The Sustainable Packaging Initiative for Cosmetics

The Sustainable Packaging Initiative for Cosmetics – SPICE – releases a science-based ecodesign tool that assesses the environmental footprint of any cosmetics packaging, empowering cosmetics packaging engineers to make more sustainable design choices and accelerate innovation toward sustainability.

The Sustainable Packaging Initiative for Cosmetics (SPICE), co-founded by global beauty group L’Oréal and leading sustainability consulting firm Quantis, is proud to announce the launch of an online ecodesign tool to measure and reduce the environmental footprint of any cosmetic packaging throughout its life cycle. The publicly available SPICE Tool is the latest solution developed by the 25 members of SPICE created to shape the future of sustainable cosmetics packaging while addressing the issues that beauty and personal care companies face while trying to improve the environmental performance of their products’ packaging (see more about SPICE below). Along with the Tool, SPICE releases a set of best practice materials, including environmental claims guidelines.

A publicly-available tool to drive sustainable packaging innovation

The SPICE Tool solves one of the key sustainability challenges facing the beauty industry: embedding ecodesign into the packaging development process. This easy-to-use platform, with a Free demo version and a Pro version, makes robust environmental data accessible to packaging designers, giving them the insights they need to develop more resilient packaging designs. The Tool calculates a holistic environmental footprint across the full lifecycle of a product’s packaging (from production to end-of-life), covering 16 environmental indicators that assess impacts on climate change as well as resource depletion, water use, biodiversity and more. Beauty companies now have an easy way to measure, improve and communicate more credibly on their packaging’s environmental performance.

Learn more about the SPICE Tool.

"The SPICE Tool ushers the entire cosmetics industry into a new era of sustainable packaging innovation,” affirms Dimitri Caudrelier, CEO of Quantis. “It delivers robust environmental metrics and actionable insights for packaging designers to make resilient decisions. This is a huge step toward SPICE’s mission to collectively shape the future of sustainable packaging — and we’re just getting started!” 

"As the co-founder of SPICE, L’Oréal is proud to see the initiative uniting the cosmetics industry around a shared vision of sustainable packaging,” adds Philippe Bonningue, Group Global Director of Sustainable Packaging at L’Oréal. “For more than a decade, we have been committed to innovating our packaging toward sustainability. We are pleased to share this experience to help develop the SPICE Tool so that, together, we can drive the industry’s sustainable transformation.” 

SPICE delivers key resources to support a resilient future for beauty

In addition to the SPICE Tool, the initiative has released other valuable resources to support ecodesign decision making and improve the environmental performance of the entire packaging value chain:

• Guidelines for environmental claims: cosmetics-specific guidance that establishes minimum requirements and strong recommendations for providing credible packaging sustainability information to consumers and other audiences;
• Environmental datasets: metrics to populate the SPICE Tool database; and
• The SPICE Primer: a communications brief presenting the mission and work of SPICE.

To encourage industry-wide use of the SPICE Tool and additional resources, SPICE has made them all publicly-available on the SPICE website. Visit www.open-spice.com.  

* END *

Notes to the Editor | Industry organizations share enthusiasm for the SPICE Tool

“We are delighted to promote the SPICE Tool, a science-based, data-driven approach to measuring the environmental footprint of cosmetic packaging, to PCPC’s membership and the broader industry. We applaud the companies and organizations that are working in pre-competitive collaborations to develop tools and processes to ensure the responsible management of impacts that our industry creates.” - Lisa Powers, EVP Public Affairs and Communications, Personal Care Products Council

“The cost of developing a robust environmental footprinting tool has been a barrier for many small and medium-sized cosmetics companies that want to implement ecodesign in packaging development. By making the SPICE Tool publicly available, the SPICE Initiative helps the whole industry move forward, getting everyone on board to design the future of sustainable packaging. Not only by providing an innovative ecodesign tool but also by showing that cooperation is the most effective way to move forward. It is an important milestone in the ecological transition of the beauty industry.” - Patrick O’Quin, President, FEBEA (Fédération des Entreprises de la Beauté) 

About SPICE

The Sustainable Packaging Initiative for Cosmetics (SPICE) is a pre-competitive initiative co-founded by global beauty group L’Oréal and leading sustainability consulting firm Quantis to develop collective solutions that will accelerate progress toward sustainable packaging for cosmetics. It has 25 members to date, including cosmetics companies Albéa, Aptar, Avon, Axilone, Chanel, Clarins, Coty, Estée Lauder Companies, Heinz-Glas, Hermès Parfums, L'Occitane en Provence, L'Oréal, LVMH, Mary Kay, Groupe Pochet, Schwan Cosmetics, Shiseido, Sisley; and organizations CITEO, Cosmetic Valley, Elipso, FEBEA, FEVE, PCPC and RecyClass. Visit: https://open-spice.com/  

About L’Oréal

L'Oréal has devoted itself to beauty for over 100 years. With its unique international portfolio of 34 diverse and complementary brands, the Group generated sales amounting to 26.02 billion euros in 2017 and employs 82,600 people worldwide. As the world's leading beauty company, L'Oréal is present across all distribution networks: mass market, department stores, pharmacies and drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail and e-commerce.

Research and innovation, and a dedicated research team of 3,885 people, are at the core of L'Oréal's strategy, working to meet beauty aspirations all over the world. L'Oréal's sustainability commitment for 2020 "Sharing Beauty With All" sets out ambitious sustainable development objectives across the Group's value chain.

For more information: http://mediaroom.loreal.com/en/ 

About Quantis

Quantis guides top organizations to define, shape and implement intelligent environmental sustainability solutions. In a nutshell, our creative geeks take the latest science and make it actionable. Our team of talents delivers resilient strategies, robust metrics, useful tools, and credible communications for a more sustainable future.

A sustainability consulting group known for our metrics-based approach to sustainability, Quantis has offices in the US, France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy and has a diverse client portfolio that spans the globe.

We are Quantis: sustainability’s scientists, experts, strategists, innovators and visionaries.

Discover Quantis at www.quantis-intl.com.

For more information, please contact:

Anne-Florence Lécolier Marketing Lead, Quantis

Phone: +33/ 9 63 23 04 67

Quantis

Quantis

Quantis guides top organizations to define, shape and implement intelligent environmental sustainability solutions. In a nutshell, our creative geeks take the latest science and make it actionable. Our team of talents delivers resilient strategies, robust metrics, useful tools, and credible communications for a more sustainable future. A sustainability consulting group known for our metrics-based approach to sustainability, Quantis has offices in the US, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Colombia and has a diverse client portfolio that spans the globe, including AccorHotels, BASF, Danone, the European Commission, GE, General Mills, Intel, Kering, the Kraft Heinz Company, L’Oré©al, MondelÄ“z International, Nestlé©, Unilever, Veolia and more. We are Quantis: sustainability’s scientists, experts, strategists, innovators and visionaries.

More from Quantis