Packaging
All of the inks we use - across our cartons, liners, tissues and shipping boxes - are vegetable based. Plus, many of our inks are largely made from Rapeseed Oil.
All of the cardboards we use are FSC boards (the FSC helps identify, purchase and use wood, paper and other forest products made with materials from well-managed forests and/or recycled sources).
Any foil print on cartons is used below an acceptable % of the surface area, to ensure any paper materials are still recyclable (because if they're covered in foil or gloss or shimmer, they're not)! And we only use foils when necessary.
PCR
We use PCR (post-consumer recycled resin) in many of our makeup compacts and incorporate it into all of our tubes and bottles where it's feasible. (This isn't 100% because sometimes it's not available, and at the moment, too much of it in the mix can make a tube inelastic and unusable. But we're working towards it.)
We avoid polybags unless they are completely necessary to protect a product in shipping. If we can, and if it's affordable, we'll opt for cloth!
Glass Jars
We try to use glass components for skincare when possible, to ensure a better likelihood of local recycling, as the glass recycling industry is better established and less confusing for customers.
We opt for minimalist chic, yet high-quality design and packaging options, because we not only think they look more luxurious, but they're more likely to be recyclable.
We're still not perfect, but we always try to make the best choices, and push for better options with our suppliers. Because really, EVERY day is #EarthDay, and we believe that we are all responsible!
All of the inks we use - across our cartons, liners, tissues and shipping boxes - are vegetable based
Now for a few questions we are sometimes asked:
Can you remove the cartons from your products? It seems like a lot of extra packaging.
At the moment, we haven't found a way - after a lot of test shipping - to ensure that your items will arrive in perfect condition without first putting them in a carton. And having to reissue products because some have arrived damaged, isn't something we build into to our budgets (plus two shipments is worse for the environment than one). Also, many members use Beauty Pie products as gifts and like to have cartons – which are easily wrappable. We have removed cartons on round bottles like our shampoos, conditioners and our body wash, and if anything else ship-tests well, we'll do that too.
Cartons also hold a lot of the regulatory information that's necessary for sale in the markets that we trade in, and if we remove them on smaller items where we can't fit the details on the primary component, we'd then have to figure out how to repackage them so we can legally sell them on a shelf, or in a pop-up (which we hope to do a lot of)! So, it sounds easier than it is, and we are always working on it, but for now, we haven't solved this one yet!
Can you NOT print BEAUTY PIE on the tissue so that we can reuse it?
Our tissue is fully recyclable, and we feel that it's a key element of our branding and experience. Please feel free to reuse it WITH the BEAUTY PIE logo printed on it (which only proves that you are not only gorgeous, you are smart).
Can you ship in smaller boxes?
Every once in a while, someone places an order for a couple of eyeliner pencils and a lipstick. This is really rare (which you probably see from the size of orders on most people's social posts. Maybe one out of every 5,000 orders?). Because most members order skincare and body cream and shampoo and conditioner. Now, our smallest box is not THAT big, but yes, there's a little air inside of it, if all you are ordering is a couple of makeup items. But to get a great price on a specific size of shipping box, we have to buy 10,000 of them. Which means as a business, we sit on thousands of boxes that we've paid for and pay for the storage of those boxes in a warehouse, but they are rarely used.
We've thought about adding stickers to plain brown stock boxes, but we’d still have to buy a few hundred of those at a time, and as the price to ship an even smaller box is the same as the price of shipping our small box, we've given up on this one, and hope you'll understand that the complexity - for the very odd case - just isn't worth it at the moment. (Yes, when Beauty Pie has 50 million members, we'll do it, but right now, amidst all the other things we're trying to accomplish, we can't put it up there as a big priority.)
Can you have larger sizes of our favourite items?
This is one we debate ALL THE TIME at Beauty Pie NPD (New Product Development). Because we'd love to put our bestselling items in larger bottles. But larger sizes inevitably have a higher cost – and a higher members’ price. And while some members are OK to go all in and spend a lot of their monthly Spending Limit on a giant bottle of something, others want to test and try more items in what would be a 'normal' sized package. (Many of our serums, BTW, come in a 50ml bottle, rather than the standard 30ml, so we have gone 'slightly jumbo' there.)
As any item of any particular size has a specific minimum order quantity (to get the best price, this is usually 10,000), having two sizes of the same item means we are holding 3X the cost in inventory (which, at our prices, really would stretch us). So we're thinking of making 10 of our CLASSIC BESTSELLERS bigger – and that involves a lot of product development – but still doing the math to see if it's possible!
For more info on our commitment to the environment, read our ESG Statement, or you can join us here.
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