With World Earth Day 2024 on the 22nd April, The Perfume Shop, the UK’s largest fragrance retailer, reports its updated initiatives to support saving the environment and planet. These initiatives include the UK’s biggest perfume bottle recycling service, a commitment to only using recycled materials in their new store refits, a focus on reducing waste and their carbon footprint and the brand’s continued efforts with the UK’s first, industry-leading multi brand fragrance refill station.
Gill Smith, managing firector from The Perfume Shop, said “At The Perfume Shop, we’re always driven by doing good. One of our number one aims as a company is, we always put our customers first whilst promising to focus on what matters the most. We’re proud of the amazing work we’ve already achieved as a business with our partnerships and how we can look to combat larger issues our planet is facing. In 2023, we saw great changes here and want to build upon this as we continue into 2024 and beyond.”
The Perfume Shop launched its most extensive perfume bottle recycling service in 2023 as part of its focus on sustainability and on-going commitment to combat unnecessary perfume bottle wastage. The Perfume Shop pioneered the first of its kind perfume bottle recycling and reuse initiative back in 2018. In 2023, over 8,611 bottles had been recycled compared to 5,152 in 2022 with a +67% YTD increase within the 209 nationwide stores. New data reveals that refillable fragrances are growing +23% (compared to +9% for non-refillable fragrances)1 as environmentally conscious consumers choose more sustainable options. This new market leading initiative further increases the distribution of perfume refills and widens the choice of perfumes available to refill in-store.
Since April 2021 every bottle recycled, The Perfume Shop make a donation to plant a tree and support the ongoing mission to make the planet a greener, more environmentally friendly place to live. To date 429,021 trees have been planted as a result of this initiative.
In 2023 The Perfume Shop introduced over 27 of its new, modernised, experiential stores. The brand’s stores continue to move towards operating digitally including customer facing screens and app-based task management for colleagues. They are also 100% zero carbon with electricity generated wind, solar and hydro. The stores continued to benefit from energy efficient LED lighting throughout, which contributes to The Perfume Shop’s commitment to reducing its energy consumption by 30% by 2030 vs 2015. The extensive expansion of these new refitted stores will continue into 2024 with around 35 more refits planned.
The Perfume Shop launched the UK’s first new cutting-edge fragrance refill station in 2023 to help meet customer demand for more environmentally friendly options, and offers more sustainable refill fragrance choices. Based in Nottingham, the fragrance refill station includes best-selling fragrances. It had been designed to fit within The Perfume Shop’s store look and feel, with use of the same sustainable materials from start to finish. All size bottles from 30ml upwards of the selected brand on offer can be refilled at the fragrance station. On average consumers save 29% when choosing refillable options.2
To continue to reduce environmental impact, The Perfume Shop invested £2.5M into their industry-leading automated packaging machines. The new systems lead to improved efficiencies with 3 times quicker processing of customer orders and a reduction in packaging of 40%. The packing machines are able to fold boxes to the size of the content included, reducing the overall cardboard and parcel size. Not only this, but the cardboard used is made in the UK and is 90% recyclable. Overall with these new innovations in place, it has meant a reduction in reduced carbon emissions as less delivery trucks will be required on the road.
