How The Beauty Industry's Culture Of Excess Is Slowing Changing

A new beauty product launches almost every week: a fresh wave of serums, oils, and creams pushed relentlessly across social media, but it's no secret that the beauty industry has an overconsumption and beauty waste issue. Expired items, mismatched packaging, perfectly usable products that simply never get used. Where does it all go? Too often, straight into landfill. The numbers back up what many in the industry have long suspected. According to a report from Avery Dennison, over 10% of beauty and personal care products are wasted somewhere in the supply chain, an estimated $4.8 billion in lost value each year. Of that waste, 6.2 percent comes from simple overproduction, while 4 percent is discarded due to damage or spoilage before it ever reaches a customer. Zooming out further, industry estimates suggest that as much as 20 to 40 percent of all beauty products end up as waste in one form or another, whether through returns, expired testers, or unsold stock sitting in warehouses. Packaging tells its own story too: roughly 120 billion units of beauty packaging, spanning plastic, paper, glass, and metal, end up in landfills annually, accounting for about 70 percent of the industry's total waste. As the beauty industry cycles endlessly through new brands and launches, its carbon footprint has become impossible to ignore. The good news is that a growing number of founders, formulators, and industry experts are building real solutions, from smarter subscription models to refill stations to a rethinking of how ingredients are grown in the first place. Here is what they are doing about it, and what it might mean for how we all shop. Curated Boxes That Tackle Beauty Waste With Intention Subscription boxes have long promised discovery, but they have just as often produced waste. Adriana Furlotti, founder of REGIMES, understands this firsthand. She developed adult acne and spent hundreds of pounds trying different products that usually either made her skin worse, or damaged the skin barrier because she did not fully understand how to use them properly. It became, in her words, an expensive process of trial and error. Her time working at TikTok Shop convinced her that beauty needed a more coordinated approach, built around full routines with clear guidance rather than a scattershot of unrelated products. "I had subscribed to many different beauty boxes myself and, at first, it was exciting receiving a box every month, but after a while the novelty wore off. The products often felt repetitive or uncoordinated, and many of them were not things I was genuinely interested in trying," she shares over email. Everyone's skin is different, and finding what works usually comes down to trial and error, an expensive proposition when buying products at full price. That is the gap REGIMES was built to close. "REGIMES is there to allow people to try trusted routines curated by creators for a fraction of the price. Customers can experiment in a more intentional way, learn how to use products properly within a routine, and ultimately discover the ones that truly work for their skin," Furlotti shares. Cosmetics Business has tracked a broader shift in the industry from traditional beauty boxes toward creator and founder-led curated edits. Traditional boxes operated on the premise that more choice meant a greater chance a customer would find something worth repurchasing. But that same abundance of options tends to produce more waste, not less. With curated edits, the goal isn't to maximize the number of products someone discovers, it's to maximize the relevance of every discovery, and the more selective discovery becomes, the more likely every product has a genuine purpose. The ultimate aim, after all, is to help a consumer find something valuable enough that they choose to buy it again at full price, while cutting down on the decision fatigue that comes with an oversaturated market. As Furlotti puts it, "REGIMES boxes aren't adding more choice to an already saturated market, we're taking it away. We don't ask the consumer to navigate lots of products, we replace those individual decisions with one trusted recommendation, and then take the concept a step further by organising the products into a comprehensive routine and showing customers exactly how to get the most from it." Refill Stations That Cut Beauty Waste At The Counter Some of the most straightforward solutions come from simply keeping usable products moving instead of letting them sit unused. Amanda Gabbard, a New York City based makeup artist, sees this waste up close in her own line of work. "Artists like myself often have a ton of barely touched product that either got sent to us or we bought and didn't use. We should do resale or trade marketplace to keep the products circulating and not sitting in drawers," she says. Laura Pucker, founder of Pucker Up Beauty and BBE Media, has pushed a similar idea further: building dedicated marketplaces or distribution platforms for products that are unopened, discontinued, overstocked, mildly damaged, or nearing expiry, along the lines of what Beautyfor is already doing locally in New York. Safety comes first, Pucker notes, meaning expiration dates and reusability standards still need to be checked. From there, "these products should, of course, still be checked if they fit safety standards for reusability. Instead of throwing away these products, it would be better to probably sell these products at greatly reduced prices, or be donated to organizations reusing these products for charity like Beauty Bus," she adds. A handful of brands have already brought refill culture into their stores. Roberta Perry, owner of ScrubzBody Skin Care, describes a system where loyal customers keep coming back to the same jars. Customers can refill their jars and bottles with the same scent, or they can try something new from our selection of ready-made scents, she explains, noting that customers can also customize anything they want at the scent bar, all at a significant discount, over and over again. "We had a customer who had jars from 12 to 15 years ago. We asked her to swap them out after she brought them in for refills many times," Perry adds. Suntegrity, a clean mineral sunscreen brand, has taken a similar approach, incorporating bio based plastics and post consumer recycled materials while offering refillable products wherever possible. Pucker argues that convenience has to be built into any refill program, or it simply won't stick. "More companies should reward customers that refill products in their original packaging. Brands can help customers stack points or discounts to get limited edition products, or even VIP access to more luxurious products or services," she says, noting that this kind of incentive can cut down on waste while keeping both customers and businesses happy. That convenience matters just as much outside the brand's own doors. Refill stations need to show up in the places people already go: department stores, pharmacies, salons, even gyms. Making refills part of an everyday routine, rather than a special errand, is what will actually move the needle on packaging waste while helping consumers save money in the process. Rethinking Beauty Waste Before It Even Reaches A Bottle Some of the most meaningful progress is happening upstream, long before a product ever reaches a shelf. Derek Chase, founder and president of FLORA+BAST, a Los Angeles based wellness company focused on sustainable beauty, points to how most raw ingredients are sourced. Most beauty ingredients are grown in India or China, where they utilize conventional, large scale agriculture practices which ruin the soil, create toxins for humans, and is the most devastating part of the process, he explains, adding that those same ingredients are often packed into plastic containers and shipped halfway across the world. FLORA+BAST instead partners exclusively with farms growing organic and biodynamic ingredients in a regenerative way, a method Chase considers the gold standard of sustainable agriculture given how much pressure farming already puts on the planet's freshwater supply. Cindy Jones, a cosmetic formulator with more than 20 years of experience and owner of Colorado Aromatics, a small farm based skincare company, argues that upstream waste is the piece of the puzzle most often ignored. "We grow herbs that we use in our skincare products on our own farm. That allows us to bypass some of the packaging, processing, and shipping involved in purchasing herbs that have already been dried, packaged, and shipped through multiple steps in the supply chain," she shares. On her farm, calendula, lavender, and fennel each earn their place through function rather than trend. Her team harvests what it needs when it's ready and folds those botanicals directly into formulations, manufacturing in small batches rather than chasing efficiencies of scale. Herbs are typically easy to grow, Jones notes, and that simplicity is exactly why supporting small, sustainability minded farms is something consumers can act on directly. Ending The Beauty Waste Cycle Is A Collective Effort None of this is a call to stop enjoying beauty products altogether. The industry supports jobs and livelihoods, and for many people, it offers a genuine outlet for self expression. But with billions of dollars in product wasted every year and the vast majority of packaging destined for landfill, the case for change is measurable and it is growing. Whether it's choosing a curated routine over an overflowing subscription box, swapping unused products instead of tossing them, refilling a bottle instead of buying a new one, or simply asking where an ingredient actually came from, the shift away from excess starts with small, deliberate choices, made one purchase at a time. This article was originally published on Forbes.com