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Nov 02, 2024

Estée Lauder and SMI announce cosmetic glass recycling case study findings

By DFNI Staff Writer in Cosmetics, People & Planet November 1, 2024 0 This multi-year study identifies key criteria for designing cosmetic glass packaging intended to be recyclable The Estée Lauder

By DFNI Staff Writer in Cosmetics, People & Planet November 1, 2024 0

This multi-year study identifies key criteria for designing cosmetic glass packaging intended to be recyclable

The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) and Strategic Materials, Inc. (SMI) recently published the findings from a cosmetic glass recycling case study to further enhance responsible packaging innovation and advance circularity for the cosmetics industry.

This multi-year study identifies key criteria for designing cosmetic glass packaging intended to be recyclable, and learnings from the study will support the industry in designing glass that yields a higher output of recyclable cullet in an effort to increase glass recyclability rates around the world.

The Estée Lauder Companies Senior Vice President, Global Engineering & Packaging, Robert Peterson said: “At ELC, we’re continually investing and innovating at every step of our packaging process to help drive more responsible packaging solutions that help enable our brands to deliver high-quality, luxury experiences to our consumers. We’re proud to collaborate with SMI, and other recyclers, suppliers, and industry partners, to incorporate more sustainable concepts into glass packaging designs and to advance responsible packaging solutions for our brands and the personal care and cosmetics industry at large.”

Since 2020, ELC and SMI have collaborated on in-depth testing of more than 200 glass beauty containers and packages to better understand what makes cosmetic glass packaging more efficiently sortable and how to overcome the challenges of delivering luxury decorations, colours, and formats that can be identified as recyclable by recyclers in practice and at scale.

The study focused on understanding the importance of designing-in recyclability by integrating luminous transmission, or the measurement of how much light can go through a glass package, as a key metric to identify glass packaging more accurately in sorting machines commonly used to separate recyclable materials at SMI.

The study included light transmission tests conducted in both a laboratory and glass sorting machine, and results showed that glass decorations that allow light transmission of 5% and above have a greater chance of being sorted correctly as glass. While the study’s authors recommend that further studies continue to be conducted, they’ve identified several design cues that play a role in a package’s sortability and shared recommendations for these considerations when designing glass packaging, including:

Glass compositionColourThickness of the glassDecorations (i.e. use of gradient, metallized inks, coatings)LabelsClosuresProduct residue

“While the majority of glass packaging recycled in North America today comes from the food and beverage industry, we have an opportunity to further advance circularity by looking towards the cosmetics and personal care industry,” said SMI Senior Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs, Laura Hennemann. “Through our collaboration with ELC, we are able to uncover what kind of glass cosmetics packaging can be most effectively recycled in practice and at scale and our hope is to remove barriers so that we can maximize recyclability yields and outputs to drive circular recovery throughout the system.”

In addition to new insights on the recyclability of various decorations, colours, and formats, the study includes design best practices that can serve as a guide to product developers, package designers, suppliers, and brands to help advance circularity. The company plans to train its packaging designers, product developers, and glass packaging suppliers on key criteria identified in the case study so they can make informed decisions when selecting and designing packaging materials. Findings from the case study will also be incorporated into ELC’s packaging sustainability guidelines.

To further inspire and enable packaging sustainability innovation across the cosmetics industry in North America, ELC and SMI have published this case study as a resource with the Glass Packaging Institute, where industry professionals will have access to these learnings and best practices.