New Study from Estée Lauder Identifies Key Design Criteria to Enhance Knowledge of Glass Packaging Sustanability

A case study from the Estée Lauder Companies aims to enhance responsible packaging innovation and advance circularity for the cosmetics industry.

The multi-year study, conducted with Strategic Materials, Inc. (SMI), identifies key criteria for designing recyclable cosmetic glass packaging. 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, officials said.

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

“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,” said Robert Peterson, senior vice president, global engineering and packaging, The Estée Lauder Companies. “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.”

Shattering Challenges

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 shatter the challenges of delivering luxury decorations, colors 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. 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, 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 composition; color; thickness of the glass; decorations (i.e. use of gradient, metallized inks, coatings); labels; closures; and product 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 Laura Hennemann, senior vice president of sustainability and corporate affairs, SMI. “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.”

Durable Design Best Practices

In addition to new insights on the recyclability of various decorations, colors 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. Moreover, 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.