Copper River Salon and Spa in Princeton is helping the planet and the local community by reducing waste and keeping otherwise non-recyclable personal care and beauty products and packaging from being thrown away and sent to landfills. Since 2012, the salon has collected 3,647 pounds of skin care, hair care and cosmetic packaging through the Personal Care and Beauty Recycling Program in partnership with Garnier. The salon joined the recycling program to unite their passion for creative style and self care with the importance of caring for the environment and appreciating nature’s beauty, according to a statement provided by TerraCycle. “Beauty is more than skin deep. Beauty comes from self care, care for your community, and care for the world around you,” Barbara Weigand, owner and master stylist at Copper River Salon, said in the statement. “Copper River Salon and Spa looks to emulate beauty in all forms, including doing our part to make beauty sustainable.” By stationing collection points near the reception area inside the salon and outside at the front entrance of the salon, Copper River Salon and Spa makes it convenient and accessible for clients and community members to drop off their products and packaging for recycling at any time, according to the statement. They also educate and inform their clients on what items can be collected through the program. The waste collected through the Personal Care and Beauty Recycling Program would have otherwise been landfilled, incinerated, or may have even contributed to the pollution of marine habitats. The collected packaging will now be recycled into a variety of new products such as park benches, bike racks, shipping pallets and recycling bins, according to the statement. “The opportunity to recycle through the Personal Care and Beauty Recycling Program allows us to impact our community by providing valuable information on how to properly recycle materials that otherwise would negatively impact our environment and a reliable way to collect these items,” Weigand said in the statement. “By doing so, our community can make environmentally friendly choices to preserve nature’s beauty.” In addition to their program with TerraCycle, Copper River Salon and Spa is a member of the National Association of Eco-Friendly Salon & Spas Organization and the New Jersey Sustainable Business Registry. For more information, visit copperriversalonandspa.com/. All collected materials from the Personal Care and Beauty Recycling Program are sent to TerraCycle for recycling, where they undergo a series of treatments before getting turned into new items. For more information on TerraCycle, please visit www.TerraCycle.com.

Tailored™, a new direct-to-consumer, personalized dog food brand, has partnered with TerraCycle^® to make the packaging for their pet food nationally recyclable throughout the United States. As an added incentive, for every shipment of Tailored packaging waste sent to TerraCycle, collectors earn points that can be donated to a non-profit, school or charitable organization of their choice.   “At Tailored, we are focused on making it easy for pet parents to find the right food for their pup’s unique needs and delivering personalized recipes fast, free and safely to their door. But we’re also passionate about feeding a happier, healthier Earth,” said Steve Joyce, CEO, Tailored. “That’s why we’ve partnered with TerraCycle – to lessen our environmental impact by ensuring our pet food packaging is able to be safely recycled.”   Through the Tailored Recycling Program, consumers can now send in their empty Tailored pet food packaging to be recycled for free. Participation is easy: sign up on the TerraCycle program page https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/tailored-pet-nutrition and mail in the packaging using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the packaging is cleaned and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled products.   “By participating in the Tailored Recycling Program, pet owners can nourish their pet and the planet by responsibly disposing of their pet food packaging,” said TerraCycle CEO and Founder, Tom Szaky. “Tailored is helping to drive awareness to the issue of waste and elicit change in the consumer by giving their customers the unique opportunity to divert waste from landfills.”  

For more information, visit www.terracycle.com.

 

Parts of Moccasin Bend (background) and Point Park (foreground), units of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, could potentially benefit from the Great American Outdoors Act.  (Photo: Bob Butters)   A recent article in Outdoor Life by Alex Robinson and Natalie Krebs explains how "the Great American Outdoors Act proves that grassroots advocacy and our democracy still work—even if it’s not always pretty."  Read the article.   The Southern Environmental Law Center reports that If allowed to stand, White House changes to the National Environmental Policy Act will reduce public input that has guided major projects for decades, further diminishing the voices of communities that have long suffered environmental injustices and masking the full extent of polluting projects. On behalf of 17 environmental organizations, SELC filed a federal lawsuit to protect NEPA.  Read more.   The SELC also reports that In one of the Georgia General Assembly’s most interesting and remarkable legislative sessions in years, SELC and partners in the Georgia Water Coalition accomplished several important victories, many in the final days of the session. Read Improved environmental protections among Georgia legislative wins.   I concluded years ago that many people who wouldn't ordinarily litter don't see cigarette butts as litter. But they are, and they're ubiquitous in the environment. Fortunately, I recently ran across some good news. TerraCycle, the world’s leader in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams, has joined forces with the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development and Keep Tennessee Beautiful to recycle the world’s most littered item – cigarette butts. After being shipped to TerraCycle, the waste received through the program is processed into plastic pellets for use in a variety of recycled products and Keep America Beautiful receives a $1 donation for every pound of cigarette waste collected. Read more.

