Refillable Packaging: What Happened to Refillable Beauty?

Reported by Vogue.

Every year, billions of beauty units go straight to landfill — most of them impossible to recycle at the curb. The refillable beauty movement was supposed to fix that. It hasn't. Not yet. But according to Vogue, something is finally shifting: refill sales across L'Oréal's portfolio grew 34% between 2024 and 2025, following the launch of World Refill Day, an annual initiative the company created in 2024 spanning 28 products across 18 brands — from Aesop to Prada Beauty to Lancôme. L'Oréal's chief corporate responsibility officer Ezgi Barcenas puts it plainly: "We are trying to create a market where there isn't one."

The infrastructure problem is real. Refillable formats have existed since L'Oréal introduced them in the 1990s — Mugler's refillable Angel bottle launched in 1992, originally as a cost-saving measure because the star-shaped flacon was so difficult to manufacture. The sustainability angle came later. What followed across the 2010s and early 2020s was a wave of enthusiasm that never quite became habit. Today, the brand roster attempting refills reads like a who's who — Chanel, Hermès, Charlotte Tilbury, Diptyque, Le Labo, Selfridges, Harrods — but mainstream adoption remains elusive. A L'Oréal customer survey found that only 42% of consumers know refills are even an option in beauty.

The Convenience Gap

Here's the honest tension: refills work beautifully for some categories and awkwardly for others. Fragrance is the sweet spot — alcohol-based, emotionally loaded, and easy to decant. Le Labo's 500ml Santal 33 refill bottle runs £835, but delivers a 52% saving versus buying the equivalent in new packaging. Lancôme's Absolue pod system saves customers 100% of the glass, 95% of the metal, and 31% of the cardboard per refill. Skincare and makeup are trickier — oil-based formulas require sealed pods, and some products need reformulating entirely for shelf stability. The format has to earn its place. As Sian Sutherland, co-founder of plastic-free advocacy group A Plastic Planet, puts it: "Refill should not feel like a compromise or a lecture. It should feel clever, beautiful, and obvious."

New Zealand brand Emma Lewisham built her entire business model around that idea. When founder Emma Lewisham understood the scale of beauty industry waste, she made refillability structural — not optional. Her refills are priced at a 10–15% discount to the full product, and the results speak: 250,000 refills sold, accounting for 35% of total brand sales, with refillable SKUs consistently outperforming the rest of her range at wholesale. The lesson isn't altruism — it's product performance first, sustainability second. "People will not give up a superior product simply for a more sustainable one," she says.

Consumer data analyst Chris Beer of GWI frames where refillable beauty actually sits in the priority stack: globally, 30% of consumers want brands to offer refillable or recyclable options — ahead of self-acceptance content, behind affordability. It's not niche, but it isn't urgent to most shoppers either. Mintel's 2025 Sustainable Beauty Consumer report argues the smartest repositioning isn't environmental guilt — it's financial intelligence. Refills as a smart investment, not a sacrifice. The brands that crack that messaging, and pair it with formats that genuinely don't add friction, are the ones that will make the category stick.

Refillable beauty's future isn't about saving the planet as a marketing hook — it's about making the sustainable choice the obviously better one.

Read the original at Vogue.