Packaging
Ere Perez has steadily reworked its packaging toward lower-impact formats, and the direction is clear and credible. Several of its best-known products are plastic-free: the award-winning Coco Crayon lip and cheek colour and the Jojoba Eye Pencil are housed in wood-and-paper casings with zero plastic, and the brand has pioneered refillable makeup compacts where a metal pan drops into a reusable holder, cutting repeat packaging out of the cycle entirely.
Across the wider range, glass and aluminium (both endlessly recyclable) are used wherever a format allows, and paper components are drawn from responsibly managed, FSC-certified and other sustainability-certified sources.
Where plastic is still present, the brand commits to post-consumer recycled (PCR) and recyclable plastics and is actively designing toward mono-material structures that are easier to recycle in practice.
The Ginkgo Micellar Cleanser is sold as a tablet that the customer rehydrates at home, removing both water weight and a layer of packaging from the supply chain. Shipping and postage materials are plastic-free, biodegradable or compostable.
Ingredient Sustainability
Ere Perez draws overwhelmingly on plant-based oils, butters, and extracts that sit in the more sustainable tiers
Many of its hero ingredients are inherently low-impact and a number are byproducts or co-products that reduce waste: oat kernel extract, sunflower seed oil, jojoba (a drought-tolerant, perennial desert shrub), raspberry seed oil (a fruit-industry co-product), prickly pear and apricot kernel oils, carrot root, lemon balm, and rice bran (oryzanol).
Coconut oil and coco-derived emollients appear frequently; these are reasonable choices when responsibly sourced, though coconut carries its own monoculture and labour caveats that are worth continued attention..
We did not find the most acutely overharvested resins and woods, such as frankincense, myrrh, wild sandalwood, rosewood, or wild-harvested ginseng, used as signature actives, and there is no obvious reliance on the most water-intensive aromatic crops like steam-distilled rose oil. Geranium oil, which can be water- and land-intensive in monoculture, does not feature as a core ingredient in the sampled products.
Palm-derived materials appear in the line (for example, palm kernel wax in the Avocado Waterproof Mascara), and a credit-based approach, while better than ignoring the issue, is a step below traceable physical certification. Encouragingly, the brand also formulates many products to be explicitly palm-free (the Moringa Crème and Quandong Serum are labelled as such). Sourcing transparency at the individual-botanical level (farm origin, organic or regenerative status) is less detailed than the strongest performers in this category, which together with the palm-credit approach is what holds the score at a strong rather than exemplary level. Synthetic content across the sample is minimal and skews to lower-impact, biodegradable choices such as glycerin, xanthan gum, sucrose esters, and glucoside surfactants, with no reliance on persistent silicones, PEGs, or microplastics.
Energy Use & Carbon Footprint
The brand claims certified carbon-neutrality since 2016. On the logistics side, the brand partners with DHL GoGreen carbon insetting and reports cutting transport emissions by up to 80% through the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, directly targeting one of the higher-carbon parts of a globally shipped beauty business.
Product design choices reinforce this: water-free and waterless formulas reduce both shipping weight and the emissions tied to transporting water. The main reason the brand doesn’t receive a higher score is that the brand leans on credible offsetting and insetting more than on demonstrated deep absolute emissions cuts, and it does not publish detailed, third-party-verified emissions data in the way the very top performers do.
Waste Management
Waste reduction is built into how Ere Perez designs products rather than treated as an afterthought. The refillable compact system lets customers replace only the inner pan, the multitasking philosophy is explicitly intended to reduce the total number of products a person buys, and waterless formats cut material and shipping waste at source. The brand also points customers to guidance on recycling empty beauty packaging. What keeps this short of the highest tier is the absence of a comprehensive, brand-run buyback or take-back and refill program of the kind the very top performers operate; refills exist for specific lines rather than across the whole range, and recycling of empties largely depends on municipal systems and third-party drop-off rather than a closed loop the brand fully controls.
Business Model
Ere Perez operates on a slow-beauty model that has remained largely consistent over more than two decades in business. Its catalogue is built around evergreen, repeat-purchase essentials rather than constant trend-driven drops, and the multitasking, long-wearing nature of the products actively encourages buying fewer items rather than more. Messaging centres on a less-is-more, sensitive-safe philosophy rather than urgency-driven overconsumption. The brand does run normal retail mechanics, occasional sales, seasonal or anniversary edits, gift sets, and a subscribe-and-save option, which is why it lands in the high band rather than the very top, but these are modest and the core proposition rewards mindful, long-term use.