Sephora: Overpackaging Like This Won’t Make For a Beautiful World

Another Sephora order, another box that's too large . . .

I've blogged about Sephora's packaging (and the packaging of the brands that they carry) before (you can find some of my blog posts here and here and here and here and here and here and here.). Sephora sometimes gets their packaging just right. Unfortunately, though, when I shop online, I often receive an overpackaged package. The problem seems to originate from the fact that Sephora insists on using cardboard boxes (with a strip of bubble wrap in the bottom) and never bubble envelopes (at least in my experience), so there will often be a lot of room in the box (for instance if one only orders one small item and this can happen a lot either if the item is high value so as to grant free shipping or if the person has VIB Rouge status which entitles the holder to free shipping on everything).

The other packaging problem that Sephora seems to have is that they carry a lot of items that have lots and lots of packaging. If a company like Sephora could influence the brands that it carries to use less packaging (for instance putting a safety seal around a lipstick, face mask, face cream, or mascara instead of using a box) then the amount of waste surrounding cosmetics and skincare would significantly decrease since Sephora is a big company with many customers.

I received this order in December (I'm just getting around to this now, since I've been busy with my baby!). I only ordered a lip gloss from Bite Beauty and a small jar of face mask from GlamGlow. Everything else below is either 100 point bonuses (in the Beauty Insider program at Sephora, each purchase gives the member points that they can then put towards deluxe samples), free samples with order (normally three with each order, but sometimes they go up to five), or the "free" makeup bag packed with samples that came with this order.

A special mention to GlamGlow for their excellent packaging of the face mask that I ordered. It had a safety seal around the small plastic jar which was filled to the brim with product. No wasting of materials here and it was fully recyclable.

Lots of packing paper as usual.

This box is definitely too big for the order.

GlamGlow is a great example of minimal packaging. Only a safety seal on this small size face mask and fully recyclable jar.

Why put a little lip gloss in such a big box? Why not use a safety seal like the face mask above?

There's nothing pretty about this wasted space or cardboard.

This lip gloss does not need any box, let alone such a big one.

This 100 point bonus bronzer had ridiculous packaging for a sample sized product.

Why make the box this thick and waste all this space?

This 100 point bonus lipstick came in a box. It is a sample size. Why not put a safety seal on it?

This 100 point bonus lipstick came in a box. It is a sample size. Why not put a safety seal on it?

Two out of three samples with the order had minimal packaging, the third, on the right, way too much.

The order came with a "free" makeup bag with samples in it. For some reason the bag was in a bag.

A bag in a bag with tissue paper too. Talk about overpackaging.

All of these samples came in the "free" cosmetics bag. Some had surplus packaging of their own.

I think that Sephora has a real chance to lead by example with their own packaging and working with the brands that they carry to create less waste and packaging or perhaps by making it easier to recycle packaging for cosmetics and skincare (mixed materials create problems, for instance in compacts that have plastic, metal, and glass or mascara that has perhaps rubber, plastic, metal, and/or bristles). While the cardboard boxes are recyclable, reducing is better than recycling. Overpackaging is never pretty (although some people on the Sephora website will disagree with me, because items that have more spartan packaging are sometimes called ugly or not pretty enough in the reviews).

Sephora: Why Do Cosmetics and Skincare Companies Insist on Overpackaging?

When excess packaging is removed, this Sephora box looks way too large.

I ordered from Sephora a few days ago and received my package promptly. The box was a bit overly large, though not as bad as some other orders I have received. There was a lot of packing paper on top of the items ordered and then some bubble wrap under the items. 

Not that big of a box.

What struck me the most about this order though, was the amount that cosmetics and skincare companies continue to overpackage their products. I’m not sure if this is just to attract attention on overcrowded shelves (I have even seen people complain online that packaging on a particular cosmetics item wasn’t “pretty” enough) or if it’s to justify their high prices, but it really should be dialed back. Most of the products that have a ton of packaging don’t actually need it (ie. they’re not breakable, etc.).

For instance, I ordered a Boscia facial cleansing sponge. The sponge is quite small, about three inches in diameter and maybe an inch or slightly higher in height. However, the package that it came in was far, far bigger and made of hard plastic. The sponge wasn’t breakable and it was already wrapped in shrink-wrap too, so all of this plastic packaging seems very wasteful and unnecessary. Yes, it’s recyclable, but it’s a waste, so it should not exist in the first place (and the instructions printed on the plastic could have been printed on a little slip of paper to go with a shrink-wrapped sponge).

