Q&A: World Refill Day with YSL's Caroline Negre

Refilling is no longer just about cutting waste – for YSL Beauty, it’s about rebuilding the way beauty products move through supply chains.

This World Refill Day, the global luxury brand highlights how its refillable fragrance, skincare and makeup lines are helping to transform production, consumption and packaging models from the inside out.

Caroline Negre, Global Sustainability & Scientific Director at YSL Beauty, is leading the charge.

With a background in cosmetology and a master’s degree in biotechnology engineering, she brings both scientific expertise and industry experience to the company’s sustainability efforts.

“At YSL Beauty,” she explains, “I’ve had the privilege of founding our Scientific Advisory Board,” which helped launch the refillable Pure Shots skincare line. She also heads the company’s Change the Rules, Change the Future corporate responsibility programme, guiding its refill push.

How can refills help to reduce the environmental impact of products?

At YSL Beauty, we are part of a division-wide drive to make refills the hottest new trend in beauty. As part of our ongoing commitment to responsible beauty, our efforts extend well beyond the point of sales. With our #jointherefillmovement campaign, we are urging consumers to make more sustainable choices in 2025. 

With the launch of this campaign, we want to encourage consumers to embrace refilling as a new beauty ritual. This campaign aims to show how small, everyday actions can collectively make a big difference for the environment. We want our consumers to feel part of a like-minded community, united by a shared commitment to sustainability.

This campaign is driven by our long-term commitment to sustainability, showcased in each category of our product portfolio including fragrance, skincare and make-up. Today, refills are an exciting new way to experience luxury beauty.

This movement strongly ties with our YSL Beauty program “Change the rules, change the future” through which we aim to reduce the number of resources used for our packaging.
Refills are central to meeting this objective as they allow us to considerably reduce the number of materials we use.

The savings in material are substantial. In the case of the LIBRE Eau de Parfum (#2 female fragrance globally), buying a 100ml refill instead of rebuying two 50ml LIBRE Eau de Parfum helps save:

• 58% of glass
• 59% of plastic
• 42% of paper
• 100% of metals

What are the challenges in adopting refill solutions?

There are challenges linked to refillable products, but we see this as an exciting opportunity to engage with our consumers on a mission of shared purpose.

We find that consumers are still on a journey to embrace refillable beauty products as the norm. Even though 78% of consumers want to buy more sustainability and online conversations around refills are increasing, many consumers are still unaware of the option and its benefits. We aim to create awareness to encourage lasting shifts in consumer behaviour that meaningfully reduce environmental impact.

Refilling your product should be an appealing option – a desirable choice that is associated with luxury, style and making a difference. (More on how we do this below).

The true benefit of refilling products needs to be understood. At YSL Beauty we hope to inspire our consumers to #jointherefillmovement by offering desirable refillable products, encouraging a more mindful luxury beauty experience.

How can businesses tackle these challenges?

Refillable products form an important part of our long-term commitment to a more sustainable future. As a global beauty brand, we have a responsibility to lead the way for change and therefore have implemented improvements at every step of our value chain. We aim to shift behaviours through our two-fold approach: awareness and education.

To raise awareness, we are constantly increasing the visibility of our refillable options across the entire consumer journey: from marketing and communication campaigns, at point of sales, our e-commerce platforms and even by educating our beauty advisors at our retailers’ stores.

To further create awareness and educate our consumers on the topics, we leverage the influence of our ambassadors like Dua Lipa (Libre), Austin Butler (MYSLF) and Lenny Kravitz (Y). Through social content and ‘how to videos’ we showcase how refills are ‘cool’, easy and accessible. Using cross-platform storytelling, we’re reaching luxury consumers with authenticity and intent.

How is YSL Beauty approaching refillable packaging?

The very essence of luxury is to create beautiful objects that are made to last. By doing so, we allow our consumers, through refills, to keep their cherished beauty products while significantly reducing their environmental impact.

We have a clear strategy to do so: we offer highly desirable products that are made to last and to add to the sentiment we offer a wide range of personalization options like engraving in some point of sales.

Through this offering we encourage consumers to keep their works of art, refill it and be part of the drive towards a more sustainable future. These refillable solutions offer consumers to ‘refill more, save more’ – on a planetary as well as financial level.

What do you think packaging will look like in the future?

At YSL Beauty we continuously revisit this question. Our vision is to keep the desirability of our products while making it synonymous with sustainability.
Over the years the solutions to sustainable packaging have evolved and we continue to look for more and better ways to stay one step ahead.

Our refillable solutions have evolved significantly over the past few years. For example, our iconic fragrances Libre and Y were not initially designed to be refillable. We have since adapted our manufacturing processes and campaigns to launch refillable Libre in 2023 and refillable Y in 2024.

As part of this transformation, we also redesigned the Y bottle, reducing its glass weight and saving 9 tons of glass annually. And in our ongoing commitment to innovation and sustainability, we introduced MYSLF in a refillable format in 2023.

Beyond fragrance, sustainability is embedded across our skincare offering: since 2019, all YSL Beauty serums (Pure Shots) and our 50 ml Or Rouge creams have been designed to be refillable.

In the spirit of YSL Beauty, we remain committed to finding innovative solutions in line with our sustainability mantra to ‘Change the rules, Change the future’.

Explore the latest edition of Supply Chain Digital Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE.

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today. 

Supply Chain Digital is a BizClik brand.