Brook Harvey-Taylor, president, Pacifica06.08.15
When I arrived, we went into their beautiful conference room, full of hundreds of components on the shelves around us. But on the table sat three. You know
where I am heading with this I am sure.
Out of those three, the kind salesperson told me that two were made of recyclable materials, though mixed, but that the other, while metal covered in paper with two other plastic parts, was the prettiest—and looked recyclable. Appearance is what the consumer cares about, she assured me. Ugh.
That is not what I care about, and I don’t sell my fellow consumer short. I think that today, women (and men) know better. They want more. They deserve more. And I knew that with our art, with our patterns, we could make anything beautiful.
So I have to admit, with some reservation, I began to dive into the world of recycled components and what it really means. And let me add, that I am still in the learning stages and don’t have the answers. But I don’t think anyone in our industry does quite yet. This is an exciting and frustrating time for all of us.
For Pacifica, being eco-conscious does not mean being brown, gritty, or natural looking. It means appealing to the widest consumer base with the best products we can, that just so happen to use the best natuvial ingredients in eco-conscious packaging.
At the end of the day, it is Beauty, right? It has to be sexy, it has to be on trend and it must perform to the highest standards to be relevant. If it can’t do all of the above, all of the effort put into being green will not matter. And if you can’t reach a large group of consumers, then it doesn’t matter enough.
That is why I am thrilled to work with Target’s Made to Matter program around these initiatives. Ulta is also focused on being a leader in this area and we are working together on some amazing projects. Especially messaging around our tubes. These are what we work with Viva Packaging on.
Our hand creams were developed with my buyer, Lisa Hamilton at Ulta. And Target made to matter while we didn’t message the recyclability angle as the first story about this product, eco-conscious products are something that Lisa and I share the same passion for. I am really proud that we won the 2014 NJPEC Gold Award for Personal Care for these products. And of course, our brand grew up and has worked closely with the leader in all of this, Whole Foods.
Patterns and Graphics
The Power of Love Collection, exclusive to Target and created for the Made to Matter program, is based on Pacifica’s core value, compassion. It is this core value that drives everything we do—in all our products across the board. We have compassion for women (good for you ingredients), animals (100% vegan and cruelty-free) and the planet (emphasis on recyclability and social responsibility).
We call the collection The Power of Love (shown above), because ultimately, compassion is true love. It is my belief that without compassion, one truly cannot call oneself an environmentalist. And again, I am not challenging anyone, or any brand, or claiming perfection or the right answers. I think that small moves in the right direction can be huge. Ultimately, my goal is to be a positive force in the beauty industry.
Pacifica’s pattern and graphics are inspired by love. And the quintessential symbol, the heart, is radiating with compassion. I love the feeling of “modern nostalgia meets little girl magical thinking.” That’s why we use rainbow colors to represent a playful, dreamy vibe.
My husband and business partner, Billy, and I talk about this all the time. We have three kids and we love seeing how they experience the world. We also both surf and we are really attracted to vintage surf memorabilia which I think is obvious in our patterns across our whole line.
The specific heart shape we are using is also from the ’60s. And the colors we chose are also really vintage-inspired from the ’60s and ’70s. I am our art director and work with two amazing in-house graphic designers, Ixtla Vaughan and Matthew Stork.
Lipsticks
I vowed at that moment in the above mentioned conference room that I would not make a lipstick that did not come in a recyclable
component. That means no wind-up classic bullets for us. No mixed metals. It took us a year to create our lipstick component. And while it might not look that innovative or special, we are careful to use materials that keep it recyclable. And by the end of this year it will have a stamp embedded in the plastic that says what material it is made from.
In regard to the design, I wanted the component to feel playful and fun, and be something that you were proud to take out of your purse and use. The side of the component is printed with the recycle symbol and number, but I think it is done in a way that feels well designed and on trend. Our boxes are FSC certified and we are using UV curable inks. The environmental attributes of printing with UV curable inks include low to zero VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), reduced CO2 emissions and a reduction of HAPs (Hazardous Air Pollutants). We have also moved to using aqueous coatings that are non-toxic, not considered hazardous by today’s environmental standards and that are also heavy metal free.
Palettes
We work with Compax on our recyclable paper palettes. These are printed with soy inks and also have the recycle numbers printed on the palettes.
Our three-well palette that we have created custom for our brand is all the same plastic, no hinges and stamped with a recycle symbol on each one. Our boxes for these are also FSC certified and we are using UV curable inks on these.
Tubes
I feel that our brand was a huge player in pushing Viva toward being eco-conscious and making sure that we could make the types of claims we wanted to make. Viva has been an amazing partner in this and has gone above and beyond a lot of suppliers we work with today. Viva does our hand creams that were developed with my buyer, Lisa Hamilton at Ulta. And while we didn’t message the recyclability ngle first, as I mentioned, it is something that Lisa and I share the same passion for.
Wipes
These come in a bag that is highly patterned and colorful. It jumps right out in the sea of “commodity” wipes, which speak more to the consumer’s needs versus her emotions. We want to address the experience and emotion of a product as well as the promise and attributes. These wipes do that, and so does the whole collection for that matter. And being in a bag, they use less plastic than a box. The lid is all PP, which once removed from the bag can be recycled. The wipes themselves are all natural material and biodegradable.