Our Sustainable Packaging Philosophy

Nature is at the heart of our business, which means sustainability — and keeping our planet as healthy as our bodies — is too. With this in mind, we get a lot of questions about packaging and so we want to share some insights into what guides our decision making.

The Packaging Dilemma

The ultimate vision for sustainability is to close the gap between the life of the product and the life of the packaging. For example, our lip butter may last you 3 months of usage but the plastic packaging can last over 300 years in a landfill. It is in our mission statement to remove toxins from the world – and we know this needs to go beyond our product themselves.

What we’ve discovered is that there is not one material that solves all of our concerns. We need a multi-tiered approach to solving our packaging dilemma. This is a journey we are passionate about and committed to solve. So, we want to take you along on our journey.

Our Sustainable Packaging Philosophy

These are the pillars that guide us when choosing our packaging:

Use Wisely

• Minimal material — we never use secondary packaging and encourage refill sizes
• Post consumer recycled plastics and FSC-certified paper
  Bulk and refill — bath bombs, bar soap, 1.9kg soap slabs and of course our Rocky Refill program
• Design for recovery — avoiding multi-layered materials that are hard to recycle

Recover More

• The Rocky Refills program
• Recycled materials — recycled plastic lids and containers, FSC-certified paper
• Clear “How To” recycle info on labels
• Offering label-free bar soaps in all of our stores
• Package-free is the ultimate solution

Return. Sterilize. Refill. Repeat.

One of the most important ways to reduce your impact is by reusing and refilling what you already have. That’s why we have our Rocky Refills program. With this program you can return our empty packaging to our retail locations and we take them to our workshop to be sanitized, refilled, and loved again. We've already refilled over 2,000 eligible products and counting!

Learn more about our Rocky Refills program.

Materials We Use

We tap into a variety of packaging solutions for the natural products you love.

Sustainable Plastics and Glass

These are two materials we use at Rocky. We’ve conducted research with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and found sustainable plastics and glass were equal in comparison.

Our Complete Cream Cleanser tube is made in Montreal from 30% recycled plastic and can be recycled again.

Recycled Plastic & Post Consumer Resin (PCR)

Recycled plastic and PCR are great packaging options as they give plastic materials a second life. At Rocky, we also like to refer to this as "repurposed" plastic. In the case of post-consumer resin (PCR), it means that the material used for your packaging was previously used for a product that was purchased, recycled, then repurposed into new packaging. Using these materials is a great step towards closing the circle through reducing and reusing waste – which ultimately means less new plastic in circulation.

Pros:

• Great options for circular systems and continued life of packaging
• Made from post-consumer materials (like plastic water bottles, glass jars etc)
• Produces less waste

Cons:

• Some polymers have low recovery in recycling facilities
• Not all PCR packaging can hold our formulas without breakage and need to be mixed with other plastics

Double take! Don’t let the beautiful clean look of this jar fool you. The frosted white jar is made completely from glass!

Glass

Glass is a wonderful material made from natural substances like sand or limestone. We use glass in most of our skincare line (except our toner bottles, which are 100% recycled plastic).

Pros:

• Can be cleaned, reused and recycled indefinitely
  Creates beautiful packaging from natural materials

Cons:

• Energy intensive to produce

Paper

Our bar soap wrappers and gift set boxes are made from FSC-certified paper. The Forest Stewardship Council promotes responsible forest management and is one of the best certified papers for reducing environmental impact. Plus, our 100% recycled soap wrappers also come to our workshop from nearby Calgary, to keep it local.

Virgin Plastic

We only use virgin plastic when PCR or recycled content is not commercially available. It is a last resort or in cases where recycled content is not compatible with the formula of our products, such as in some cases when recycled content or PCR renders the packaging weaker and unable to support our formulas.

Materials We Never Use

Aluminum

This is a material we never use as it is rated as the least desirable packaging option due to the high energy in production, greenhouse gas emissions, water and mineral consumption and open pit mining.

We hear you and we’re with you. We put careful consideration to every decision we make when choosing our packaging and our work here is never done. We are always open to our customer's thoughts and ideas to help us towards our sustainability goals. Please feel free to comment below, or contact us via live chat, phone or email - we’d love to keep the conversation going.

Thank you for being with us on this journey!