ECO-DESIGNED TO RESPECT THE PLANET
We left nothing to chance in our design and in our logistics organization.
We will explain everything to you ...
1. Our bottle
We have chosen a very light bottle, half the weight of traditional bottles, without unnecessary glass weight.
The pump is unscrewable, allowing the bottle to be refilled or easily recycled.
Brands love bottles with thick glass for aesthetic reasons but also because the weight gives the customer the impression that they are getting "their money's worth". This practice is a double penalty for the environment: more weight means more material to melt during the manufacture of the bottle, and more kilos to move during the life cycle of the perfume. That's all we don't want.
2. Our cap
We have innovated by designing a two-pieces 100% aluminum cap, and carefully avoiding plastic. This allows our cap to be lightweight and 100% recyclable, which is extremely rare in selective perfumery.
On the market we find mainly caps made of transparent plastics with a high thickness to imitate the thicknesses of glass. Unfortunately these specific materials are not recyclable.
D'autres sont opaques et faits de plusieurs types de plastique : régulièrement lestés ou accompagnés d'aimants, ils sont très difficilement recyclables.
Il y a enfin les capots en acier ou en zamac, lourds et bien souvent importés de chine, systématiquement assemblés avec un insert plastique. Tout comme les capots… en bois !
Others are opaque and made of several types of plastic: regularly ballasted or accompanied by magnets, they are very difficult to recycle.
Finally, there are steel or zamac caps, heavy and often imported from China, systematically assembled with a plastic insert. Just like the caps… in wood!
In short, we are quite proud of our cap, it's true.
It is machined by "bar turning", a technique used for precision mechanical parts, such as luxury watches. The nice chips you see in the photo on the left are generated during the manufacturing process, but they are fully recycled. No loss of material.
3. Our zero plastic approach
On earth, only 9% of the plastic produced is recycled: the only long-term solution is to manufacture and consume less plastic.
We have therefore banned plastics where they were not essential, i.e. everywhere, except at for the spray pump: no alternative solution exists to date.
Our products have no cellophane, our caps have no plastic inserts, our cartons have no laminated film, even our labels are all made of paper.
Unique in the market, our samples are made of glass and cork, without any plastic stopper.
3. Notre démarche zéro plastique
4. Our wooden boxes
We have voluntarily preferred wood to cardboard. Indeed bleached cardboard are very water and chemical consuming (chlorine among others). In addition, a large part of the boxes shaped in France is imported from the Nordic countries, while the wood for our boxes comes from French poplar groves.
Although old, we believe that wooden packaging is a packaging of the future that has no equivalent on the market. The forest, managed in a responsible and sustainable manner, is a key element of the eco-system: it sequesters carbon, thus fulfilling a vital function for humanity.
Wood packaging is the best all-category packaging for the environment since it does not consume fossil or scarce resources, and is extraordinarily energy efficient in its manufacturing phase, unlike paper and cardboard.
4. Our wooden boxes
Its carbon footprint and its life cycle analysis systematically give wood as the most favorable for the environment. Our discovery box is as light as cardboard. This is not the case with our 100mL box which is a little heavier than a simple case, but it can be kept in a pretty storage box (principle of upcycling), whereas a perfume case is, him… systematically thrown away!
5. Our logistics
The choice of the location of our logistics center was made in order to avoid the unnecessary movement of "kilos" on the road, both upstream and downstream of the chain. It is both close to the production workshop (to deliver components and to source finished products), and to the bottle supplier (heaviest component).
More than a service provider, our partner Houtch, which manages our storage and distribution, is a logistics player recognized for its environmental and social actions.
We chose La Poste - Colissimo for E-commerce because it ensures the full carbon neutrality of its offers by offsetting all of its CO2 emissions.
For the E-commerce boxes, we have chosen a simple recycled cardboard and a tracking envelope in pre-stamped cardboard: always without lamination and plastic padding ...
5. Notre logistique
6. Our partners
Our suppliers and service providers have been anchored in France for many years, some in their "industrial valley" for over a hundred years:
Robertet, which manufactures the concentrate in Grasse, the world-famous city of perfume; the Brosse glassworks in the Bresle Valley in Normandy nicknamed the "Glass Valley"; the Papeterie de Montsegur®, a living heritage company in the Drôme Provençale; Jacquemoux Décolletage, in the Arve Valley (Haute-Savoie), a valley famous for its mechanical parts for precision watchmaking.
And all the others, in Lot, Maine et Loire, Haut-Rhin, Loiret, Oise, Aisne, Saône-Et-Loire ...
In short, all of France is found in our perfumes!
6. Nos partenaires, nos approvisionnements
Small precision: although all our direct suppliers are located in France, the natural cork stoppers of the samples are manufactured in a factory in Portugal, because it is there that the forests of cork oaks are located
In any case, we will try to put our partners a little ahead. Because they each bring more added value to the product than any communication agency.
7. We are not perfect, but we do our best.
And above all, we agree to talk about the axis of progress that we still have to make.
In most cases, we made the best technical-environmental choice at the expense of cost. This is the case of our aluminum hood, which costs about 3 times more than a conventional hood. This was the price to pay for "Made In France, without plastic". The same goes for our sample cork stoppers. Same for organic alcohol which costs 4 times more than conventional alcohol. Etc...
But in one case the economic equation was absolutely impossible. So we had to choose the least "clean" solution to tint the bottle: we dreamed of tinting it during the manufacturing process (tinting in the mass) rather than at the end (lacquering the bottle, which is more difficult to recycle). It was not possible for us to choose the most environmentally friendly option because it is only possible for very large production quantities. We are committed to making this choice as soon as our sales volumes allow it.
We also ran into two technical problems:
- We would have liked to have even lighter wooden boxes, but the stapled boards in our wooden boxes are currently the thinnest that can be used. Nevertheless, we are still looking for solutions to improve this.
- A spray pump is a multi-material, non-recyclable component. For this reason, we have chosen not to put any on our samples. Conversely, we have left a pump on our 100mL, for greater convenience in the application of perfume. But knowing that at the end of their life, a small part of our products goes into the household waste does not satisfy us.
As soon as a recyclable pump hits the market, we promise, we jump on it!
8. Clear sorting instructions
As a preamble, some explanations of the logos that you can see on our packaging:
8. Clear sorting instructions
This first logo (Eco-Emballages or "green dot") does not mean that the product is recyclable: it just indicates that as a manufacturer, we adhere to and contribute financially to the system for managing household packaging waste organized by Eco-Emballages. This logo is very present on cosmetic products. But it creates confusion for the consumer who may believe that the product is recyclable. This is rarely the case, unfortunately!
This second logo tells you that you can sort and recycle all or part of our products. It is hardly present in cosmetic products, whereas the law has required it since 2015. The consumer must then be able to find sorting information, directly on the packaging, if not on the brand's website. Unfortunately, this information is rarely available ...
It's a shame for the consumer and his planet!
At AEMIUM, everything is clear. Here are our sorting instructions:
