ELEMENTARY Skin Care | Commitment to Sustainability
In this current world of excess and consumerism, it's bloody difficult (understatement of the century!) to put high standards of environmental impact at the forefront of your business model, but I believe it's one of the greatest challenges we all face, as individuals and in business.
We're all worried about the state of our planet, and we all want to do the right thing: buy less, recycle everything, say no to plastics...but the brutal truth is, it just ain't that easy.
The beauty industry as we know it doesn't help. “Natural,” “clean,” “eco-friendly”...words that get bandied about way too freely, more often than not, with little or no substance.
Vague 'green-washed' claims, cherry-picked ingredients, packaging language designed to make you feel good rather than reflect how it's actually made.
I get why people are sceptical of sustainability claims from skin care brands...including mine.
So instead of talking in generalities, and being a part of the problem as I see it, I want to be specific...including the messy parts where I feel Elementary is still missing the mark.
My mission is to make Elementary, truly zero-waste and plastic free, across the board. (The scientific evidence emerging about the health issues associated with micro-plastics and chemical contamination from plastic packaging are quite frankly terrifying!)
...but for now I still choose to use plastic in parts of our range, for reasons I'll explain below and I'd rather own that than pretend otherwise.
It's easy for a skin care brand to talk a good game about sustainability. It's harder to be honest about where you still fall short. That's the approach I'd rather take.
Jen - Elementary founder
We choose organic and botanical, first
Every formulation starts with the plants. We favour Organic and Wild-harvested botanicals wherever we can and we choose extra virgin, cold-pressed oils to keep the naturally occurring, beneficial compounds intact.
It's not possible to make every product 100% organic and remain accessible, but it's the standard we measure every ingredient and supply decision against.
A minimalist approach to packaging
We don't add packaging for the sake of presentation. No outer boxes, no unnecessary labelling, no fluffy inserts that exist purely for the unboxing moment. If it doesn't serve the product or support recycling and reuse, we leave it out.
Being honest about plastic
For a long time, my packaging relied heavily on recycled PET (rPET) plastic, on the basis that it has a lower manufacturing footprint than glass and supports demand for the recycling industry. I still believe that's true — but I'm no longer convinced that plastics recycling, as it currently operates, is good enough on its own to be the whole answer. So I'm changing how I package some of the range.
Where we're moving to amber glass
For our facial moisturisers, I'm progressively transitioning to amber glass bottles. Amber glass is fully and infinitely recyclable, doesn't carry the same long-term uncertainty around microplastics or recycling-stream contamination and its light-blocking properties help protect the botanical actives in our formulations; a genuine product benefit alongside the environmental one.
This transition is happening range by range as I work through existing stock and packaging orders, rather than all at once.
Where we're staying with rPET and PE, for now
For our liquid washes, cleansers and body lotions; predominantly products used in the shower or bath, I'm continuing to use rPET bottles and PET tubes.
This isn't an oversight; it's a deliberate safety decision. Glass isn't a suitable material for wet, slippery environments where a dropped bottle becomes a real hazard, for me and for you. I'd rather be upfront about that trade-off than switch materials somewhere they don't belong.
Why not refill sachets or soft plastic pouches?
On paper, refill sachets or plastic pouches looks like the obvious win; but in practice, most sachets and pouches are multi-layer laminates: several different materials (plastic, foil, sometimes paper) fused together into one sheet. That construction makes them almost impossible to recycle through any standard council program, because the layers can't be separated back into a single reusable material.
Soft plastics recycling in my own area (Manningham) is a good example of the gap. After the REDcycle scheme collapsed nationally in 2022, it's since returned locally as a trial, but only as a drop-off bin at a handful of participating supermarkets, not through the kerbside recycling bin. It also only accepts a fixed list of items — things like bread bags, cling wrap and yoghurt pouches but no guarantee a skincare sachet would even qualify.
In other words, even where soft plastics recycling exists again, it still asks the customer to actively drive it to a collection point rather than simply popping it in their recycling bin at home.
For a rigid rPET bottle, that recycling pathway already exists through ordinary kerbside collection. So while a sachet looks lighter and more minimal sitting on a shelf, it's often a harder material to deal with responsibly once it's empty. I'd rather stay with packaging I can be honest about the fate of, than switch to something that looks better but ultimately solves less.
How we choose our supply lines
Every supplier we work with is assessed against three criteria:
• They operate ethically and follow sustainable manufacturing practices
• They're a local Australian business, supporting Australian workers and the Australian economy
• They share our approach to sustainability, waste reduction, and ethical practice
Reducing what ends up in landfill
Where possible, we design our packaging with removable labels so containers can be cleaned and repurposed rather than discarded.
We only use packaging that can go through standard council recycling programs; glass, aluminium and the rPET / PET plastics we still rely on for shower and bath products.
This is our direction, not a finished destination
We don't think sustainability is something a business gets to declare “done.” It's an ongoing set of trade-offs — between safety, cost, accessibility, and environmental impact and we'd rather talk about those trade-offs honestly than make blanket claims.
If you have questions about any packaging choice we've made, we're always happy to talk it through.