The Science of Our Packaging: Why Glass, Metal, and Paper Matter
Creating a clean beauty brand requires looking at the entire lifecycle of a product, not just the ingredients inside the jar. The beauty industry has historically struggled with waste, relying heavily on single-use plastics that inevitably end up in landfills. Because our formulas are rooted in botanical science, we knew our packaging needed to meet those exact same standards.
Here is a transparent look at the materials we use at Ichiko, and the specific reasoning behind each choice.
Why We Choose Glass and Metal
We package our primary products in heavy glass jars with durable metal lids. This isn't just an aesthetic choice; it directly impacts how the product performs.
From a biochemical perspective, traditional plastics are porous. This means the plastic material can actually capture the beneficial, active molecules found in our plant-based formulas, trapping them within the walls of the container. When this happens, some of the most potent ingredients never even make it out of the bottle and onto your skin!
Glass, on the other hand, is completely inert. It acts as an impermeable barrier against oxygen and moisture, ensuring that the clinical efficacy of our botanical extracts is protected—and fully delivered to your skin—from the day it is poured to your final use. Additionally, unlike plastic—which degrades in quality each time it is recycled—both glass and metal are infinitely recyclable. They can be repurposed continuously without losing their structural integrity.
Recyclable and Compostable Shipping
We eliminated traditional plastic bubble wrap and synthetic void fill from our shipping process entirely. Your order arrives in a standard, fully recyclable cardboard box, but we take the packaging a step further when it comes to sealing it. Instead of standard plastic packing tape, which complicates the recycling process and adds to plastic pollution, we exclusively use a paper-based, fully recyclable tape with zero plastic content.
Inside the box, we use unbleached parchment and tissue paper to protect your items in transit. These materials are completely biodegradable and compostable, returning to the soil without leaving toxic micro-plastics behind. We also carefully source biodegradable stickers for our branding, ensuring you can compost or recycle the entire unboxing experience easily without having to peel away synthetic adhesives first.
A Note on Transparency: The Plastic Pump
A core part of our brand logic is radical transparency, which means being completely honest about where we still need to improve.
Right now, the only single-use plastic in our product line is the internal mechanism of our pump tops. Despite auditing our supply chain and researching extensively, the packaging industry has not yet produced a fully sustainable, plastic-free pump that reliably handles skincare and haircare viscosities.
Rather than using misleading greenwashed language, we want to be upfront about this limitation. We are actively working with our manufacturing partners and will transition to a sustainable pump the moment a scientifically sound option becomes available. Until then, we remain focused on formulating with rigorous botanical science and minimizing our environmental footprint wherever current technology allows.