Posted on June 22, 2020   Mechanical engineering major Jekabs Hayes ’20 was awarded TerraCycle’s first annual Ernel Simpson Innovation Award for incorporating sustainable practices in his senior project. Hayes earned a $500 stipend to cover his research.   Hayes teamed up with fellow seniors Peter Stahl and Christopher Garr and his advisor, George Facas of the mechanical engineering department, to construct a prototype of a small, semi-portable system that uses solar panel-generated electricity to turn salt water into desalinated drinking water.   As team leader, Hayes pushed to take their already environmentally sustainable project to the next level.   “In the spirit of both Dr. Simpson and TerraCycle, our prototype was constructed in part using what most people consider ‘trash’ or ‘waste,’” says Hayes.   Hayes and his team used wiring from obsolete electrical equipment, wood from discarded furniture, and screws from previous design projects. Hayes even went dumpster-diving for a wheel on a discarded l filing cabinet.   Hayes says he is “proud and thrilled” to be the first recipient of the Ernel Simpson Innovation Award.   “TCNJ’s School of Engineering senior design project program was one of the key reasons I decided to change majors [from business],” says Hayes “I can happily say I fulfilled one of my goals from freshman year when I set out to change majors: take part in a meaningful senior project.” Although he is immensely grateful for this award, Hayes says his teammates deserve just as much recognition for their role in this important project. “The project is without a doubt a group effort. We either swim together or sink together,” he says.   All TCNJ engineering students currently working on senior design projects related to environmental sustainability were eligible for the award. Hayes submitted a personal statement describing his efforts to make his senior project more sustainable as well as his resume and a letter of recommendation.   The Ernel Simpson Award is named after TerraCycle’s chief scientist.   “The award was named after our dear Dr. Ernie Simpson for his ability to simplify the complex and develop groundbreaking ways to process everything from chewing gum to cigarette butts to dirty diapers to construction adhesives,” says Liana Scobie, vice president of staff and administration at TerraCycle.   TerraCycle offers free recycling programs funded by brands, manufacturers, and retailers around the world to help collect and recycle hard-to-recycle waste.

We can’t shop our way to saving the planet, but mindful choices matter. From ingredient sourcing to sustainable packaging, here’s how the industry’s forward thinkers are striving to tread more lightly as they produce the beauty products you see on the shelves. RETHINK (INGREDIENTS) The fine print on beauty labels tells us next to nothing about how responsibly sourced ingredients are. To muddy matters, calculating a product’s eco-footprint is far trickier than checking if the formula is all-natural or organic. For starters, natural ingredients can still cause environmental havoc—take, for instance, palm oil and its derivatives. Widely used in beauty products, they can be found in everything from shampoo to lipstick. They are largely produced in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the destruction of rainforests to clear the way for palm oil plantations is rampant. “A lot of companies are coming in and bulldozing and forcing communities out,” says Lindsay Dahl, senior vice-president of social mission at Beautycounter. Although the brand initially wanted to eschew palm oil, it realized that palm derivatives are still the best choice for many of its products.

