Cleaner footprints: L’Oréal aims for greener deliveries in Singapore with latest sustainability push

With the SustainaBox Initiative, L’Oréal expects to completely remove the use of plastic from its local e-commerce parcels from its own brand websites as well as e-commerce platforms Shopee and Lazada.

The products will be delivered in a SustainaBox carton with fasil paper box fillers and paper tape that are FSC-certified1 and made of 100% recycled materials, reducing all plastic waste without the need of any plastic airbags or tape.

The company has is also embarking on an electric vehicle delivery trial across 40 stores in the west of Singapore from this month onwards and is aiming to reduce up to 50% of carbon emissions each month.

The firm is working with transportation partners on this programme and is aiming to expand it further by next year.

“Over the past years, expectations as to what the role of companies should be has changed dramatically. At L’Oréal, we want to take on greater responsibility, go beyond the mere transformation of our business model,”​ said Iris Lam, managing director, L’Oréal Singapore.

While the accelerated growth of the online retail arena helped the company weather through the COVID-19 pandemic, it was aware of the huge amount of waste it was generating.

“L’Oréal has been seeing huge growth in online retail across key brands such as L’Oréal Paris, La Roche-Posay, SkinCeuticals, Kiehl’s. However, we also recognised the real and burgeoning issue of the increase in e-commerce waste,” ​said Lam.

Green goals        

Last June, L’Oréal outlined a range of sustainability measures for its ‘For the Future’ programme. It included 2030 targets for all plastic packaging to be recycled or bio-based, all sites and centres to be carbon neutral and 95% of ingredients to be bio-based, derived from abundant minerals or circular.

Lam said L’Oréal Singapore’s sustainability goals were aligned with the group’s targets for 2030. “With sustainability as the core of L’Oréal’s mission, we aim to make significant leaps in the next 10 years through our set of ambitions laid for 2030.​

“We have already converted to using 100% clean energy for our office since 2020, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced waste, implemented eco-design stores and displays in stores, and conducted research and innovation into sustainable ingredients and green sciences.”​

She also revealed to us that a cross-brand recycling programme is set to launch in Singapore as well. Such a programme was previously implemented in Hong Kong just last month.

The programme started off with Kiehl’s, Lancôme and L’Oréal Paris accepting used product containers at their stores. The programme is aiming to cover the group’s other 10 beauty brands in Hong Kong by the end of Q2 2021.

The company partnered with local environmental social enterprise V Cycle to recycle its packaging, including plastic, glass and metal components.

“This will be announced really soon for L’Oréal Singapore and we look forward to sharing our exciting initiative with everyone,”​ said Lam.