L'Oréal China and Alibaba team up on green packaging

02-Jul-2018 - Last updated on 02-Jul-2018 at 12:34 GMT

Cosmetics giant, L'Oréal, and e-commerce leader, Alibaba Group, are boosting their efforts to reduce waste by using environmentally friendly packaging.

The Chinese arm of the global cosmetics company, L'Oréal, has partnered up with Alibaba to ensure all of the packaging used on its items sold in China is environmentally friendly. This transformation will take place over the next five months.

L'Oréal and Alibaba signed the partnership agreement on Monday 25th June 2018, reported Alizila, Alibaba’s new site.

The event was witnessed by Li Keqiang, Chinese Premier and Edouard Philippe, the French Prime Minister at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China.

Retail experience

This new partnership represents Alibaba’s ongoing efforts to position itself in the age of New Retail, as it strives to champion the “seamless integration of online and offline commerce”.

As part of the agreement, L’Oreal China has strived to lower the use of plastic materials. This will take place in all of its brands’ packaging as it will use Forest Stewardship Council-certified sustainable paper and zipper paper cartons or paper adhesives.

With this year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival taking place in November, it also provides an ideal opportunity for the group to use only 100% recycled boxes in time for the event.

“The upgrade of consumption is both an upgrade in quality of life as well as consumer awareness,” Jet Jing, the head of Alibaba’s B2C marketplace Tmall, reported.

This is set to also create “green, healthy and sustainable social values”, Jing added.

Green Chinese consumers

Alizila emphasised the “increasingly green-minded” needs of Chinese consumers. A report by China Chain Store Association reveals that over 70% of 9,370 respondents surveyed that they were willing to pay a 10% premium for sustainable products as these are typified to develop as few pollutants as possible and that avoid environmental harm.

The collaboration between L'Oréal and Alibaba follows an initiative launched in May 2017 that sees Alibaba’s smart logistics arm, Cainiao, and 13 L’Oreal brands including Kiehl’s and Helena Rubinstein create a Green Brand Alliance.

This alliance required participants to pledge to a wide selection of environmentally friendly measures, like biodegradable packaging materials.

2020 plans

In May 2018, Cainiao also updated its green campaign by stating that by 2020 it would introduce energy vehicles to 100 cities across China. It also plans to optimise the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to forge smart routing in 40,000 villages.

To further boost its environmentally friendly methods, it also plans to expand the use of e-shipping labels to replace traditional paper stickers on 40 billion parcels.