From ingredient sourcing to sustainable packaging, here’s how the industry’s forward thinkers are striving to tread more lightly as they produce the beauty products you see on the shelves.   RETHINK (INGREDIENTS)   The fine print on beauty labels tells us next to nothing about how responsibly sourced ingredients are. To muddy matters, calculating a product’s eco-footprint is far trickier than checking if the formula is all-natural or organic.   For starters, natural ingredients can still cause environmental havoc—take, for instance, palm oil and its derivatives. Widely used in beauty products, they can be found in everything from shampoo to lipstick. They are largely produced in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the destruction of rainforests to clear the way for palm oil plantations is rampant. “A lot of companies are coming in and bulldozing and forcing communities out,” says Lindsay Dahl, senior vice-president of social mission at Beautycounter. Although the brand initially wanted to eschew palm oil, it realized that palm derivatives are still the best choice for many of its products.   As cosmetics ingredients, palm oil derivatives are safe and non-toxic, explains Dahl. Plus, palm oil is the most efficient vegetable oil to grow, so switching to less efficient crops that demand more land could be more environmentally damaging. Beauty companies are therefore working to change how it’s produced: 100 per cent of L’Oréal Paris’s palm oil supply is certified by the non-profit authority Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and Beautycounter is currently pushing for all of its products to be RSPO-certified, too.   But sometimes there’s no way to harvest something in a sustainable way, so rethinking ingredients means taking to the science lab. A 2012 study by the ocean conservation non-profit BLOOM found that the cosmetics industry was the world’s biggest buyer of animal squalane, a moisturizer largely sourced from the livers of endangered sharks. So when Biossance got into the sustainable-skincare game, it opted to bioengineer 100 per cent plant-derived squalane—from renewable sugar cane—instead.   REVAMP (THROWAWAY PACKAGING)   Mixing non-recyclables with recyclables in the blue bin—something waste management experts have dubbed “wish-cycling”—can result in the whole batch getting trashed. Beauty products are extra-tricky: “If you look at a lipstick or a compact, it’s usually made from different kinds of material, and then there’s the size,” says Anthony Rossi, vice-president of global business development at Loop, a TerraCycle company. (Small-format items, generally anything less than eight centimetres by eight centimetres, often can’t be properly sorted.)   Plus, it’s not always obvious what can or can’t be recycled (a PET plastic shampoo bottle is OK but not the cap) and too often leftover goop hasn’t been rinsed off. “When something is contaminated with residual liquid, not only can you not recycle it but it ruins other recyclables,” says Calvin Lakhan, PhD, co-investigator for York University’s Waste Wiki project. A study done for Environment and Climate Change Canada reports that in Canada, we throw away 87 per cent of plastics.   But even if we only recycle what we should, the system is plagued by another problem: plummeting demand. “The big challenge with recycling today is that the cost of crude oil to make virgin plastics is so cheap,” says Rossi. “The incentive for companies to use recycled plastics is diminishing by the day.”   There’s no fast fix to throwaway packaging, but beauty companies of all stripes are making headway. Recently, Unilever switched to 100 per cent recycled-plastic bottles for all three of Dove’s ranges in North America and Europe in an effort to slash its use of virgin plastics. Last year, Beautycounter got rid of 800,000 unnecessary plastic parts—think inner lids and spatulas otherwise doomed to become landfill fodder.   Over at Burt’s Bees, prioritizing post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials has been a longtime goal, with some items now up to 80 per cent PCR content. Through its TerraCycle partnership, the brand also ensures that people have a free way to recycle items that can’t go in a blue bin, like lip balms and mascara.   In the haute-beauty space, Hermès’s answer to disposable consumer culture includes the new Rouge Hermès lipsticks, encased in colour-blocked lacquered, brushed and polished metal. Designed by Pierre Hardy, best known for his shoes and baubles, the plastic-free tubes are refillable keepsake objects—like all luxury items, they’re made to last.   REINVENT (THE SYSTEM)   “Reduce, reuse, recycle—it’s not just a catchy phrase,” says Lakhan. “It’s actually the order we’re supposed to do things, but we as consumers and policy planners neglect those first two steps.” Why jettison perfectly functional packaging, for example, when it could be refilled? That’s the question being posed by a growing number of manufacturers and retailers. In Vancouver, The Body Shop’s newly revamped CF Pacific Centre store has refill stations where you can buy your favourite shower gel in replenishable aluminum bottles.   Local indie shops focused on refillables are popping up across Canada, too. BYOC (bring your own container—anything clean will do) to Montreal’s Klova, Calgary’s Canary or Vancouver’s The Soap Dispensary & Kitchen Staples. Offering door-to-door service, Saponetti in Toronto will bring glass Mason jars with made-in-Canada soaps, shampoos and conditioners right to you and take away your empties for reuse.   Similarly, TerraCycle’s circular shopping platform, Loop, is a spin on the milkman delivery model, partnering with some major players in beauty, including P&G and Unilever. (Stateside, you can order Pantene, Love Beauty and Planet and Ren Clean Skincare—the same formulas you know but in containers designed to be refilled again and again.) Loop is slated to launch in the Greater Toronto Area this year with Loblaw; although it’s a pilot for now, it’s one more sign that reinventing our collective attitude to waste is not just urgent but doable.

