Interview: L’Oréal’s Laurence Pardieu-Duthil on why travel retail drives the refill movement

Introduction: In a compelling conversation with The Moodie Davitt Report, L’Oréal Travel Retail Chief Sustainability Officer Laurence Pardieu-Duthil outlines the goals behind the #JoinTheRefillMovement campaign.

The campaign responds to growing consumer demand for sustainability, highlighting a major awareness gap around refill options – despite rising online engagement and intent to purchase more responsibly.

Travel retail plays a central role in the strategy, Pardieu-Duthil says, backed by tailored activations, beauty advisor training and travel retail-exclusive refill sets designed to meet customer expectations on value and sustainability.

As the environmentally friendly solutions scale across global operations, L’Oréal is positioning travel retail as a strategic platform to shift consumer behaviour and embed refills into international travellers’ beauty routines.

What was the catalyst for launching #JoinTheRefillMovement at this moment in time?

Consumers unfortunately haven’t yet fully embraced refillable beauty products as the new norm. Even though 78% of users want to buy more sustainably, and online discussion around beauty refills is really increasing, many are unaware of the option or don’t fully grasp its benefits.

This lack of awareness is a missed opportunity to change consumer behaviour and significantly reduce environmental impact. That’s why, with the launch of #JoinTheRefillMovement, we want to raise awareness and highlight the benefits of refills which is our obsession with this campaign.

It requires a lot of visibility and full consistency between leading brands to make refills become the new cool and create a real standard of ‘edginess’. Actually, it is interesting to see that our hottest brands, such as Yves Saint Laurent or Prada, are also the most advanced in terms of refills, which has become a marker of modernity and avant-garde.

How is the #JointheRefillMovement coming to life in travel retail?

This first-of-its-kind cross-divisional campaign will feature a range of products from different categories (skincare, fragrance, makeup and haircare), to showcase the scale of refill options available.

This campaign isn’t a one-off event; it’s a launchpad for an ongoing journey. Our brands will continue to promote refilling throughout the year with their creative content and activations, keeping the momentum alive.

At L’Oréal Travel Retail, we have already recently initiated sustainability partnerships with our main travel retail retailers to raise the strategic importance of refills to the channel, both as a way to engage travellers, who have higher expectations in sustainability than the average, and to anticipate regulatory shifts in terms of assortment circularity and decarbonation.

As part of these partnerships, we had already trained travel retail beauty advisors on refills, launched specific travel-exclusive refill value sets on all major brands and prepared specific travel retail activations for World Refill Day.

I could mention, for example, a specific digital Lagardère Travel Retail and Extime animation, an Avolta Club CRM and promotional campaign. In addition, we launched strong in-store visibility led by our retail experience team in partnership with the airport store teams everywhere.

What role does travel retail play in driving L’Oréal’s wider refill transformation? How are you tailoring refill solutions to fit the specific needs of the channel? 

Travel retail is a crucial element of this strategy, serving as a prominent showcase for our brands. It offers us the opportunity to engage with a highly discerning, globally aware consumer base and introduce them to our latest innovations in sustainable beauty.

We tailor the refill solutions to the channel by offering dedicated travel retail-exclusive refill value sets allowing travellers to top-up their favourite travel sizes before the trip, with exceptional value, which is also what customers are looking for in duty-free environments.

What role does education play in the campaign, and how are you working with retail partners to raise visibility in-store and online?

As we have seen, travellers’ demand for sustainable beauty is growing and online discussion on refills is booming. It’s important for us to empower these consumers to make a difference.

A clear call to action, including the dedicated hashtag #JoinTheRefillMovement, will encourage consumer participation and engagement with the movement. Paid media and stories will direct consumers to dedicated refill landing pages on brand websites

This campaign showcases the many benefits of refills, demonstrating how they can be good for the planet and for the pocket: for example, each time you buy a 100ml refill instead of rebuying two 50ml bottles of La Vie Est Belle Elixir fragrance you help save 73% glass, 66% plastic and 61% cardboard.

That’s why educations plays an essential role in the campaign and this is why we have engaged all our top influencers on this campaign, to show how refilling can be something really simple and rewarding and set the new norm in terms of beauty routine and status.

We also shared this key campaign with all our beauty advisors in the field. They have a key role to play to explain and show these new gestures to our clients.

What has been the most challenging aspect of scaling refill solutions across L’Oréal’s global operations and product lines?

The most challenging aspect has been standardising packaging solutions per product category across very different types of brands, regions of the world and packaging.

This was the condition to reach economies of scale and be able to bring this value back to consumers, a key success factor in sustainability. And you know how much an attractive pricing per ml remains a key reason to buy in duty-free.

How do you see refill evolving over the next five to ten years – not just as a packaging solution, but as a consumer habit and a new beauty ritual?

Yes, you said it, we are installing a new gesture in the beauty routine – and even more than that – a new standard for what is cool and hype in beauty.

Beauty packaging is by definition very beautiful and desirable. Throwing away these objects makes no sense. We are actually coming back to the very roots of beauty, when our grandmother would keep their fragrance bottle or their superb powder case, like a jewel, their entire life.

How does the #JoinTheRefillMovement campaign build on the goals set in the L’Oréal for the Future programme, particularly around circularity and respecting planetary boundaries?

We are committed to minimising our environmental footprint while continuing to deliver exceptional experiences and innovative, high-performing products. Embracing refillable beauty solutions is a key strategy for achieving this goal and propelling the beauty industry towards a circular model, creating a more sustainable future for beauty.

How does L’Oréal balance the push for sustainability with performance and luxury, particularly in fragrance and skincare?

This balance is essential as consumers want it all: best of packaging experience and formulation efficacy while decreasing their impact, and of course at an affordable price.

Refills allow us to solve this equation as, since they are standardised and minimalists, they allow economies of scale and materials. Refills help us maintain the exceptional experience of the product while offering unprecedented value back to consumers and a tangible contribution to sustainability.

Finally, what does success look like for this campaign – both in the short term around World Refill Day and in the long-term cultural shift you hope to inspire?

Success for this year will be measured in terms of consumer reach and engagement in social media, which was already very strong last year with only organic posts. We really want to empower consumers to make the difference.

Success in the long term would be the full adoption of refills by the whole industry and all major beauty brands joining World Refill Day.