A big plastic package for a tiny sponge.

This package is ridiculously large and unnecessary since the sponge is already wrapped in plastic.

Redundant plastic.

I also ordered some Bite Beauty lipsticks that were on sale. I had forgotten the packaging that this lipstick came in as I had not bought one in quite a while. I opened the box thinking that I had received the wrong lipstick because the size and shape of the box were so different than my lipstick. But it was my lipstick. It was in a box at least two times bigger than necessary. I have blogged more than once about how I think that items like mascara and lipstick should just have a safety seal or maybe shrink-wrap around them and no box to reduce packaging. I stand by this.

Three lipsticks, three unnecessary boxes.

When one opens a box one finds the lipstick and then tons of empty space and a cardboard spacer.

The box is way bigger than the lipstick tube.

What a waste of cardboard.

Then there’s the matter of samples. With each Sephora order one receives three samples. But I also received a gift bag packed with a ton of other samples as a bonus. Plus, I ordered a 100 point sample of hair detangler (this was just in a bottle with no unnecessary box). The samples were all sparely packaged except for the Bumble & Bumble Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil, which had a glass and plastic vial and then a folded cardboard jacket which I thought overly large.

The Bumble & Bumble sample had too much packaging.

That's a huge jacket of cardboard for such a small vial.

I have talked before on this blog about “free” makeup or cosmetics bags and samples (you can find the links here and here and here and here and here). Many women (and some men too) end up with way too many free makeup or cosmetics bags from buying cosmetics and/or skincare products over the years and receiving these as a bonus or “free” item (really these are probably built into the price of the products sold by the company). A lot of these bags probably end up as garbage or collecting dust. I have also seen a lot in thrift shops. Even with giving away these bags or repurposing or reusing them for other things like packing (see my blog post) I still have way more than I ever needed.

Naturally, the cosmetics bag comes wrapped in a plastic bag and tissue paper. That makes sense!

Garbage before one even makes it to the cosmetics bag.

The tiny samples definitely don't need such a large package.

All the samples around the cosmetics bag that they came in.

The other samples added to the bonus samples and the 100 point sample show just how many things I didn't pay for in this order and how much more garbage and recycling there will be out of this order in the end.

A special mention goes out to Bumble & Bumble for not placing their hair product, Don’t Blow It, that I ordered in a box and just having it in its tube. A facial oil I ordered came in a box, but as it’s a glass bottle, this is acceptable because of the risk of it breaking in shipping.

Excellent packaging. No excess box.

When I removed all of the unnecessary packaging from the products that I ordered and put them back in the box from Sephora, there was so much more empty space. What a waste. If we keep heading in this direction, we’re going to be left drowning in a huge pile of recycling, without the resources to process it.

These are all empty packages and the paper and plastic and cardboard from just this one Sephora order before I've even used anything. So, after I use up things there will be even more waste.

A much smaller box or bubble mailer envelope could have been used for this tiny amount of stuff if packaging had been less to begin with.

Let's reduce packaging.

Neutrogena Hydro Boost Sample Through Well.ca: How Much Packaging Does a Sample Need?!

I previously wrote a post (that you can find here) about getting a sample after shopping online at Well.ca, a Canadian online shopping site. The website has many interesting products including food, vitamins, protein bars, a wide range of baby products, kitchen implements, etc.. I’ve been very pleased with the website so far (their customer service is excellent too), however, there is one aspect of ordering products from them that makes me a little annoyed. When one places an order, depending on how much one has spent, certain samples are offered. One does have the right to refuse the samples, but in this case, I took the sample offered which was Neutrogena Hydro Boost gel cream. I figured it might be handy to take along when travelling instead of lugging along something larger.

I pulled it out of a drawer yesterday when I was organizing and was struck by how much packaging was involved in this tiny sample. There was a large plastic wrapper with an expiry date stamped on it. There was the tiny plastic tube of moisturizer. There was also a big coupon for buying more of the product printed in high colour on cardstock.

Big plastic wrapper, giant coupon, and tiny little sample.

So much waste.

Why is this coupon so big?

