Meet the Melbourne teens tackling beauty’s plastic problem

The beauty industry has a waste problem, contributing close to 12,000 tonnes a year in Australia, so when teenage sisters Daisy and Matilda Johnson from Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula started their sustainable skincare brand, they wanted to avoid contributing to the problem. Their solution? Refillables.

Launching last year, One Summer aims to cut down the amount of waste that ends up in landfill from non-recyclable beauty product packaging by offering refills for customers.

“Refillables are the way forward,” says older sister Daisy, 16. “As the younger generation that will be facing environmental issues, we wanted to create a brand that focused on sustainability.”

The skincare brand sells lower priced, plain plastic refills to sit inside the original packaging. Empty cartridges can either be recycled or returned in a prepaid pouch, which the sisters clean, refill and reuse.

“We don’t want anything to go into landfill. It’s second-hand – but not dirty,” says Daisy.

The vegan range includes cleansers, moisturisers, masks and scrubs with 100ml refills of each product starting from $30.

Danielle Chee, Adore Beauty’s head of brands and merchandising, has seen demand for refillable beauty products since the online retailer began stocking them in 2013 primarily in the fragrance category. By 2017, refillables extended to all of its categories and today the website sells about 100 refillable products across skincare, body, make-up, and fragrance, including Dermalogica and supermodel Miranda Kerr’s Kora Organics.

About 700-1000 customers a month buy refillable products on Adore’s website with this number expected to grow as more brands look to add refillable products to their ranges.

“[Our customers are] seeing it as an eco-friendly way to support their daily routines with the products and formulas they already know and love,” says Chee.