English Version | The bigger the better

12 Jun 2023
By Mariana Silva

What came first: the large-sized beauty product or the sample? For the contemporary consumer, travel size packaging takes priority over unfamiliar formulas and sizes that are impractical to carry in a suitcase. But if their advantages are obvious, the problems of beauty miniatures lie at the bottom of the oceans.

What came first: the large-sized beauty product or the sample? For the contemporary consumer, travel size packaging takes priority over unfamiliar formulas and sizes that are impractical to carry in a suitcase. But if their advantages are obvious, the problems of beauty miniatures lie at the bottom of the oceans.

Whenever I have to prepare a travel bag, a minimalist facet takes over my movements. I don't know if it was the years spent at university, when every weekend I carried my life in a bag, or the fact that I suffer from a severe aversion to chaos and clutter, but there is a voice in my head that prevents me from taking anything more than a carry-on every time I travel. Needless to say, I often regret this choice. And no, the reason is not lack of outfits or beauty products. There is only one moment that makes me question my bag: the dreaded passage through airport security. The absurd thing is that I have nothing to hide (except for that one time when I accidentally carried a pair of sewing scissors in my purse, so small that even the security guard laughed at me). However, there is something about the act of having someone near me yelling "liquids and electronics out" that activates my nervous system all too effectively. You see, I always have liquids, lots of liquids, and nothing scares me more than the idea of having to leave one of my precious beauty products at the airport. That's the reason I started resorting to travel size containers, until I read an article that referred to them as "the straws of the beauty industry."

While safety rules in airports have driven the miniature beauty industry, there are many applications for this packaging these days. Many give them away as gifts, in sets of three or four products at a time, while others use the smaller sizes to see how effective a particular formula is. Brands, in turn, have found samples to be a powerful marketing strategy to increase sales. A 2015 study by data analysis agency Euromonitor International recorded sampling as the third most important reason consumers buy a beauty product. Only recommendations from family and friends and past experiences (e.g. repeat purchase) ranked higher. In 2019, in the United States, sales of miniature cosmetics totaled 3.1 billions of dollars, and it is estimated that in the UK the annual production of travel size packaging is equivalent to 980 tons of plastic. However, you don't even need data like this to realize how much this sector is growing. Just walk into a beauty retailer and you'll find that there are already displays dedicated solely to small-sized cosmetics.

In general, why are consumers so obsessed with miniatures? Companies confess that their target audience is members of the millennial generation, who are not loyal to any beauty brand. A travel size option allows them to purchase the product at a lower price, reducing the sense of commitment. It also highlights the fact that millennials traditionally live in smaller homes, compared to previous generations, which means they will have reduced space on their beauty shelf. Looking at a more general population, it would be wrong to ignore the impact that travel has had on the growth of miniature beauty products – it is no accident that these are commonly known as travel size. Tourism increases at the same time as the amenities on airplanes decrease, as the vast majority prefer to travel more, rather than travel at its best, seeking to reduce the costs associated with each flight. Even among those who choose to take more than a carry-on, in which there is no limit to the size of products, there are some who take with them skincare options on the plane. Dehydration is an inevitable consequence of a long flight and skincare trends dictate that applying face masks in the middle of the clouds should not be considered a luxury, but a necessity. 

Having established the reasons that made the expansion of the travel size cosmetics sector possible, it is time to outline the problems that have accompanied this growth. The word to watch is waste; however, it is not only the type of waste that comes along with packaging. Before raising the negative consequences for the environment, consider the problems that this trend brings for consumers. First of all, the continuous purchase of beauty miniatures is not viable from an economic point of view. Even if the sample is cheaper than the large size product, when we analyze its price per quantity (instead of unit), we realize that the cost is higher, since it implies a greater expenditure on packaging and transportation. Let's do a quick test with a widely sold hair oil on the Portuguese market. The largest size, 100 milliliters, is priced at €78.99, which corresponds to €0.7899 per milliliter. The smaller size, 20 milliliters, on the other hand, can be bought for €22.99, for a total of €1.1495 per milliliter. What seemed to be more affordable at first glance turns out to be more expensive when analyzed over a longer period of time. Still, this is not the only disadvantage for the consumer. Since cosmetics expire quicker after having been opened, it is not a good idea to save the remaining miniatures for the next trip, as they may no longer be within their valid date. This results in high product wastage, together with the need to repeat the purchase of travel size products every time you want to travel.

