Our Sustainable Packaging Journey
Moving to 100% recyclable packaging is harder than we thought — and more important than ever. Here's what we've learned.
When we started Glow The Clean Way, we knew our commitment to clean had to extend beyond the formula itself. Packaging is one of the beauty industry's most significant environmental challenges — globally, over 120 billion units of packaging are produced by the cosmetics industry each year.
Our initial packaging was 80% recyclable, which felt like a good starting point. But as we dug deeper into lifecycle analysis, we realised "recyclable in theory" and "actually recycled in practice" are very different things. Some of our packaging, while technically recyclable, used materials that few municipal facilities actually process.
Over the past year we've worked with our packaging suppliers to make two significant changes. First, we've moved all our glass jars to a post-consumer recycled glass programme, reducing the embodied carbon of each unit by approximately 30%. Second, our cartons are now made from FSC-certified board with water-based inks only.
We're not there yet. Our pumps — which require mixed materials for functionality — remain our biggest challenge. We're currently testing a pump-free alternative using a vacuum-seal system, which we hope to introduce in late 2026. It's slower progress than we'd like, but we'd rather be honest about the complexity than overstate our sustainability credentials.