Many beauty brands have made tremendous strides in meeting the challenges of sustainable packaging—both now and in the future. Still, they concede that there’s no one way to proceed nor one overarching solution. We talked to a number of execs leading the way to get their thoughts and predictions on what the future holds, as far as greatest challenges/opportunities ahead for brands, suppliers, consumers. 
 
For what these leading brands are already accomplishing as far as sustainable packaging, please see “Ramping Up the Sustainability Conversation” at BeautyPackaging.com

Jill Tomandl, Vice President Product Development and Brand Sustainability Lead, Smashbox, Estée Lauder Companies

Creating a circular economy is critical to reduce material waste and CO2 emissions. Sustainability must be top of mind throughout the packaging process including design, engineering, material selection, construction, manufacturing and regionalization, power sources, distribution and end-of-life management. 
 
Brands must engage and educate consumers about packaging sustainability including recycling, refills, materials, reuse and recovery through storytelling, trends, claims, details, certifications and instructions to change mindsets and behaviors. “Sustainability” must become the new “cool.”
 
Brands, suppliers, retailers, and consumers must work together to create systemic change.
 
Investment in innovation, collection, scaling new technology, new business models, and cost-of-goods is required.
 
We must do what we can, as fast as we can, to make an impact.

Jillian Wright, Vice President, Willow Beauties and Master Aesthetician at Jillian Wright Facials

Finding the right packaging solution for your brand takes time, patience and thinking—no pun, “outside the box.” There are many alternate materials on the market but a brand has to do their due diligence in finding the right fit for them.

Laura Otani, Head of Packaging and Sustainable Design, e.l.f. Beauty

Developing sustainable packaging is a journey and we know that a small percentage of packaging is recycled today. Brands, suppliers and retailers are operating dynamically in this space. The way we’ll be the most effective is by collaboration with a willingness to break barriers, disrupt and invent new. At e.l.f. Beauty, we’ve made great strides on our clean and lean platform, reducing outer packaging, removing decoration and light weighting components, and we look forward to continuing to push boundaries as we grow in this space.

Jenn Kapahi, Co-CEO + Founder, Trestique

Keep in mind that sustainability is a journey. It is ever evolving, and we are at its infant stage as the packaging industry is going through the biggest adaptation phase it’s ever had – sourcing and developing new materials while being cost-effective. For brands, the biggest challenge is to create a full 360-degree sustainable circularity experience – from sourcing through usage and end-of-life.
 
Customers are at their learning phase of what sustainability is and can’t distinguish between real sustainable packages and ones a brand just claims as such. This is going to change soon, as customers get more educated about sustainability.

Megan Douglas, Founder/Product Creator, The Organic Skin Co.

A customer is more likely to purchase a sustainably packaged beauty product if it looks amazing, it feels great in hand and it still performs as expected. That’s our job as a brand—to genuinely tick all the boxes so that the customer can make the eco-transition and be excited for it.
 
Our challenge as an industry is to build and back a packaging supply chain that makes the existing non-recyclable packaging model obsolete. Accelerated innovation, team-work and education remain the greatest opportunities, while the challenges remain a lack of awareness (still!) by many to the dangers of non-action.

Tina Hedges, Founder, LOLI Beauty

From R&D to retailers, PR to creative, everyone needs to band together and understand that sustainable innovations will require unprecedented ways of doing things—the old templates won't work. It's also essential that as an industry, we share our learnings and "open source" our technologies. Sustainability is still an imperfect science as for every new solution, there are also compromises or challenges. Working in a black box will not help our industry move at the pace that our planet requires.
 
For what these leading brands are already accomplishing as far as sustainable packaging, please see “Ramping Up the Sustainability Conversation” at BeautyPackaging.com. See also “Making the ‘Eco-Transition:’ A Sustainable Cosmetic Packaging Update”