Besides the disadvantages for the consumer, there are a myriad of difficulties that the miniatures industry faces environmentally. Due to the materials used in packaging and the inefficient treatment of chemicals in the supply chain, the beauty industry is generally very polluting. However, the manufacture of travel size options not only increases the scale of these ecological problems, but also carries its own adversities. Let's start with the reality that the overwhelming majority of samples are packaged in materials sourced from fossil fuels, namely plastic. Although some large beauty products are packaged in glass or cardboard, this is rarely the case for the smaller versions, as this would increase the final price and take away some of the practical features essential to travel size options. Whoever has never hidden the delicate glass packaging of a perfume in the middle of their clothes to make sure it doesn't break during a trip, cast the first stone. If plastic packaging alone is already a threat to the health of planet Earth, imagine the impact of billions of similar packages, as well as the pollution resulting from the transportation required to get them to the consumer. 

Now, the million dollar question: can't these packages be recycled? Yes and no. In theory, the vast majority of countries have an effective recycling system that allows post-consumer plastics to be given a new life and thus reduce the waste that ends up in landfills and oceans. In practice, it's not that easy. A study published by National Geographic in 2018 concluded that only 9% of plastics worldwide are recycled. And while that number may have increased in recent years, it is far from ideal for the climate stage we are at. There are several reasons for the very low percentage of recycled plastics, but when looking at the specific case of travel size beauty products, the most important relate to their size. Many recycling systems follow an automated process and the machines have been programmed to detect the "normal" sized products, such as water bottles, and not the miniatures that flood the recycling bin. Even with manual sorting, it is difficult to identify such small containers amidst tons and tons of garbage. Another significant justification is that the products need to be empty. A plastic container can only be given a new life if there is no waste inside that could contaminate the recycling process. Since it would take a tremendous amount of manual labor to empty all the containers that arrive in the bins, many end up in landfills where they remain for thousands of years.

Since there are different recycling systems for each country, in Portugal we must consider the indications of the Sociedade Ponto Verde. With regard to beauty packaging in general, one must follow the rule of majority recycling: that is, the product is placed in the bin that corresponds to the majority of the composition of the packaging. If a container is made of plastic, for example, it is placed entirely in the yellow bin, even if it has a paper label. Because of its small size, this label should not be separated from the main packaging, as it would be lost in the recycling process if it were placed in the blue bin on its own. As already mentioned, products should be emptied completely, and do not need to be washed. Only residues that do not impair water quality, such as shampoos and shower gels, can be disposed of in the sink. The remaining formulas should be sent to undifferentiated waste.

Even though these are good recycling practices, they should not be the first initiative to adopt for a more sustainable miniature cosmetics industry. If we follow the order of the five R's of ecology, we would start by rethinking our lifestyle, refuse what we don't need, reduce consumption of what we do need, reuse what we already have and, only at the end, recycle what we have used. In this sense, alternatives to travel size packaging are emerging, which focus on the principles of reduction and reuse. One of the most adopted by the cosmetics industry is the promotion of refillable options. Instead of buying a plastic or glass package with the purchase of a beauty product, there are brands that offer the possibility to acquire only the contents of that package. By bringing the container you have to the store, a sales assistant can refill the selected product for a lower price, since there are no packaging costs. This solution is especially effective for hotels, where beauty products used to follow a single-use rule, adding up to a high cost for the hotel. While some chains are voluntarily changing their practices, legislation is beginning to arrive that reinforces this need. The state of California pioneered a ban on single-use plastics in the hospitality sector, providing a transition period that ended in January 2023.

Another solution is to favor solid products. By not requiring as much water in production and eliminating plastic from packaging, their environmental footprint is much smaller than that of liquid cosmetics. Nowadays, solid options already exist for almost every step of a beauty routine, and it is increasingly difficult to find arguments to question their effectiveness. If we don't want to ponder its environmental benefits, let's think about how much easier it would be to get through airport security. Goodbye, transparent bags and chaotic searches to the carry-on. The future of travel beauty is more solid than ever.

Translated from the original on The Voyage Issue, published June 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue. 

Mariana Silva By Mariana Silva

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