All of our products are created with our planet in mind. Here at Melixir, we strive to minimize our impact on the environment by adapting source-reduced packaging to all that we produce. Based on our simplistic design principles, we make sure our packages contain the minimum amount of materials, additives, or auxiliaries possible. We strip away any unneeded components or materials and reduce secondary or transportation packaging.
For instance, our paper packaging does not contain any plastic or vinyl sealing to safely protect the products inside. Our customers can easily rip open the box with little effort, without encountering the plastic PVC sticker commonly used in most retail businesses.
We have also optimized paperboard and cardboard consumption by eliminating leaflets and printing brand and product information on the box itself instead. In doing so, we have not only minimized our material usage but also created a playful nudge for our customers to take interest in sustainable packaging over those designed for one-time use.
Furthermore, we aim to make all of our products with 50% PCR (post-consumer recycled) plastics and glasses by 2023 to reduce our environmental impact. We are also investing vastly into R&D to create single-material containers in order to stir away from the usual usage of multiple materials in the beauty and personal care industries.
Where most businesses see waste as an endpoint, we see it as a place to start something new. We create value out of waste, by recycling used up bottles and jars of our products into recycled glass and plastic, which are then donated to other businesses. It’s a full circle of reusing resources that is key to sustainable beauty.
We partner with Terracycle, a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle materials, to run our recycling campaign #me:cycle with full transparency and the most advanced technology. Plastics are separated by number, melted down, and turned into pellets that can be molded and extruded to produce new products. Glass is cleaned and sorted by color for processing. It is then crushed and melted to be used in new glass products.
Up to date, more than 200 kg of packages have been collected from our customers and recycled, which translates into 150+kg of carbon reduction in total.
We want the spaces we work in & meet our customers to be expressions of our ideals. Melixir’s iconic Plastic-free Store is a pop-up store where we meet our customers. Unlike traditional pop-ups which create massive waste after opening for a limited period of time, The Plastic-free Store is designed to minimize waste by reusing and recycling every material.
All factors constituting The Plastic-free Store is made out of recycled waste and sustainable materials such as used packages and paper boxes. The products are displayed upon stacks of uncoated cardboards, biodegradable paper made of baggass(dried pulp waste of sugarcane juice). All Melixir products are showcased on recycled boxes and wooden panels decorated with rocks and plants harvested from nature. After the pop-up store closes, we repurpose these materials instead of throwing them away. This venue is our experiment to achieve sustainability by spatial design.
Every member of our team is given an extensive education on how to minimize waste and to recycle wastes that are produced according to in-house office activities. Everything that is left after mealtime or meetings in our headquarter and APAC office, including plastic and glass bottles, milk cartons, and paper cardboards and boxes are carefully sorted by materials and washed before going into individual recycling bins our People & Culture team has prepared at one side of our office canteen.
Not only are they educated in regards to the right way of recycling resources, we make it our cultural DNA to always find multiple uses of one material, so that when products reach the end of their life cycle, they are reused instead of going into waste. One example is The Plastic-free Store, Melixir’s iconic pop-up store that opened in May 2021 in Seoul, Korea. Every factor constituting this place is made out of recycled waste and sustainable materials such as used packages and paper boxes, and cardboard stands we used in our last pop-up in November 2020. The products are displayed upon stacks of uncoated cardboard, biodegradable paper made of baggass(dried pulp waste of sugarcane juice).
Though this company-wide recycling program and a culture to reuse and recycle used materials, every employee at Melixir gets to learn not only about how they can effectively recycle everything they consume on a daily basis, but also about how individuals putting efforts into conserving the environment and carefully monitoring their impact on the planet leads to a greater impact.
