LVMH, Dow collaborate for sustainable packaging

With Dow as partner, LVMH Beauty, a division of LVMH aims to accelerate the use of sustainable packaging across its perfume and cosmetic products. This collaboration would enable both bio-based and circular plastics to be integrated into the beauty multinational's product applications, with the functionality or quality of the packaging still intact.

Bio-based and circular plastics, which are made from bio-based and plastic waste feedstock respectively, will be used to produce sustainable SURLYN™ Ionomers, polymers used to manufacture premium perfume caps and cosmetic cream jars. Within 2023, some of LVMH's perfume packaging will include both bio-based SURLYN™ and circular SURLYN™. The sustainable SURLYN™ portfolio will deliver similar crystalline transparency and freedom of design expected from the rest of Dow's SURLYN™ range, at a low carbon footprint. 

"At LVMH, with our Life 360 program, we made the decision that our packaging will contain zero plastic from virgin fossil resources in a near future. Collaborating with Dow in developing sustainable SURLYN™ is key as this material is used in some of our iconic perfumes, starting with GUERLAIN La Petite Robe Noire. It is helping LVMH achieve our sustainability targets without any compromise on quality", said Claude Martinez, Executive President and Managing Director of LVMH Beauty.

"Creating a circular economy takes every player in the value chain to commit to ambitious goals and challenge the status quo. Dow looks forward to supporting the sustainability journey of a leading global luxury brand," said Karen S. Carter, President of Packaging & Specialty Plastics, Dow.

Bio-based feedstocks for the production of bio-based SURLYN™ include raw materials such as used cooking oil. As only waste residues or by-products from an alternative production process will be utilized, these raw feedstock materials will not consume extra land resources nor compete with the food chain.

Hard-to-recycle mixed plastic waste are transformed into circular SURLYN™ through advanced recycling technologies. The technologies break down waste plastics into their basic chemical elements using heat and pressure, creating raw material that is equivalent to those made from virgin fossil feedstock. This raw material, or circular feedstock, can be used in a wide range of packaging, giving waste that is currently going to landfill or being incinerated a second life.

Dow is collaborating with customers and other stakeholders to drive the transformation that is needed to tackle the challenges of climate change and the environment. This collaboration represents another key example of Dow's continued effort to transform waste and alternative feedstock as per its Transform the Waste target announced in October 2022.

(Thumbnail photo © Vadivazhagan Margandan | Dreamstime.com)