless of age, ethnicity, or geography. The demand is there, but meeting it is a complex challenge.

Ambitious Targets Meet Real-World Complexity

No company has been more vocal about its sustainability commitments than L’Oréal. The company set a target for 100% of its plastic packaging to be reusable, refillable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025, with 50% coming from recycled or bio-based sources. While it fell short of those goals, it continues to push forward.

According to Retail Brew, L’Oréal has already used life cycle assessment tools and an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fee calculator to identify savings opportunities, discovering it could avoid a million dollars in annual EPR fees simply by removing metal design decals from a Garnier shampoo line once California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act ( SB 54)takes effect in 2027. That success gives a glimpse of the kind of quantified, design-level intervention needed to meet sustainability commitments.

The Estée Lauder Companies are on a parallel path. EPR preparedness has become part of its design mandate, with packaging teams working backward from end-of-life requirements to inform decisions made at the prototype stage.

For Refillables to Work, Address Practicality

Refillable packaging is one of the most structurally promising changes available to the beauty industry. A refillable container that travels with a consumer for years eliminates the need for new primary packaging with each repurchase, reducing material use in a way that recycling alone can’t.

The adoption challenge is convenience. The SPC research found that the biggest barriers to refillable adoption are concerns about messiness, complexity, and limited product availability. The strongest purchase motivators were ease of use and durability. Formats that require extra steps, introduce uncertainty about hygiene, or simply aren’t available for the products consumers already use will struggle to scale regardless of their environmental credentials.

This is a design and retail problem as much as a manufacturing one. Refill systems that feel seamless and familiar are far more likely to build the habitual use that makes them environmentally meaningful over time.

No Brand Can Close the Loop Alone

Individual brand commitments have limits. The most promising recent developments involve brands, retailers, and recovery organizations working together toward shared infrastructure.

Planet Beautiful, a campaign launched in April 2026 by cosmetic brand Saie in partnership with Sephora US and 11 other beauty brands, links consumer purchases directly to verified plastic recovery programs through a partnership with rePurpose Global. Participating products were featured in 425 Sephora US stores, bringing sustainability messaging onto the retail floor where purchase decisions are actually made. L’Oréal, meanwhile, is working through its partnership with Closed Loop Partners alongside Kraft Heinz, Target, and P&G to retrofit recycling facilities capable of processing the small-format rigid plastics that dominate beauty packaging. This is the kind of plastic that most curbside recycling programs currently can't handle.

Changing What Plastic Is Made From

Beyond changing formats and recovery systems, the industry is also working on the composition of plastic itself. Bio-based plastics derived from renewable feedstocks like sugarcane offer a route to reducing fossil-derived inputs while preserving the functional properties that make plastic valuable in beauty applications.

ALPLA’s bio-based jar, developed for La Biosthétique’s Velvet Finish Paste is a concrete example of this in practice. The jar, cap, and liner are made entirely from bio-based material derived from renewable raw materials. The packaging produces only half the emissions of a comparable solution made from conventional virgin plastic, and a survey of 70 professional users found that the majority were not only satisfied with the product but willing to pay more for it. The packaging is also ready for series production and scalable. Innovative prototypes and commercially available solutions have historically been one of the sector’s persistent frustrations, so tackling scale is important.

Regulation Is Driving the Industry Forward

The trend toward sustainability may have started with consumer demand, but regulation is ensuring it continues. California’s SB 54, the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), and expanding EPR frameworks across U.S. states are adding a financial incentive to packaging decisions. Brands that design for recyclability, invest in reusable and refillable systems, and reduce virgin plastic content are generally expected to face lower fees and fewer compliance burdens.

The beauty industry’s relationship with plastic is evolving. Brands are investing in bio-based materials, refillable formats, collaborative recovery infrastructure, and EPR preparedness to meet the needs of a market that’s moving toward circularity, and has no reason to move back.