Excessive Packaging-Who reject the sustainablility?

On September 8, the official account of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government Office "Shanghai Release" announced the brands that violated the regulations due to "excessive packaging" in the latest market supervision spot check. The results of the spot check showed that the supervision conducted a total of 10 batches of cosmetic products on online shopping platforms such as Tmall, Taobao, and Oriental Shopping. Among them, 7 batches of cosmetics were over-packaged, and the unqualified detection rate was 70%. Among them, Chanel and L'Oreal , Estee Lauder, etc. are listed impressively, the reason for the failure is that the packaging void rate is too large.

In fact, China has already made clear regulations on the problem of excessive packaging of goods. In the National Standards for Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods, Food and Cosmetics, implemented in 2010, “excessive packaging” is defined as “packages that exceed moderate packaging functional requirements and whose packaging void ratio, packaging layers, and packaging cost exceed the necessary level” . And it clearly stipulates that the number of packaging layers for food or cosmetics cannot exceed 3 layers, and the gap of the packaging cannot exceed 60%, and its cost cannot exceed 15% of the selling price.

In the "General Rules for Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods" implemented in 2015, "packaging void ratio" is defined as "the ratio of the volume of space occupied by the package without the contents to the total volume of the package".

Although the new regulations have been released, the enthusiasm for excessive packaging of cosmetics continues unabated, regardless of whether it is domestic or foreign, internationally well-known or niche brands.

According to the observation of GPLP, the unabated increase in over-packing is not unrelated to consumers and businesses. Consumers like products that are exquisitely packaged and look "high-end" products, even when they are used as gifts. On the other hand, merchants are afraid of product damage or bad reviews due to improper packaging during express delivery, and exquisite packaging can increase sales and enable merchants to earn more profits.

In the cosmetics industry, this problem can be translated into product efficacy or product packaging, which is more important, and consumers want both. As one of the important indicators that consumers refer to when purchasing goods, packaging can indeed drive product sales to a certain extent. However, if it is over-packed, it will cause resource and environmental pollution problems.

If you want to know more details about the current supervision for China cosmetic market, please feel free to contact us,e-mail:[email protected] or phone: +86 18067912059