Why a heavier jar isn’t a better product

There is a gesture I have seen hundreds of times, in pharmacies and at trade fairs. Someone picks up a jar, weighs it in their hand, and nods without realizing it. If it is heavy, it must be good.

That gesture is not foolish. It was built. For decades, the cosmetics industry has used material as a language: thick bases, double bottoms, boxes larger than their contents, caps with a carefully calculated weight. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is design. Weight communicates value because someone decided that it should.

As of August 12, the new packaging regulation applies in Europe, and among other things it requires weight and volume to be justified. It does not impose the same minimalism on everyone, nor does it ban aesthetics. It asks that any extra material have a reason. I thought it was worth writing about here because the most interesting consequence is not regulatory: it is that we have to change the way we judge a product in our hands.

Cover image generated with the support of artificial intelligence.

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What packaging really does when it does its job well

When we formulate a product, the container is not the end of the work. It is a variable in the formula.

An active ingredient that is unstable in light calls for dark glass or an opaque material. An active ingredient that oxidizes on contact with air calls for an airless system, meaning a mechanism that prevents oxygen from entering again with each dispensing. A rich texture calls for a wide opening, while a fluid one calls for a dropper that dispenses the right amount without waste. And everything must remain compatible: certain essential oils attack certain plastics, and some formulas change if the cap does not close properly.

None of this can be seen by weighing a jar. A very lightweight airless bottle can protect vitamin C much better than a glass jar one centimeter thick that is opened and closed every morning, allowing air to enter.

Weight, in short, is not an indication of quality. It is simply the easiest information to perceive, which is why we have mistaken it for the most important.

The uncomfortable part: lighter is not automatically better

Here I also need to be honest in the other direction, because the opposite rhetoric is already emerging and is just as imprecise.

Removing material is not a virtue in itself. If I make a container thinner and the formula degrades sooner, I have merely shifted the waste: less plastic, more product thrown away. If I eliminate a box that was needed to protect the product during transport, I will have more returns and more shipments. If I replace plastic with glass without thinking it through, I have a recyclable material that is much heavier to transport, and the impact shifts to logistics.

Refills, too, which on paper are the elegant solution, only make sense if they are actually reused enough times. A refillable system used just once is simply two packages instead of one.

There is no universal answer. There is the life cycle, and the function that the container has to perform.

Why "sustainable packaging" means nothing

It is the phrase I see most often, and the one that says the least. Sustainable compared with what? In which part? Measured how?

The claims that convince me are always more boring and more specific: this percentage of recycled material, in this component, these parts separate in this way. The new regulation goes in exactly this direction, requiring environmental claims to be documented and to specify what they refer to. That is good news, even if it makes communication less spectacular.

There is also a word we continue to use incorrectly, and I use it incorrectly too when I am not careful: recyclable. Recyclable does not mean "will be recycled." It means that it is designed to be recyclable. If that material is not collected in your municipality, or if the parts cannot be separated and everything ends up in general waste, the design remains on paper. Part of the outcome does not depend on the producer; it depends on the person who throws it away.

What we have done, and what we have not done yet

I do not want to use this space to say that we have already arrived, because that is not true.

We have eliminated unnecessary secondary packaging, switched to recycled paper bags, and are testing lighter materials. In some cases, these choices have cost us: one less box means a product that looks less important on the shelf than the one next to it, and in a market where weight communicates value, it is not a neutral decision.

What we have not solved yet is the difficult part, and it is the same for everyone: dispensing systems. A pump or an airless system is made of several materials, often very different from one another, and separating them is complicated. They are also the components that best protect the formula. Replacing them with something simpler is only possible if I do not compromise the product, and so far, with some formulas, we have not managed to do that without losing something. I would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

The questions I would ask at the pharmacy

If I had to translate all this into something practical, I would change the questions we ask ourselves in front of a package. Not "is it beautiful?" and not even "does it seem sustainable?", but:

• how much material does it use, and is there a reason for the extra material?
• does it really protect the formula it contains?
• can the parts be separated, and are they collected in my municipality?
• does the claim I am reading say something verifiable, or is it just a nice word?
• can I use the product all the way to the end, or is there residue left that I have to throw away?

The last one matters most to me, and it is almost always forgotten. A container that does not let you reach the final dose is waste you pay for twice: as material and as product.

Where I want to get to

I do not believe the new regulation will suddenly make everything more understated, and I do not think it should. The beauty of an object you keep in your bathroom every day matters, and people who work in this sector know that.

What I hope for is simpler: that we stop equating value with the amount of material. Good packaging is not the packaging that weighs the most. It is the one that uses exactly what is needed to protect what is inside, and not a gram more to convince you that there is more inside.

If you are interested in the regulatory side in detail, we analyzed it in a dedicated article on EU Regulation 2025/40, with the complete schedule of deadlines. The path we are following is explained on the page about packaging toward 2030.

Elisa

Sources for this article

• Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste, applicable as of August 12, 2026.
• Eurostat, packaging waste statistics, 2023 data published on October 22, 2025.
• Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products.

On the website: EU Regulation 2025/40 · LeLang packaging toward 2030 · cosmetic expiration dates and PAO