The beauty industry is seeing a seismic shift. Sustainability and cruelty-free have become the buzz word and beauty brands are also trying their best to incorporate these practices for a better tomorrow.
We speak to L'Occitane India's International spokesperson Ruth Calvo Rubial and ask her how her beauty brand is changing with time. Here's an excerpt from the interview.
Tell us about the initiatives toward recycling in India?
The recycling programme is the first one in India that accepts PET beauty empties from any beauty brand along with all L’OCCITANE empties. The main goal is to mobilise more people to make a big impact on the environment with little changes. As part of our commitment to reducing waste, we believe that recycling will keep the environment free from pollution and help achieve a circular economy where each material can have a second life.
Tell us about Eco-refills and how it helps preserve nature?
L’OCCITANE develops products that are increasingly respectful of both mankind and the world we live in. We produce eco-refills and much of our packaging is made with recycled materials or uses resources that are renewable or from sustainably managed forests. Over the past decade, more companies have been reducing the amount of plastic they use, and we're proud to say that we've always been at the forefront of the movement. Our Eco-Refills contribute to saving from 78% to 97% of packaging material compared to the standard product. Each eco-refill prevents the equivalent of roughly 50 plastic cups, 300 straws or 3,000 cotton buds from entering our oceans. Switching to eco-refills is an environmentally friendly alternative that contributed to saving 251 tons of packaging this year. By 2025, 100% of our bottles will be made from 100% recycled plastic.
Let's talk about challenges you faced while managing the sustainability and recycling programme?
Our sustainability strategy has evolved greatly over the years. Our commitment to protecting nature or related initiatives has not truly materialized into a real competitive edge until we organized our efforts into a customer-centric strategy. Since 2008, we have embarked upon the journey to integrate sustainability in every part of the business, with adapted resources and organization. Under the current structure, we strongly believe it has become one of the Group’s competitive advantages and differentiates us from other brands.
What's your opinion on steps the industry needs to take to tackle the issue of waste ending up in landfills?
Recycling is an important step to ensure that the beauty empties get a second life instead of ending up in landfills. Encouraging the customer through such programmes to consciously dispose the empty containers should become a common practice in not just the beauty industry but other sectors as well.
A piece of advice for the beauty industry w.r.t. Waste management?
An important piece of advice would be to acknowledge the problem and to work on each step from product design through the supply chain all the way to the retail level. We continuously evaluate our actions and impacts on nature. We focus on ensuring that our activities, such as production facilities and packaging, have a minimal impact on the ecosystem. We carefully monitor the resources we consume, and the quality of wastewater discharged by our factories. We are also progressively reducing waste by using a greater percentage of recycled materials, developing refill and bulk selling, facilitating the sorting of recyclables and phasing out unnecessary single-use plastics. But we don’t just focus on minimising negatives: our Group develops positive actions that help restore and regenerate ecosystems as stated in our new biodiversity strategy, prioritising nature-based solutions that benefit biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions. Over the long term, we also aim to promote new consumption models to move towards a nature-positive world.
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