Refilling the future: L’Oréal’s last-mile push to make sustainable beauty mainstream

In beauty, packaging has always been part of the machinery of desire. The bottle, compact, or case is part of what consumers buy — and part of what they throw away. At L’Oréal’s exhibition area at the 2026 Shanghai International Carbon Neutrality Expo, four oversized refill posters made that contradiction impossible to miss. Four flagship refill products, alongside the “hands-up” visual call to action, were featured on the posters, which curved into a semi-circle around a stage with a microphone. Visitors were invited to step onto the center to pose, photograph, and share how a modest change in packaging could stand for something much larger. By blowing up something as small and familiar — a refill for a serum, lipstick, fragrance, or shampoo — into towering campaign images here at the Expo, L’Oréal made a proposition: keep the object, replace what’s inside, and make sustainability part of the ritual. At the fourth Carbon Expo, L’Oréal once again made refill its focus. “We make refills a recurring topic because the say-do gap is still there even though it’s narrowing. That makes the ‘last mile’ from awareness to action especially important,” said Lan Zhenzhen, Chief Corporate Affairs and Engagement (CA&E) Officer of L’Oréal North Asia and China. The ‘last mile’ That gap is detailed in L’Oréal's first report on refill consumption trends, released at the Expo on June 10. Based on a quantitative survey of consumers aged 15 to 60 across urban China, the study maps how beauty shoppers understand and use refills and where interest still fails to translate into purchase. It finds that 81% of this demographic are aware of beauty refill products, particularly young consumers in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Makeup refills, led by cushion compacts, register 62% awareness, followed by 51% for skincare refills. However, for both skincare and makeup refills, awareness exceeds actual purchase by 28 percentage points. According to the report, the say-do gap is largely attributed to several practical concerns including limited visibility of refill options, incompatible sizing, concerns about bacteria growth from repeatedly opening, and prices that do not feel cheap enough to justify the switch. Among those completely disinclined to buy refills, habit is the main barrier, accounting for 40% of the responses, followed by safety concerns, price, and assumed inconvenience. By contrast, cost savings and environmental benefits emerge as the top triggers for adoption among consumers using refills. This granular breakdown of the barriers offers the industry a more targeted framework to tackle this stubborn “last mile,” in addition to making the refill effort more verifiable and hence building trust. In the China market, the awareness–familiarity–trust pathway is crucial because confidence in product quality and safety helps pave the way from awareness to action. For beauty brands, sustainability is increasingly a trust business: Green labels, consumer surveys, evidence-based statistics, collaboration with credible third parties are becoming as important as storytelling. “Now that the report finds 81% of female consumers aware of beauty refills, we are happy to see what was once a dry technical topic has become a trend the public is willing to engage with. More importantly, behavior is beginning to change as well, as evidenced by our rising sales of refills,” Lan told Jing Daily during the Expo. “We are witnessing the say-do gap closing. That’s why walking the last mile is extremely important today.” Regarding the practical hurdles facing refills, L’Oréal has been working to make the choice feel both practical and rewarding. “Our consumer research shows that the first reason people buy refills is often price and that is a very natural choice. We are making more refill products available at attractive price points,” said JeeSeon Park, Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) of L’Oréal North Asia and China, during an interview with Jing Daily at the Expo. She added that concerns around ease of use are factored into refill product development from the very outset. In addition, the group has long tried to make sustainable consumption feel less instructional and more participatory, in particular for younger consumers. As Lan noted, that means designing activities around play, interaction, and ease of entry rather than grand, abstract messaging alone. Past efforts by the world’s largest beauty player included a carousel-style refill installation, university activations to engage with younger generations, biodiversity-themed and planet-themed games in cooperation with museums, and a project of crested ibis habitat restoration. This year, L’Oréal co-hosted a salon with the Shanghai Consumer Council, Shanghai International Exhibition Management, and the tech media platform 36Kr to discuss how to move consumers from “awareness” to “action.” Lan Zhenzhen and Wang Yuheng, a designer and Antarctic Ambassador who actively participates in conservation campaigns, led opposing teams through an open debate, punctuated by challenges and interactions with the audience. The questions were deliberately practical and intended to spark debate: Should sustainable consumption depend more on mechanism or self-discipline? For a sustainable future, which matters more — role models, or collective action? Refill as the new ‘beauty infrastructure’ The lively salon marked an evolution: Back in 2024, the group’s discussion at the Expo focused on the pain points holding sustainable consumption back; this year it centered on scaling a concrete solution, refills, to make sustainable choices feel less like an optional extra but more of the default. Since its first foray into refills with a Thierry Mugler fragrance refill fountain in 1992, L’Oréal has come a long way. The effort has accelerated in China in the 2020s, where the group has so far built a refill portfolio spanning more than 10 brands in the country, covering skincare, makeup, haircare, and fragrance from iconic brands such as Lancôme, Kiehl’s, YSL, and Kérastase. The reduction is substantial: refilling Lancôme’s Absolue cream uses 83% less packaging materials than buying a new full-size jar. In 2025, L’Oréal launched #JoinTheRefillMovement on the World Refill Day, its first global refill initiative that spans multiple brands, categories, and channels. This year, the campaign has expanded to 18 brands, with 28 products taking part. The Expo has become a key stage for that evolution. Since 2023, when the event emerged as a major platform supporting China’s “30/60” decarbonization goals, L’Oréal has used refill as a recurring entry point — moving the conversation from product display to consumer adoption. In this process, refill is positioned less as a niche packaging solution than as part of a broader infrastructure for sustainable beauty. To Park, refill is a win-win for everyone. “It’s good for the environment, as the packaging intensity is usually 30% to 60% lower, reducing CO2 emission as well as waste. Also, consumers pay less money while L’Oréal's business is still growing.” Sustainable beauty is sometimes associated with restraint: less packaging, less indulgence and, by implication, a less refined experience. Refills complicate that assumption. However, L’Oréal has challenged the stereotype that sustainability risks sacrificing aesthetics or ritual, with the exquisite, recognizable bottles, cases, or fragrance vessels being reused and reducing packaging waste and carbon footprint. In this sense, L’Oréal's refill model allows beauty brands to reconcile two seemingly conflicting demands: consumers’ desire for aesthetics and the industry’s need to reduce packaging waste. This is where much of the refillable beauty market’s potential lies. Refillable packaging is becoming a big trend in the beauty industry. According to Grand View Research, a US consulting firm, the global refillable packaging market for cosmetics and personal care generated $7.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $10.3 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of 6.6%. It noted that the Asia-Pacific region was the largest market in terms of revenue. “Consumers in China and across North Asia have shown a much higher level of awareness and acceptance of refill products than in many other geographies. This has made North Asia a key engine of L’Oréal's refill strategy and the group’s largest contributing market globally,” Lan said. Leading the mainstreaming of sustainable consumption In China, sustainable consumption is moving from individual preferences to value-aligned consumption. Over 85% of consumers identify as “low-carbon pioneers” and 80% believe that their low-carbon purchases can contribute to climate change, according to SynTao’s 2025 Chinese Sustainable Consumption report. Meanwhile, the Beijing-based consultancy focused on Corporate Social Responsibility also underlines that over half of consumers expect companies to take greater social responsibility. The findings suggest a market where sustainability has become more of a lifestyle choice and also a standard by which consumers choose brands aligned with their values. Sustainable packaging is one of the most tangible places where that shift shows up. PwC’s 2025 China Consumer Market report shows that 43% of Chinese consumers prefer sustainable packaging, higher than the global average of 37%, and that 36% look for sustainable certification versus 24% globally. McKinsey’s 2025 global packaging survey also points to China as one of the more receptive markets for sustainable packaging. It’s evident that China offers both a consumer base highly receptive to sustainable packaging among other low-carbon choices and a market large enough to test whether that sentiment can be converted into daily practice. At the same time, L’Oréal has made big strides with a range of low-carbon initiatives in China. Its sites and stores operating across the country have been running on 100% renewable energy since 2019, six years ahead of the company’s global target. Over the years, it’s been introducing more refill products of the same quality at lower prices, supported by a broader ecosystem of partnerships. This includes working with six carbon-reducing pioneer suppliers to accelerate transformation across the value chain, collaborating with major platforms from JD.com to Ant Group, to lower the barriers to sustainable consumption, as well as engaging startups through its Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program to co-create cutting-edge solutions. Both McKinsey and SynTao point out that price and quality are the most important product characteristics that influence consumers’ purchasing decisions now, more than in previous years. Meanwhile, L’Oréal has also worked to make the idea socially appealing and easier to act on. The message it has kept communicating is that refill is cool. In this way, the beauty giant makes refill feel visible and accessible to a wider audience, and more importantly, desirable. At a time when sustainable consumption is gaining traction, L’Oréal’s approach in China is effective in that it’s grounded in a data-driven, granular, and proactive strategy with younger consumers and women — often key drivers of low-carbon practices — at the center. This is where the China story becomes larger than beauty. A modest refill product on a Chinese woman’s dresser can serve as a starting point for a wider quest: How can sustainable consumption be made more accessible, desirable, and routine? It seems L’Oréal already has an answer. “For refills to become mainstream, they can’t remain in a beauty-only conversation. We need more cross-industry collaborations, from food to apparel, and we should also connect refill with recycling and reuse. Refill is ultimately a behavior, not just a beauty product. Once consumers become familiar with the act of reusing and replenishing, that habit can travel across categories,” Park noted. Given L’Oréal’s long-standing experience and expertise in sustainable beauty, its China practice offers a replicable reference for how consumer goods companies can help move sustainability from niche preference toward the mainstream by making the “last mile” from awareness to action easier to cross.

Refilling the future: L’Oréal’s last-mile push to make sustainable beauty mainstream

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Refilling the future: L’Oréal’s last-mile push to make sustainable beauty mainstream

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag