Royal DSM, a science-based company, has partnered with Albéa, a cosmetic packaging supplier, to bring sustainable packaging for its sun care formulation prototypes and achieve its vision of delivering a fully sustainable sun care offering to customers.
 
Increasingly, consumers searching for planet-friendly options are expanding this scope to include packaging as well, looking at what’s in the bottle and at the bottle itself to make informed and responsible choices. In addition, rising consumer concern about packaging safety and ease of use is fueling demand for contamination-free packaging that can help deliver peace of mind to consumers.
 
Given that the cosmetics industry produces more than 120 billion units of packaging annually, Royal DSM believes the opportunity to have a positive impact on the planet through progress in more sustainable packaging is tremendous.
 

Commitment to a Sustainable Value Chain

The partnership between DSM and Albéa is another key step in making personal care more sustainable and aligned with both companies’ commitment to sustainable practices.
 
Thanks to the partnership, DSM can provide customers with a complete sustainable solution in sun care. As a first step, DSM plans to move most of its sun care formulation prototypes into tubes, known to be the product form and packaging format that delivers the most significant sustainability impact as well as safety and hygiene benefits. In addition to protecting from microbial contamination, the tubes also deliver on cost of performance with minimum product loss (versus spray formulations, for example) and provide the use of use for consumers.
 
Albéa’s tube used in DSM’s formulation prototypes combines the 3Rs: recycled content, recyclable-ready and reduced weight. The tube is composed of a light eco-design looking SLIM cap combined with a downgauged web leveraging the unique Thin-Wall technology for a reduced weight solution. This recyclable-ready tube in the current recycling streams also incorporates a maximum level of Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) content, the tube reaching 38% of PCR (62% excluding the cap) for a tube D35, 50ml thus participating to moving towards a circular economy.
 
Fully leveraging Albéa’s broad capabilities, the partnership will also explore the wide variety of sustainable packaging materials solutions.
 
“Both customers and consumers are looking for a commitment to sustainability throughout the value chain. To make our offering more sustainable, we need to work together and strive to introduce sustainable practices at every stage and in every area of our operations,” says Gaelle Bathany, global director sustainability DSM Personal Care and Aroma Ingredients. “This requires shifting our mindset as well as taking many small but thoughtful steps in the right direction, such as formalizing our partnership with Albéa.”
 
Caroline Hughes, head of Marketing, Albéa Tubes, commented, “We are rethinking packaging to make it circular, low-environmental impact, and safe. This step change requires collaboration across the value chain – as illustrated by this partnership between DSM and Albéa. The two leaders combine their expertise, mindset, innovation capabilities as well as social and environmental responsibility so that beauty & personal care brands can ultimately deliver on their own commitments to their stakeholders.”