Name: This new Ulta Beauty platform sells beauty products in reusable packaging
Brand: fastcompany.com
SKU: fastcompany-com-129
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

This new Ulta Beauty platform sells beauty products in reusable packaging

preview

advertisementadvertisementAnyone who likes beauty products is familiar with the mountain of packaging waste they create, from tiny jars to shampoo bottles, mascara tubes, cellophane wrappers for face masks, compacts for blush or foundation, and pump bottles that once held lotion. By one estimate, the cosmetics industry makes more than every year. Much of it either can’t be recycled, or isn’t.advertisementA new online platform from offers an alternative: Everything on the site comes in reusable packaging. When customers place an order, they pay a refundable deposit on the package. When they use up products, they put the packages back in a reusable shipping tote and schedule a free pickup. The packages go back to Loop, which cleans and sterilizes everything so it can be used again.“We’re seeing the beauty industry, particularly waking up to this issue more than others, but I think a part of it is that they’ve been asleep so long,” says Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, a company that focuses on recycling hard-to-recycle products, and Loop, a spinoff platform that offers common brands in reusable packaging. Loop runs its own platform with a broader range of products, including food.The new site from Ulta offers products like body butter and deodorant in glass jars, Dermalogica cleansing gel in an aluminum bottle, a gel cleanser from Burt’s Bees in a glass bottle, and more unusual products like Noice, an organic toothpaste that comes in a glass container with a pump that also helps avoid wasting the toothpaste itself. “One press gives the exact right amount of toothpaste,” Szaky says. “It’s really good because people usually overdose toothpaste pretty substantially—if you look at the photos of toothpaste on a toothbrush, that is way more than what you actually have to put on.”advertisementSo far, the new platform has around 30 products. More will come soon. “Redeveloping packaging from scratch, as you can imagine, is a phenomenal amount of work,” he says. “We are launching with a good number of brands out of the gate, but what’s really exciting is that there’s just a huge pipeline of development occurring, which is going to become available sometime after the launch.” As consumer demand for reusable packaging continues to grow, and more brands begin offering versions of their products in new packaging, he expects that other beauty retailers will follow Ulta’s example. “I think you’re going see a ripple effect,” he says.advertisementadvertisementadvertisementadvertisementadvertisement

advertisementadvertisementAnyone who likes beauty products is familiar with the mountain of packaging waste they create, from tiny jars to shampoo bottles, mascara tubes, cellophane wrappers for face masks, compacts for blush or foundation, and pump bottles that once held lotion. By one estimate, the cosmetics industry makes more than every year. Much of it either can’t be recycled, or isn’t.advertisementA new online platform from offers an alternative: Everything on the site comes in reusable packaging. When customers place an order, they pay a refundable deposit on the package. When they...

public

Adele Peters

Fast Company is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes eight print issues per year. Fast Company was launched in November 1995 by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors, and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Company

fastcompany.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

This new Ulta Beauty platform sells beauty products in reusable packaging

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS