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P&G Beauty: Focus on Reduction
Jenny Rushmore, global sustainability leader for P&G Beauty & Grooming, says that creating beautiful and sustainable packaging is a core part of the group’s sustainability strategy, and a priority for P&G as a company. She says that corporate research shows that consumers perceive packaging to be one of the main environmental impacts of beauty products, and at the same time, P&G wants to make beautiful packaging in as cost-efficient a way as possible. “This means,” says Rushmore, “that focusing on reducing both primary and secondary packaging, as well as developing other innovations in the area of materials and recyclability, are crucial for our business.”

 Estée Lauder Takes a Big Step
The Estée Lauder Companies also maintains that cosmetic packaging must be sustainable as well as beautiful, and takes the challenge one step further. The beauty giant designs its packaging under a “cradle-to-cradle” philosophy, with the goal of maximizing the use of renewable and recycled source materials, designing for recovery at the end of product life and manufacturing its packaging using renewable energy—as defined by the SPC’s definition of sustainability set forth at the beginning of this article. The company’s Environmental Packaging Design Protocol, in effect since 2001 and updated regularly, mandates the use of bio-based or technical materials that can be recycled, composted or recovered in a waste-to-energy facility. It bans the use of materials from old growth forests and favors recycled paper and fiber products, or materials from sustainable sources. PVC is avoided in packaging wherever practical. Estée Lauder is also a partner in the largest solar-powered plant in New Jersey. With the purchase of renewable electricity for all of its operations facilities by the end of 2007, Estée Lauder claims to be the only beauty company to use green power for all of its manufacturing.

Read more at: http://www.beautypackaging.com/articles/2009/05/sustainable-packaging-new-strides-strategies