From ingredient sourcing to sustainable packaging, here’s how the industry’s forward thinkers are striving to tread more lightly as they produce the beauty products you see on the shelves.   RETHINK (INGREDIENTS)   The fine print on beauty labels tells us next to nothing about how responsibly sourced ingredients are. To muddy matters, calculating a product’s eco-footprint is far trickier than checking if the formula is all-natural or organic.   For starters, natural ingredients can still cause environmental havoc—take, for instance, palm oil and its derivatives. Widely used in beauty products, they can be found in everything from shampoo to lipstick. They are largely produced in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the destruction of rainforests to clear the way for palm oil plantations is rampant. “A lot of companies are coming in and bulldozing and forcing communities out,” says Lindsay Dahl, senior vice-president of social mission at Beautycounter. Although the brand initially wanted to eschew palm oil, it realized that palm derivatives are still the best choice for many of its products.   As cosmetics ingredients, palm oil derivatives are safe and non-toxic, explains Dahl. Plus, palm oil is the most efficient vegetable oil to grow, so switching to less efficient crops that demand more land could be more environmentally damaging. Beauty companies are therefore working to change how it’s produced: 100 per cent of L’Oréal Paris’s palm oil supply is certified by the non-profit authority Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and Beautycounter is currently pushing for all of its products to be RSPO-certified, too.   But sometimes there’s no way to harvest something in a sustainable way, so rethinking ingredients means taking to the science lab. A 2012 study by the ocean conservation non-profit BLOOM found that the cosmetics industry was the world’s biggest buyer of animal squalane, a moisturizer largely sourced from the livers of endangered sharks. So when Biossance got into the sustainable-skincare game, it opted to bioengineer 100 per cent plant-derived squalane—from renewable sugar cane—instead.   REVAMP (THROWAWAY PACKAGING)   Mixing non-recyclables with recyclables in the blue bin—something waste management experts have dubbed “wish-cycling”—can result in the whole batch getting trashed. Beauty products are extra-tricky: “If you look at a lipstick or a compact, it’s usually made from different kinds of material, and then there’s the size,” says Anthony Rossi, vice-president of global business development at Loop, a TerraCycle company. (Small-format items, generally anything less than eight centimetres by eight centimetres, often can’t be properly sorted.)   Plus, it’s not always obvious what can or can’t be recycled (a PET plastic shampoo bottle is OK but not the cap) and too often leftover goop hasn’t been rinsed off. “When something is contaminated with residual liquid, not only can you not recycle it but it ruins other recyclables,” says Calvin Lakhan, PhD, co-investigator for York University’s Waste Wiki project. A study done for Environment and Climate Change Canada reports that in Canada, we throw away 87 per cent of plastics.   But even if we only recycle what we should, the system is plagued by another problem: plummeting demand. “The big challenge with recycling today is that the cost of crude oil to make virgin plastics is so cheap,” says Rossi. “The incentive for companies to use recycled plastics is diminishing by the day.”   There’s no fast fix to throwaway packaging, but beauty companies of all stripes are making headway. Recently, Unilever switched to 100 per cent recycled-plastic bottles for all three of Dove’s ranges in North America and Europe in an effort to slash its use of virgin plastics. Last year, Beautycounter got rid of 800,000 unnecessary plastic parts—think inner lids and spatulas otherwise doomed to become landfill fodder.   