Beauty beyond the bottle: L’Oréal’s circularity takes shape in Jing’an Park

As Shanghai heads into breezy early fall, Jing’an Park, the historical little oasis nestled in dense urban bustle, reopened after the largest renovation in three decades. Among a number of new additions across the pocket of green, some may be easier to miss than others: a set of benches donated by L’Oréal. As modest as the materials they are made from — recycled plastic and responsibly sourced wood, the benches mark the latest endeavor in the beauty group’s sustainability effort decades in the making. The donation was announced by L’Oréal China back in July during the final stages of Jing’an Park’s renovation, on the 2026 L’Oréal Citizen Day, an annual social engagement and volunteering day the group started in 2009. The benches come in two material types. Fifteen linear benches combine wood with plastic recycled from beauty empties, while another four irregularly curved benches use plastic-wood materials. Another fifteen linear benches are made from FSC-certified wood sourced from sustainably managed forests. “With this donation, we hope to show how used materials can be given another life and give back to the community in a way that’s practical and lasting, making sustainability part of the spaces and routines everyone experiences every day,” said Lan Zhenzhen, Chief Corporate Affairs and Engagement (CA&E) Officer of L’Oréal North Asia and China. Closing the circular loop The benches are only the most visible end point of a much longer chain. Behind them is a broader effort by L’Oréal to build sustainability into different stages of a product’s life cycle – from how water is conserved, packaging is designed, and materials are sourced to how consumers dispose of empties and how waste is recovered and put back into use. L’Oréal’s environmental efforts stretch back decades. In China, where the group entered in 1997, that agenda has gradually become concrete over the past two decades, bringing what once happened largely behind the scenes in factories and supply chains closer to consumers’ everyday lives, as seen now in the park. The circular loop starts at the factory. In 2019, China became L’Oréal’s first market to achieve 100% renewable energy use on operated sites and stores. The industrial-water-recycling model builds on the operational success of L'Oréal's Yichang Tianmei plant in Hubei province, which covered 100% of its industrial purpose with recycled or reused water for the 5th consecutive year. From there, the circular loop extends to the design stage, with packaging developed with recyclability in mind from the very outset, which includes greater use of mono-materials and structures that are easier to disassemble and process. A prominent example is L’Oréal Paris’ Extraordinary Oil shampoo and conditioner range. Its bottles already incorporated PCR PET sourced through certified recycling systems, reducing reliance on virgin plastic. The packaging was further upgraded in 2022 by removing carbon-black pigments and replacing the conventional metal-spring pump with an all-plastic version developed at the L’Oréal China Research and Innovation Center after more than 300 repeated pressing and sealing tests, making the package easier and less costly to recycle. The all-plastic pump was later applied to its Hyaluronic Plump shampoo products. The design upgrade overall could save up to 413 tons of virgin plastic a year. As JeeSeon Park, Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) of L'Oréal North Asia and China, put it, “Under L’Oréal for the Future, circularity is about reducing reliance on virgin resources and hence keeping materials in use for a longer time. Part of it means designing packaging so those materials can be recovered and recycled, in a more efficient way. The idea is to move away from treating resources as single-use inputs and creating more opportunities for them to stay in circulation.” Another upstream consideration in packaging is the use of FSC-certified paper for applications ranging from product cartons to DTC shipping boxes. The decision brought the sourcing of paper itself into focus: where the fiber comes from, how the forests are managed, and whether that origin can be traced through the supply chain, in addition to supporting forest conservation and biodiversity. The consumer-facing dimension comes through collection. For years, L’Oréal has been building out recycling channels for used beauty packaging with partners such as AIHUISHOU, a carbon-neutral company backed by JD.com. It worked with the platform to add “empty plastic beauty bottles” as a designated recyclable category, becoming the first beauty group to introduce a public-facing recycling label for beauty packaging. The move helped standardize collection practices while raising consumer awareness that skincare and cosmetic packaging has recyclable value. The partnership later expanded into a smart empty-container recycling network spanning 38 Chinese cities, where consumers can drop off used bottles or other packages at designated collection points nearby. Beauty brands under the group also encourage more sustainable consumption through a range of incentive programs, including offering points for choosing products without gift-box packaging or participating in empty-container recycling. After collection, the loop continues to waste recycling. L’Oréal has been seeking new uses for unsellable product contents and other production waste. For example, powders extracted from foundation, eyeshadow, and pressed powder can be made into eco-bricks; lipstick and lip balm contents are separated by color and turned into craft wax for candles and other wax products. Creams and lotions can be reformulated into industrial cleaning products, while serums converted into leather-care solutions. Notable collaborations include one with Xinguang Recycling, through which L’Oréal recovers shampoos and turns them into industrial cleaning agents. Turning circularity into community value The latest donation of park benches speaks directly to empowering communities, one of the four pillars of L’Oréal’s 2030 sustainability commitments under The L'Oréal for the Future program. First launched in 2020 and updated in 2025, the global framework now centers on climate, nature, circularity, and communities. In China, these commitments are put into practice through three main approaches: sustainable innovation in products and packaging, sustainable consumption including the promotion of refills, and sustainable partnerships throughout the circular loop. In addition, the bench donation carries wider implications: It offers a replicable example of how corporate circularity efforts can contribute to public spaces as ESG considerations continue to deepen globally. It also shows how sustainability initiatives can move beyond a specific sector or consumer group to reach a broader public, as in this case, the conversation has gone beyond consumers shopping the beauty aisle. “Investing in China also means investing in the communities and places that shape everyday life here,” said Vincent Boinay, President of L’Oréal North Asia & CEO of L'Oréal China. “As part of our long-term strategy in China, we are committed to creating lasting value through sustainable business growth, combining economic performance with positive environmental and social impact.” The donation also sits within a broader local push to rethink how urban space should be used. Jing’an District’s five-year Central Activity Zone (CAZ) Next 2030 plan aims to develop the area into an ecological urban space integrating culture, consumption, and social life. Seen in that context, the project brings L’Oréal’s circularity efforts back to where the story began: keeping materials in use for longer while finding new forms of value beyond their original purpose. From walking the “last mile” of sustainable consumption by moving consumers from awareness to action, L’Oréal is extending the circular journey further, into shared urban life. Recovered packaging materials have also been given a second life in a variety of other forms such as furniture and textiles. When circularity leaves the factory floor and enters public life, its value lies in much more than what it saves. After years of work on emissions, materials, packaging, and recycling, sustainability is no longer confined to targets or back-end operations; rather, some of its outcomes are beginning to surface in everyday life. In Jing’an Park, that long loop takes one of the most ordinary forms: a bench for people to sit on.

Beauty beyond the bottle: L’Oréal’s circularity takes shape in Jing’an Park

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Beauty beyond the bottle: L’Oréal’s circularity takes shape in Jing’an Park

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back