Why does the coupon have to be so huge or on cardstock? Why is a plastic wrap even needed when the tube is plastic? There is overpackaging galore involved in this sample. Neutrogena should reduce the amount of packaging that it’s using for samples. Our children are going to having nothing left but a pile of garbage if companies keep using so much wasteful packaging for all of their products including free samples. Well.ca, being a company focussed on wellness, should perhaps put some pressure on the companies that are sending samples to them to distribute to use less packaging for the “wellness” of the planet. 

Overpackaging impacts us all. Now I’m left with a plastic wrapper and a piece of cardstock which the coupon is printed on, all of which I will never use again and some of which I can’t even recycle. As for the tiny tube of moisturizer, once that’s gone, it will end up in a recycling bin somewhere too. I wonder if it would have been better for Neutrogena to put the lotion into one of those little tear open pouches which while they are not recyclable, they don’t take up much room. The tiny plastic tube, if it is recycled, will take a lot of resources to process. Too many resources are being squandered on things like redundant packaging. It’s time that we all thought of a better way to make our finite resources last.

Zero Waste: How I Reuse Free Makeup/Cosmetics Bags

Another "free" makeup bag joins the ranks along with its own packaging.

I’ve blogged before about the “free” or bonus stuff that often comes with makeup or skincare (you can find the links here and here and here and here). Sometimes it’s some samples and other times it may also includes a makeup or cosmetics bag. I’ve ended up with an unbelievable number of these from such places as Sephora, Shishedo, and Clinique. 

Another makeup bag and it's filled with samples.

This makeup bag came full of more "free" samples.

The picture below was taken more than a year ago and since then a few more of these bags have joined the ranks.

There's even more of these cosmetics bags hanging around my place now.

Someone on a blog of packing tips said that they use their free cosmetics bags when travelling to organize stuff. I tried this method on my last trip (to French Polynesia- haven’t finished uploading all of my blog entries for this trip but you can find it here). I put charging cords and earphones in one cosmetics bag. I put my GoPro Hero 5 and its accessories in another one. I put my travel journal (paper) plus pens, scissors, and tape in another. I used yet another to carry my prescriptions. I was quite pleased with this way of reusing the makeup bags (it makes it easy to find small items in a suitcase or backpack when it’s categorized in makeup bags that all have different patterns and colours) which otherwise would be a complete waste (I mean you might use one to travel with your makeup, but how do you use 15?), however I still have so many not in use.

One example of how I used makeup bags to organize small stuff when I traveled. Here's my GoPro Hero 5 plus accessories.

The other day, Graco sent me a replacement baby carriage (a jogger type) because my previous Graco stroller was defective. Unfortunately, both of these carriages are equipped with only a strangely small phone carrier (they say it will fit modern smartphones, but if you have anything larger than an old flip phone, you won’t be able to use their phone carrier or even the opening tray underneath to store your phone (not even my husband’s iPhone 6s fits in this carrier). Also, annoyingly, women’s clothes often don’t have pockets, so where am I supposed to store my phone? I went over and over the problem in my head. I tried the cup holders, but they didn’t fit my Google Pixel XL. I tried a small reusable bag, but it hung down from the handle too far, which was irritating. Then I remembered all of the free makeup bags. Some of these were made of waterproof materials. I found one that fit my phone and took a hair elastic and passed it through the zipper pull. Then I took the elastic and passed it through the frame of the stroller by the canopy of the carriage. I use this now for when I don’t have pockets and need somewhere to put my phone. The little lidded storage box on the carriage works for my keys, but not really anything else. I think I’ll probably use a real elastic band next time to give the case more latitude to be pull towards me when I’m rummaging for my phone while holding the handle of the carriage, but I’m pleased with this solution.

The middle thing is supposed to be for holding a phone. My Google Pixel XL will not fit at all.

It won't fit in this little storage bin under the "phone holder" either.

A free makeup bag.

Attached to the frame of the stroller with a hair elastic.

Light and nestled into the hood of the carriage, the free makeup bag now holds my phone when I don't have pockets.

While it would be better to not have so many makeup bags being produced and thrown out or just sitting around (when one visits Value Village and other used clothing stores one can observe dozens or sometimes what seems like hundreds of these makeup bags hanging around. Who is going to buy one of them used when it was originally free? What happens to them if they are not bought at these places? Are they thrown out?), at least if they are used somehow, they are not a complete waste. Really though, I think makeup bags are another example of overpackaging in our society that uses too much packaging, resources, and is not moving in a zero waste direction at all.

Do you have any ideas of how to reuse cosmetics or makeup bags?

Packages with packages. That's a lot of waste.