Over at Burt’s Bees, prioritizing post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials has been a longtime goal, with some items now up to 80 per cent PCR content. Through its TerraCycle partnership, the brand also ensures that people have a free way to recycle items that can’t go in a blue bin, like lip balms and mascara.   In the haute-beauty space, Hermès’s answer to disposable consumer culture includes the new Rouge Hermès lipsticks, encased in colour-blocked lacquered, brushed and polished metal. Designed by Pierre Hardy, best known for his shoes and baubles, the plastic-free tubes are refillable keepsake objects—like all luxury items, they’re made to last.   REINVENT (THE SYSTEM)   “Reduce, reuse, recycle—it’s not just a catchy phrase,” says Lakhan. “It’s actually the order we’re supposed to do things, but we as consumers and policy planners neglect those first two steps.” Why jettison perfectly functional packaging, for example, when it could be refilled? That’s the question being posed by a growing number of manufacturers and retailers. In Vancouver, The Body Shop’s newly revamped CF Pacific Centre store has refill stations where you can buy your favourite shower gel in replenishable aluminum bottles.   Local indie shops focused on refillables are popping up across Canada, too. BYOC (bring your own container—anything clean will do) to Montreal’s Klova, Calgary’s Canary or Vancouver’s The Soap Dispensary & Kitchen Staples. Offering door-to-door service, Saponetti in Toronto will bring glass Mason jars with made-in-Canada soaps, shampoos and conditioners right to you and take away your empties for reuse.   Similarly, TerraCycle’s circular shopping platform, Loop, is a spin on the milkman delivery model, partnering with some major players in beauty, including P&G and Unilever. (Stateside, you can order Pantene, Love Beauty and Planet and Ren Clean Skincare—the same formulas you know but in containers designed to be refilled again and again.) Loop is slated to launch in the Greater Toronto Area this year with Loblaw; although it’s a pilot for now, it’s one more sign that reinventing our collective attitude to waste is not just urgent but doable.

From ingredient sourcing to sustainable packaging, here’s how the industry’s forward thinkers are striving to tread more lightly as they produce the beauty products you see on the shelves.   RETHINK (INGREDIENTS)   The fine print on beauty labels tells us next to nothing about how responsibly sourced ingredients are. To muddy matters, calculating a product’s eco-footprint is far trickier than checking if the formula is all-natural or organic.   For starters, natural ingredients can still cause environmental havoc—take, for instance, palm oil and its derivatives. Widely used in beauty products, they can be found in everything from shampoo to lipstick. They are largely produced in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the destruction of rainforests to clear the way for palm oil plantations is rampant. “A lot of companies are coming in and bulldozing and forcing communities out,” says Lindsay Dahl, senior vice-president of social mission at Beautycounter. Although the brand initially wanted to eschew palm oil, it realized that palm derivatives are still the best choice for many of its products.   As cosmetics ingredients, palm oil derivatives are safe and non-toxic, explains Dahl. Plus, palm oil is the most efficient vegetable oil to grow, so switching to less efficient crops that demand more land could be more environmentally damaging. Beauty companies are therefore working to change how it’s produced: 100 per cent of L’Oréal Paris’s palm oil supply is certified by the non-profit authority Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and Beautycounter is currently pushing for all of its products to be RSPO-certified, too.   But sometimes there’s no way to harvest something in a sustainable way, so rethinking ingredients means taking to the science lab. A 2012 study by the ocean conservation non-profit BLOOM found that the cosmetics industry was the world’s biggest buyer of animal squalane, a moisturizer largely sourced from the livers of endangered sharks. So when Biossance got into the sustainable-skincare game, it opted to bioengineer 100 per cent plant-derived squalane—from renewable sugar cane—instead.   