Podcast 324: Why beauty packaging is always the last thought — and the biggest problem

What actually happens to your beauty packaging when you’re done with it?

It’s a question most brands still can’t answer, because nobody ever planned for it. In this week’s Green Beauty Conversations episode, Lorraine Dallmeier argues that packaging is one of the most expensive mistakes an indie brand founder can make, and that the habit of treating it as an afterthought is costing brands far more than money.

This episode follows on from Lorraine’s interview with Jerome Fraillon of Alder Packaging in episode 323. That discussion between Lorraine and Jerome shone a spotlight on the fact that beauty packaging is almost always an afterthought.

In this opinion piece, Lorraine takes that further by exploring what that actually means, why it matters so much more than most formulators realise, and what it looks like when someone gets their packaging choices right.

“Your formulation deserved months of your attention. Your packaging deserves more than an afternoon.” — Lorraine Dallmeier

Key takeaways:

• Packaging is almost always an afterthought — and that’s a values problem. By the time most indie founders get to packaging, they’re tired, over budget, and under pressure to launch. They pick something that looks right and move on. But a founder who has spent six months obsessing over the provenance of their botanical extracts and then grabbed the first glass bottle they found online has created a disconnect between their values and their product — one that beauty shoppers will eventually feel.
• Some of the most well-intentioned packaging choices have complicated outcomes. Dark or violet glass is protective of a formula and beloved by apothecary-style indie brands, but it can’t be sorted by the laser at most recycling facilities — it gets classified as something other than glass and goes to waste. Biopolymers made from sugarcane sound natural and circular, but once that sugarcane has been processed into a resin, it won’t biodegrade any faster than a conventional plastic bottle. Good intentions don’t automatically equal lower impact.
• The packaging industry was not built with indie founders in mind. When Jerome Fraillon described 25,000 units at $10,000–$20,000 as “not an excessive amount of money,” he was speaking from the supplier’s perspective — and he was right to. But for a founder formulating at home, that framing is a useful reminder that if you walk into this world unprepared, without asking the right questions early enough, you will either get it wrong or get priced out. Preparation isn’t optional — it’s protective.
• When Lorraine previously interviewe Kristina Dunn of Rua Beauty, she demonstrated what beginning with the end in mind actually looks like. Kristina spent two and a half years rejecting packaging options before launching, building a fully circular system based on infinitely recyclable glass and aluminium, with a refill model designed to keep packaging in use rather than in landfill. She formulates in a CO₂-neutral lab running on Norwegian hydropower and uses distilled seawater that would otherwise be discarded as a byproduct of sea salt production. Kristina runs the entire brand alone — and this year won Best Sustainable Packaging at the Beauty Shortlist Awards 2026. Listen to Kristina’s interview.
• End-of-life beauty planning is still not standard practice — and it needs to be. Lorraine coined this term in episode 178 back in 2023, challenging the industry to think about what happens to products and packaging at the end of their lives from the very beginning of the design process. Three years on, she’s saying it again. The challenge this week is specific: before your next packaging decision, ask what actually happens to it when you’re done with it — right now, with the systems that actually exist today.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please share, subscribe and review this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Youtube so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook and Instagram.

Lorraine Dallmeier

Lorraine Dallmeier is a Biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and the CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic cosmetic science school. Read more about Lorraine and the Formula Botanica Team.