CHINA. L’OCCITANE Travel Retail has partnered with TerraCycle China to roll out bottle return programmes in five major downtown duty free stores in Hainan.
The programme encourages travellers in Hainan to deposit their used bottles at recycling bins in-store. It promotes conscious consumerism and invites shoppers to routinely recycle their purchases when travelling. As an added incentive, customers can join L’OCCITANE Travel Retail’s stamp collection programme in WeChat, which rewards them with gifts in exchange for recycling stamps.
L’OCCITANE en Provence is the first beauty brand to partner with TerraCycle in Hainan. It builds on the Group’s seven-year partnership with TerraCycle in domestic markets globally. The latter provides in-store recycling facilities for L’OCCITANE’s directly-operated boutiques.
L’OCCITANE China and TerraCycle partnered to launch bottle return programmes in the China domestic market in 2019. In addition, the French beauty house has partnered with recycling company ICycle in Asian markets where TerraCycle doesn’t operate including Malaysia and Singapore.
L’OCCITANE Travel Retail’s first TerraCycle team-up was launched in La Samaritaine Pont-Neuf by DFS in Paris this year.
In 2020, one million pieces of empty packaging — weighing a total of 67 tons — was sent to L’OCCITANE for recycling.
The Group currently offers in-store recycling in 27 different countries, representing 65% of its directly-operated store network. By 2025, the group has committed to offering recycling collection points across its entire owned-store network, which covers 1,500 stores globally. It has also pledged to banning cellophane wrapping by the end of this year and transitioning to 100% recycled bottles by 2025.
L’OCCITANE Travel Retail Asia Pacific General Manager Estelle de Bure commented, “Our primary purpose in offering a travel retail in-store recycling service at five downtown duty-free stores in Hainan, is to raise consumer awareness of recycling and to encourage customers to act in an environmentally responsible way. This is a particularly important gesture in countries that lack extensive public recycling services.
“This service underlines the Group’s three abiding principles: to reduce waste, to recycle, and to react – which, in effect, means working with innovative businesses to fight against plastic pollution.”
In 2021, L’OCCITANE en Provence was recognised by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation as one of the most committed brands in the fight against plastics. The brand has pledged to manufacture 100% of its plastic bottles from 100% recycled waste by 2025.
L’OCCITANE Group is a leader in driving sustainability within the travel retail industry and has partnered with The Moodie Davitt Report for the Sustainability Curated Newsletter.
The company supports the industry’s fight for sustainable change by adopting open source sharing and a proactive, eco-friendly approach to production, packaging, reducing waste, regenerating biodiversity and reducing its carbon footprint.
Note: The Moodie Davitt Report has launched an e-newsletter, Sustainability Curated, in association with L’Occitane. It offers a curated selection of key sustainability stories in travel retail and beyond.
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