REVAMP (THROWAWAY PACKAGING)   Mixing non-recyclables with recyclables in the blue bin—something waste management experts have dubbed “wish-cycling”—can result in the whole batch getting trashed. Beauty products are extra-tricky: “If you look at a lipstick or a compact, it’s usually made from different kinds of material, and then there’s the size,” says Anthony Rossi, vice-president of global business development at Loop, a TerraCycle company. (Small-format items, generally anything less than eight centimetres by eight centimetres, often can’t be properly sorted.)   Plus, it’s not always obvious what can or can’t be recycled (a PET plastic shampoo bottle is OK but not the cap) and too often leftover goop hasn’t been rinsed off. “When something is contaminated with residual liquid, not only can you not recycle it but it ruins other recyclables,” says Calvin Lakhan, PhD, co-investigator for York University’s Waste Wiki project. A study done for Environment and Climate Change Canada reports that in Canada, we throw away 87 per cent of plastics.   But even if we only recycle what we should, the system is plagued by another problem: plummeting demand. “The big challenge with recycling today is that the cost of crude oil to make virgin plastics is so cheap,” says Rossi. “The incentive for companies to use recycled plastics is diminishing by the day.”   There’s no fast fix to throwaway packaging, but beauty companies of all stripes are making headway. Recently, Unilever switched to 100 per cent recycled-plastic bottles for all three of Dove’s ranges in North America and Europe in an effort to slash its use of virgin plastics. Last year, Beautycounter got rid of 800,000 unnecessary plastic parts—think inner lids and spatulas otherwise doomed to become landfill fodder.   Over at Burt’s Bees, prioritizing post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials has been a longtime goal, with some items now up to 80 per cent PCR content. Through its TerraCycle partnership, the brand also ensures that people have a free way to recycle items that can’t go in a blue bin, like lip balms and mascara.   In the haute-beauty space, Hermès’s answer to disposable consumer culture includes the new Rouge Hermès lipsticks, encased in colour-blocked lacquered, brushed and polished metal. Designed by Pierre Hardy, best known for his shoes and baubles, the plastic-free tubes are refillable keepsake objects—like all luxury items, they’re made to last.   REINVENT (THE SYSTEM)   “Reduce, reuse, recycle—it’s not just a catchy phrase,” says Lakhan. “It’s actually the order we’re supposed to do things, but we as consumers and policy planners neglect those first two steps.” Why jettison perfectly functional packaging, for example, when it could be refilled? That’s the question being posed by a growing number of manufacturers and retailers. In Vancouver, The Body Shop’s newly revamped CF Pacific Centre store has refill stations where you can buy your favourite shower gel in replenishable aluminum bottles.   Local indie shops focused on refillables are popping up across Canada, too. BYOC (bring your own container—anything clean will do) to Montreal’s Klova, Calgary’s Canary or Vancouver’s The Soap Dispensary & Kitchen Staples. Offering door-to-door service, Saponetti in Toronto will bring glass Mason jars with made-in-Canada soaps, shampoos and conditioners right to you and take away your empties for reuse.   Similarly, TerraCycle’s circular shopping platform, Loop, is a spin on the milkman delivery model, partnering with some major players in beauty, including P&G and Unilever. (Stateside, you can order Pantene, Love Beauty and Planet and Ren Clean Skincare—the same formulas you know but in containers designed to be refilled again and again.) Loop is slated to launch in the Greater Toronto Area this year with Loblaw; although it’s a pilot for now, it’s one more sign that reinventing our collective attitude to waste is not just urgent but doable.

