(At Least) 3 Benefits of Glass for a Premium Skincare Pack

With so many options in skincare primary packaging, sometimes it's nice when someone just collates all the technical advantages of a material and puts them together for you. So here we look at why glass is premium, safe and environmentally friendly.

Reason #1: Glass is Premium

It's the feel of it, we reckon - when you take a primary pack for skincare, like a bottle or jar, other materials can look shiny, but it's the heavy, solid feel of glass once you touch it, once you pick it up. It doesn't disappoint the senses - it stays true to the original appearance. The thickness of the material adds to the substantial aura.

Once you touch it, it's got that smooth, cold feel - it's a 'clean' feeling - and the ultra clear properties contribute to that clarity and clean-ness.

It's familiar, too - well-recognised. It has heritage, it originated long ago and has graced the houses of the rich and famous for far hundreds of years, even before it became a commonly-manufactured material. A 2015 study notes that 'Although the use of plastic in packaging has largely increased, consumer research consistently indicates that consumers attach a high quality perception to glass packaged products'.

Products this case study features:

Cosmetic Glass Bottles

Cosmetic glass bottles such as our Mallaig range are a great example of how a premium material can form a stunning pack, with great shelf presence, that doesn't disappoint when the customer picks it up!

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Cosmetic Glass Jars

The Richmond Jar range, along with the fluted, high-quality heritage of the Victoria Jar, do a great job of showing off premium quality glass as a skincare packaging material.

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Reason #2: Glass is Safe

The other, and slightly more technical, reason glass is often a preferred choice is its safety. When you're using a variety of ingredients, there are some materials which can react with the natural essences or chemical compositions. The inert property of glass makes it a popular choice for many formulations containing essential oils - among many other things!

And speaking of sensitive formulations - many natural formulas are affected by UV rays - which is where amber glass comes into its own. Amber glass naturally cuts out over 90% of harmful UV rays.

Reason #3: Glass is Environmentally Friendly

Glass is infinitely recyclable. This does lead to it being seen as environmentally friendly - because sure, you can recycle other materials too, but plastics, for example, can become of lesser quality each time they are recycled. Glass can be returned to its original state with no loss of quality. This is true closed-loop recycling, where a product is made, used, recycled and re-formed into the same (or similar) item again. For all you know, your glass jar of day cream may one day return to you as a little glass lip balm jar!

Recycled content is common in glass - using recycled content drastically reduces the amount of energy needed for manufacture. For example, our ointment jars contain 30-45% post-consumer recycled content collected from the marketplace, plus further post-industrial material - waste glass from the internal manufacturing processes.

It's also made from naturally-occurring materials that are abundant in nature, with no further chemicals layers needed to complete it - so the impact on natural resources is very low from the raw ingredients perspective.