Readers’ Award: Beiersdorf

The worthy recipient of our second-ever Readers’ Award – voted for, as you might have guessed, by Packaging Europe readers – was Beiersdorf, with its NIVEA shower gel refill station. Marta Suslow and Bernhard Felten, packaging technology specialists, tell us why this innovation has drawn so much attention.

PE: Firstly, congratulations on winning the award! What does this mean for you?

MS: We at Beiersdorf are extremely excited about winning the “Sustainability Award” in the Reader’s category. The first and most advanced refill station in the German market for a personal care product showed a very positive response from consumers and media. It is difficult to justify this concept by commercial arguments only given the current conditions of trade and environmental regulations. We hope this project will motivate the market participants and consumers to start changing their habits and will contribute to a more sustainable behavior on a broader scale.

PE: Could you please introduce your successful innovation? What are the environmental challenges in packaging that your entry addresses, and what impact do you hope it will make?

BF: At a time characterized by severe environmental challenges, it is of the highest importance for Beiersdorf to take all possible steps to counteract climate change and limit global warming. Therefore, it is essential for us to minimize, slow down, reduce, and close our material cycles where possible. As one key global topic is plastic, and we at Beiersdorf use a lot of plastic for the packaging of our skin care products that we sell around the globe, we are working hard to find innovative solutions to avoid, reduce, reuse, or recycle our plastic packaging materials (our “4-R” approach). For this reason, Beiersdorf’s biggest global brand NIVEA, in collaboration with DM, Germany’s largest retailer of cosmetics and healthcare products, just launched its first shower gel refill station. The prototype, aiming to investigate the concept of reusable bottles, was developed in just seven months by a cross-functional team within Beiersdorf’s Global Packaging and R&D functions. The leading idea is to improve the end-of-life of single-use plastics, the multiple re-use of product packaging could be one key element in getting closer to our vision of a circular economy.

PE: ‘Sustainability’ in packaging is multi-dimensional – both in terms of objectives and challenges. Could you comment on the most important roadblocks you identify from your position in the value chain, and the kinds of solutions you would like to see addressing them?

MS: We believe that the regulatory side of reusable packaging concepts needs to be further investigated and defined by government policy. Additionally, collaborations with both suppliers and retailers need to strengthen and be further evolved, as well as improvements in the collection of plastic to improve the quantity and quality of material streams – this includes consumer education, the establishment of better waste streams and the technological uplift of sorting lines etc. n