Simple, beautiful, and sustainable, the new MyKirei by Kao personal care line is the embodiment of the Japanese company’s Kirei, or “beautiful,” Lifestyle Plan and the commitments it has set forth in the ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) plan to make everyday life more beautiful, make thoughtful choices for society, and make the world cleaner. That’s according to MyKirei Director of Marketing Marissa Vallillo, who adds, “MyKirei by Kao is built on the philosophy that caring for self, society, and the world makes life more beautiful. It includes plant-based, biodegradable, vegan-friendly personal care products in a revolutionary eco-friendly package.”   That package is the AIR Bottle, a flexible, yet rigid, “bottle” that comprises an inner flexible pouch surrounded by a transparent, air-filled outer flexible film pouch with an air tube that allows the bottle to stand upright. The inner pouch is Kao’s Raku-raku Eco Pack Refill, which was developed by Kao in 2018 to allow for easier refills (in conjunction with its Smart Holder) and to evacuate all product from the pouch through the use of a pump dispenser. In the AIR Bottle, the inner pouch is separated from the outer pouch so that as product is dispensed, the inner pouch collapses inward, dispensing up to three times more product than in more traditional packaging.   The first practical use of Kao’s in-house-engineered Air in Film Bottle technology, the 10.1-oz MyKirei by Kao package is made from a proprietary combination of materials from Fuji Seal that were selected for their various properties, such as water and gas barrier, and puncture resistance.   According to Ken Adams, Director of Packaging Development at Kao, the functional requirements for the package were solely based on sustainability and on Kao’s commitment to reducing its reliance on plastic. “Many brands on the market now offer recyclable packaging, but how many consumers actually go through the trouble to recycle it? Not many,” he says. “Ninety-one percent of plastic is not being recycled, and 80 percent of what is sitting in landfills should have been recycled, but it wasn’t. The AIR Bottle does the work for the consumer so they can feel confident that they are respecting the world as soon as they bring it into their home.”   By replacing the rigid plastic traditionally used in a pump bottle, Kao says that it is reducing the use of plastic by 50%. In addition, the bottle is advertised on-pack as being “100% Recyclable,” with an asterisk guiding consumers to the TerraCycle website. Explains Vallillo, “Consumers can download a prepaid shipping label from TerraCycle [linked through the Kao website] and ship used packaging to them. TerraCycle upcycles the materials and makes sure nothing goes to waste. In Japan, we heave a similar program with TerraCycle where they upcycle similar materials and turn them into children’s building blocks.”   Focus on simplicity extends to product   In the U.S., Kao is most well-known for brands such as Ban, Bioré, Curél, Jergens, and John Frieda, among others—all of which were acquired by Kao or brought to the U.S. from Japan. Given that the focal point of the new brand is Kao’s ESG strategy of Kirei and its “revolutionary” new Air in Film bottle technology, Kao chose to launch the products as a new brand under its own name, rather than part of a brand extension.   “By launching MyKirei by Kao, an ESG-specific brand, we now have a place to house some of these breakthrough innovations like the AIR bottle,” says Vallillo. “We also plan to integrate many of the ESG technologies into the other brands.”     The MyKirei by Kao line debuted in April, with the first phase offering three products: Nourishing Shampoo, Conditioner, and Hand Wash. With a focus on simplicity of choice, each formula is said to deliver the desired benefits across all hair and skin types. “The MyKirei lineup is not extensive,” says Vallillo, “it offers you great performance formulas without compromise. You don’t need to have 10 shampoos or conditioners in the shower. You only need MyKirei. We are providing you with technology and efficacy so you too can reduce waste in your home with excess products and packaging.”   The formulas also reflect the Kirei sensibility of simplicity, as well as other aspects such as beauty, cleanliness, simplicity, balance, and sustainability. They are vegan-friendly, plant-based, and up to 95% biodegradable. They also include balanced blends of traditional, authentic Japanese ingredients, like yuzu fruit, rice water, and Japanese Tsubaki flower.   The package design supports these messages, with the inner pouch direct-printed with a gradient of soft pink along with a stylized flower image that changes depending on the variety. The pump is white.   The products were introduced only in the U.S and only on Amazon, but Vallillo says Kao plans to expand into other retail channels in the future. The next launch in the MyKirei line is (at presstime) scheduled for July. According to Kao, it will be all about instilling a culture of cleanliness into the next generation, with a specific focus on hand-washing education.   “This is an incredibly relevant topic right now for obvious reasons, but Kao has been doing this with classes in schools for children for years. We are excited to bring this campaign to the USA through MyKirei by Kao,” shares Vallillo. “Every launch will have a new way to help the consumer live more Kirei, while telling a different story each time. What you see is just the start, and we plan to extend into other lifestyle categories and household categories that fit the MyKirei proposition.”  

