Aveda's Approach to Packaging

Aveda’s Stress-Fix Body Lotion is packaged in a 100% recycled HDPE bottle with disc-top closure, and features the ECO-CERT logo.

We are proud to be the first beauty company with 100% post consumer recycled PET for skin care and hair styling (bottles and jars). With every package we develop, we’re mindful of our environmental footprint and work to minimize our packaging and maximize our use of recyclable and post-consumer recycled materials.

Aveda follows guiding principles in regard to our packaging. Specifically, this means we:

• Consider the lifecycle analysis of packaging options

• Reduce the size, weight and production processes of packaging wherever possible

• Offer packaging that can be recycled whenever possible

• Use the most environmentally sound materials and as much post-consumer recycled (PCR) content as commercially possible

• Use renewable energy to manufacture and fill our packaging

• Challenge our packaging partners to meet the same standards

Our strongest initiative is to try to use post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials in all our packaging. We can’t guarantee that our packaging will be recycled, but we can do our part, ensuring that the material it’s made of will now have a second life, rather than going to a landfill.

Today, most of our plastic bottles use a minimum of 80% PCR, made from milk bottles—and with our Aveda Men line, we’ve reached 95% PCR. By our calculation, it saves us over 300 tons of virgin plastic each year (high-density polyethylene, or PET; we don’t use materials like PVC). We also use PET from recycled soda and water bottles for many of our bottles and jars.

In accordance with our mission to set an example for environmental leadership and responsibility, Aveda has long led the beauty industry in achieving greater levels of PCR content in packaging.Our success is built on strong partnerships with our packaging suppliers, with whom we have worked for several years to push the limits of materials reuse, recycling and waste reduction. Our goal has always been to achieve 100% PCR in our packaging. As our supply partners have learned more and more about the processing of PCR, we have incrementally increased our use.In 2002, with the relaunch of our Brilliant Line, we launched the first 100% PCR PET bottle and jar and with Aveda Men, we achieved another industry first with a 95% PCR HDPE bottle in 2007. We minimize packaging as much as possible while adhering to strict quality and environmental standards. We incorporate as much PCR content as possible, do without cartons whenever we can and never add elements solely for the sake of aesthetics.

Aveda is proud to be the first beauty company manufacturing with 100% certified wind power. Our wind energy purchases offset 100% of the electricity used by our primary manufacturing facility in Minnesota, our company headquarters and the Aveda Institute Minneapolis. We also purchase Green-E certified offsets through Native Energy to balance our natural gas emissions.

Aveda tries to ensure our products will not only benefit our customers through exceptional performance, but will positively impact the people and economies from which the products’ ingredients are sourced. We do so whenever possible by sourcing organic, sustainable or renewable plant-based ingredients, providing fair compensation to suppliers, and/or purchasing ingredients that are biodegradable and processed in an environmentally responsible manner.

We have many recycling programs offered at Aveda, ranging from recycling all possible materials in our manufacturing and office operations to a 98% recycling level in our distribution operations.Basically we recycle anything we can, anywhere we can.

In 2008, Aveda debuted the Aveda Caps Program, the first bottle cap collection program of its kind in the continental U.S., helping to eliminate this type of plastic from landfills and waterways, and educate recyclers and municipalities about the need to accept #5 plastics at curbside. Since the program’s inception, more than 1,700 schools, communities, businesses and universities have collected more than 115 million plastic bottle caps. These caps are recycled into very high PCR content caps for Aveda products such as Full Spectrum Hair Color and retail sample tubes.

Beginning in 2011, Aveda piloted the Aveda Package Take Back Program in Colorado. The pilot program included more than 50 Aveda salons, Experience Center retail stores and an Institute in Colorado, making Coloradoans the very first consumers with the chance to return Aveda packaging not accepted at curbside back to Aveda. The returned Aveda packaging is collected, later to be recycled into new Aveda packaging or some other reusable material, ensuring no returned Aveda packaging goes to landfill.

Aveda’s primary manufacturing facility in Blaine, MN sends zero waste to the landfill.Aveda recycles materials and composts refuse from its headquarters cafe, and is working to extend its environmental impact beyond its own doors by sharing green design principles and other practices for environmentally sound business with like-minded organizations.

About the Author
Mike Kennedy, vice president, global package development at The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), started in the package development team at Aveda in January 1999. He has been with ELC for more than 38 years, with approximately 20 years of package development and related experience. He is based out of the Aveda headquarters in Blaine, MN.