Green consumption behavior in Indian cosmetics industry

Abstract

Degradation of environmental quality has been a global issue since a decade. Since then, the push for products and services that cause minimal effects to the ecosystems by both consumers and government has been on rise. Especially, the non-recyclable waste produced by FMCG industry is alarming. In spite of the pressure on corporates, many firms are still adopting unhealthy ways of production to save additional costs. For the companies to turn their products into Green products, it involves demystification of their entire packaging value chain. Hence, to attain sustainable outlook, companies need to rethink about various critical issues like type of material used for packaging and its ability to be recycled, re-designing the product, improving consumer awareness about sustainability, establishing a post-consumption treatment. Some of the initiatives taken by the firms are, Unilever constructed a new production facility to dispose of non-hazardous packaging waste to landfill, Marico reduced their Parachute Oil bottle to be 7% lighter to reduce its consumption of packaging material.