Simple, beautiful, and sustainable, the new MyKirei by Kao personal care line is the embodiment of the Japanese company’s Kirei, or “beautiful,” Lifestyle Plan and the commitments it has set forth in the ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) plan to make everyday life more beautiful, make thoughtful choices for society, and make the world cleaner. That’s according to MyKirei Director of Marketing Marissa Vallillo, who adds, “MyKirei by Kao is built on the philosophy that caring for self, society, and the world makes life more beautiful. It includes plant-based, biodegradable, vegan-friendly personal care products in a revolutionary eco-friendly package.”   That package is the AIR Bottle, a flexible, yet rigid, “bottle” that comprises an inner flexible pouch surrounded by a transparent, air-filled outer flexible film pouch with an air tube that allows the bottle to stand upright. The inner pouch is Kao’s Raku-raku Eco Pack Refill, which was developed by Kao in 2018 to allow for easier refills (in conjunction with its Smart Holder) and to evacuate all product from the pouch through the use of a pump dispenser. In the AIR Bottle, the inner pouch is separated from the outer pouch so that as product is dispensed, the inner pouch collapses inward, dispensing up to three times more product than in more traditional packaging.   The first practical use of Kao’s in-house-engineered Air in Film Bottle technology, the 10.1-oz MyKirei by Kao package is made from a proprietary combination of materials from Fuji Seal that were selected for their various properties, such as water and gas barrier, and puncture resistance.   According to Ken Adams, Director of Packaging Development at Kao, the functional requirements for the package were solely based on sustainability and on Kao’s commitment to reducing its reliance on plastic. “Many brands on the market now offer recyclable packaging, but how many consumers actually go through the trouble to recycle it? Not many,” he says. “Ninety-one percent of plastic is not being recycled, and 80 percent of what is sitting in landfills should have been recycled, but it wasn’t. The AIR Bottle does the work for the consumer so they can feel confident that they are respecting the world as soon as they bring it into their home.”   By replacing the rigid plastic traditionally used in a pump bottle, Kao says that it is reducing the use of plastic by 50%. In addition, the bottle is advertised on-pack as being “100% Recyclable,” with an asterisk guiding consumers to the TerraCycle website. Explains Vallillo, “Consumers can download a prepaid shipping label from TerraCycle [linked through the Kao website] and ship used packaging to them. TerraCycle upcycles the materials and makes sure nothing goes to waste. In Japan, we heave a similar program with TerraCycle where they upcycle similar materials and turn them into children’s building blocks.”   Focus on simplicity extends to product   In the U.S., Kao is most well-known for brands such as Ban, Bioré, Curél, Jergens, and John Frieda, among others—all of which were acquired by Kao or brought to the U.S. from Japan. Given that the focal point of the new brand is Kao’s ESG strategy of Kirei and its “revolutionary” new Air in Film bottle technology, Kao chose to launch the products as a new brand under its own name, rather than part of a brand extension.   “By launching MyKirei by Kao, an ESG-specific brand, we now have a place to house some of these breakthrough innovations like the AIR bottle,” says Vallillo. “We also plan to integrate many of the ESG technologies into the other brands.”   The MyKirei by Kao line debuted in April, with the first phase offering three products: Nourishing Shampoo, Conditioner, and Hand Wash. With a focus on simplicity of choice, each formula is said to deliver the desired benefits across all hair and skin types. “The MyKirei lineup is not extensive,” says Vallillo, “it offers you great performance formulas without compromise. You don’t need to have 10 shampoos or conditioners in the shower. You only need MyKirei. We are providing you with technology and efficacy so you too can reduce waste in your home with excess products and packaging.”   The formulas also reflect the Kirei sensibility of simplicity, as well as other aspects such as beauty, cleanliness, simplicity, balance, and sustainability. They are vegan-friendly, plant-based, and up to 95% biodegradable. They also include balanced blends of traditional, authentic Japanese ingredients, like yuzu fruit, rice water, and Japanese Tsubaki flower.   The package design supports these messages, with the inner pouch direct-printed with a gradient of soft pink along with a stylized flower image that changes depending on the variety. The pump is white.   The products were introduced only in the U.S and only on Amazon, but Vallillo says Kao plans to expand into other retail channels in the future. The next launch in the MyKirei line is (at presstime) scheduled for July. According to Kao, it will be all about instilling a culture of cleanliness into the next generation, with a specific focus on hand-washing education.   “This is an incredibly relevant topic right now for obvious reasons, but Kao has been doing this with classes in schools for children for years. We are excited to bring this campaign to the USA through MyKirei by Kao,” shares Vallillo. “Every launch will have a new way to help the consumer live more Kirei, while telling a different story each time. What you see is just the start, and we plan to extend into other lifestyle categories and household categories that fit the MyKirei proposition.”