“The C2C design approach encourages cosmetic and personal care companies to take a holistic view of sustainability, so they think about the ecological and social impacts from the product design phase, raw material sourcing, production, packaging, distribution to the product's end of its life-time i.e. how to rid of packaging, unused materials, etc,” Organic Monitor director Amarjit Sahota told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com.
“By designing more ecological and sustainable products, there is less product wastage, less packaging use, and less impact on the environment,” he said.
Companies launching isolated sustainability initiatives
Organic Monitor notes that while natural and organic companies are expanding their sustainability initiatives, many are adopting isolated strategies such as ethical sourcing and using recycled packaging, with few having integrated programmes that combine various strands together.
According to Sahota, few companies are adopting a C2C approach due to the fact many are small firms that lack the resources and manpower necessary to invest in new design approaches, as well as the fact there awareness of C2C is low.
“At present, it is mainly large multinationals that have integrated sustainability programmes although small-medium size firms are slowly catching on,” said Sahota.
Aveda one of first to adopt C2C design Approach
Organic Monitor highlighted Aveda as being one of the first natural personal care companies to use the C2C design approach, pioneering many sustainability initiatives that have had positive social and environmental impacts.
The company has set up organic agricultural projects in Latin America, Australasia and Africa in order to secure the supply of organic ingredients, and is now the world’s largest buyer of essential oils.
Through use of the C2C approach, Aveda has not only reduced its packaging impact by using recycled packaging and saving over 1mn tonnes of virgin plastic annually, its ‘Recycle Caps With Aveda’ initiative has removed over 37mn propylene caps from the environment.
The C2C design approach will be discussed at Organic Monitor’s upcoming Sustainable Cosmetics Summit that is taking place in New York on 12-14 May 2011.