What is Zero Waste Perfume?
Zero waste might sound as a pretentious, populist expression and what we may think is a slow green revolution, might be a hard process for both a consumer and manufacturer. Humanity is perfect in its imperfections, while on the one side consumerism supported by social media influencers is developing rapidly, the other side sees small steps taken by those who believe in the true nature of reducing waste. ‘Reducing’ is the key word, since eliminating waste completely is practically impossible today.
The production of perfumes requires many different resources, from labels to bottles and from pipettes to raw material containers. The process can never be clean, green and waste free. To make some products re-usable we have to take one step back to take two steps forward: I believe that a consumer must take an active part in the process. This is why our ZeroWaste Project is a reciprocal activism.
First and foremost, you do not need to have twenty perfumes in your collection, even if all of them are natural, vegan and ethically made. I am against collecting beauty products. If I buy something, I simply use it daily or almost daily and enjoy it. If you are on the path to a zero waste life, try to reduce your beauty items, including perfumes. 1-5 perfumes sounds more realistic. Having a small collection of your favourite items means they will all be used and not wasted when the expiry date is close.
When natural perfumes are created, there can be more waste than you might think: not all suppliers provide eco-friendly packaging and fillers. Although we, perfumers, do my best to find such, this work is a constant daily search. I refuse to use plastic pipettes during perfume making and formulation process because they are useless and produce a lot of waste. I test all my perfumes on skin and use re-usable pipettes made of glass.
From April 2020 we are starting to gradually switch to making all our perfumes in reusable bottles, small purse sprays and refill bottles, 100ml stoppered French flacons. Because both our eaux de parfum and extraits de parfum are so concentrated we will just use one category for them: ‘parfum’, since they are much closer to extracts in their formulas. They will also be considered zero waste perfumes. You can buy your purse spray once and refill it from a 100ml flacon which needs to be shipped back to us every 2-3 years to get a new amount of perfume and a new label if necessary. . The benefits of the refill system include: saving on the total cost of perfume and having absolutely zero waste from both purse sprays and refill bottles, they can be reused many times! We also plan to give a discount for refill bottles as well as free worldwide shipping.
Although I do not consider our new program to be perfect, it will still need time and some efforts to make the process smooth. Perfume samples are the only exception and will need more research from our side. So far there are no sustainable alternatives to perfume testing kits at home, natural perfume has to be tested on skin, botanical scent evaporates much faster than synthetic so some alternatives as sachets, gels, etc. pre-packed or on paper are not an option. So at this moment we offer reusable perfume vials which can be refilled using a pipette. But if there is a retailer who has our perfumes close to you, please do test perfumes there! For now, you can purchase purse sprays and small flacons which can be then refilled from 100ml bottles. The same system will be applied to our Ambiance Perfume.