Garbage: The Beauty Trend That Won’t Go Away

How unboxing changed the beauty industry — and the environment.

The year is 2018. People are starting to question two of the beauty industry’s biggest trends: “unboxing” videos (wherein influencers and editors open extravagant, expensive gifts from cosmetic companies on-camera) and skincare mini-fridges (in which influencers, editors, and casual enthusiasts alike store their various moisturizers, sheet masks, and jade rollers). “I just find all of this PR incredibly wasteful,” says influencer Samantha Ravndahl in a YouTube video announcing she will no longer accept PR packages. “You do not need to keep skincare products in the fridge. Keeping them in the fridge does not make them more effective,” a dermatologist tells Fashionista.com.

Six years later, has anything changed?

No, according to Darshita Goyal in a new analysis for Dazed. Her article — “Has influencer gifting got out of control?”— looks at the industry’s latest exaltation of excess: the “stickered and stuffed” refrigerators that Gisou sent beauty creators last month, which “took the gluttony of PR packages to stratospheric new heights” and included “rows of hair and body oils, hair perfumes, serums, washes, balms and multiple lip tints in every shade, as well as chunky bottles of Mogu Mogu juice and a drawer of pink-hued fruits.”

Gisou / TikTok

“As expected, the gimmick proved successful,” Goyal writes. “#GisouMiniFridge has over 53 million views on TikTok with thousands of comments dubbing this the dream PR package.”

I was glad to speak with Goyal for this piece. It’s a must-read that addresses the history of the unboxing video (remember Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji Heart Fragrance, “which was delivered to celebrities, influencers and editors encased in a giant chocolate heart crafted by Fours Seasons’ Beverly Wilshire’s pastry chef, complete with a KKW branded hammer to shatter the chocolate”?), the irreversible environmental impact of these PR stunts (an estimated 45% of landfill waste comes from product packaging, recycling is not an effective solution, refrigerators in particular have “high global warming potential”), and more.

Since most of our interview didn’t make the final cut, I thought I’d share it in full with you here.

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Dazed: Overall, how would you describe the beauty industry’s relationship with sustainability?

Jessica DeFino (me): Obviously, sustainability is a buzzword in beauty and we are seeing some new brands pop up to address the issue of waste, and some old brands set sustainability targets for themselves — using recycled or recyclable packaging, for instance. But broadly, the more the sustainability conversation grows, and the more data we get about global warming and about the beauty industry's impact on it, whether it be via microplastics or packaging, the more we're seeing the beauty industry overall increase in intensity, in the opposite direction. More products, more waste, more PR packages with more excess, which is very concerning, but also just very distracting. It's a distraction tactic.

Dazed: Why do you think unboxing videos are making a comeback, even though concerns about wastefulness were brought up years ago?

JD: I think the shift is very closely tied to our present moment and culture. Things in the real world are depressing. Climate change is happening. There are systemic issues that politicians are doing so little to address. In response, fashion and beauty’s problematic argument is, Let people enjoy things, let them have this much at least. I think this line of reasoning helps them feel better about their choices.

Dazed: Is any of this surprising to you?

JD: I am kind of surprised that this is still happening. After I got your email about this interview, I remembered I had pitched a very similar story to a prominent women's fashion and beauty magazine in 2019. I think I called it “How Unboxing Changed The Beauty Industry & The Environment.” There was some initial interest from the editor, and we went back and forth for a couple emails, and she told me she was going to check with her team and get back to me on the specifics. And then I was ghosted. I followed up many times, but the story never materialized, and I remember feeling like this was the moment for it. I thought the unboxing experience had reached its peak, and the hook would soon be irrelevant, and I sort of abandoned the article. I think it’s really sad that five years later, we're still here and the unboxing issue has only gotten worse.

Dazed: What are some of the risks of brands and influencers glorifying over-the-top PR gifts in this way?

JD: Besides the obvious waste, overproduction, and overconsumption, I think one of the downstream effects of unboxing is that it’s created the desire for this over-the-top experience for every consumer. It’s glorified this particular PR experience to the point that it created demand — expectation, even — for it on the individual level. I remember back when I was pitching my version of this story initially, I was thinking about Pat McGrath Labs. The brand used to add handfuls of glitter and piles of black plastic crinkly confetti to every box that they shipped, so that every customer could have that big unboxing moment. Those are all microplastics — they stay in the environment forever, they never break down, they only break up, and they will literally leach plastic chemicals into the soil and water supply for the rest of time. I think a lot of brands see this over-the-top PR practice of unboxing — and then trickling that trend down to their consumers — as an essential part of running the business.

Dazed: What do influencers do with these gifts after they unbox them? Are they expected to send anything back — like the Gisou fridges. Are they keeping all of that?

JD: It's hard to say across all influencers. In most circumstances, though, you keep the product, you keep the gifts, you're not expected to send anything back. I doubt anybody is sending those fridges back. The PR incentive is to completely treat the influencer, not to make things hard or complicated for them. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to create content and get your brand some publicity. What normally happens is that influencers and editors amass this huge hoard of gifts, and then they barely use them. They're just inundated with stuff. Sometimes they'll they'll keep it, sometimes they'll give it away to their friends and family. When I was a beauty editor, every friend and member of my family was was inundated with products in the same way that I was, because I would just pass it along. I had no use for it.

I also think think that what happens for influencers and editors is that the thrill goes away. These unboxing experiences are happening so often that you don't even appreciate it anymore. And because the thrill is gone, it creates a lot of competition between brands to make their box the most exciting, the most eye-catching, the least ignorable. So brands are trying to outdo each other, and outdo themselves — outdo their own prior PR moments.¹

It even happens with so-called “sustainable” brands. A big part of why I personally divested from the beauty industry after years as a beauty editor and years of getting these gifts and having these unboxing moments is, you know, I started to be skeptical about a lot of things I was witnessing. I was learning to be more critical of some of these industry practices. I sort of made a deal with myself — I said, Okay, if my focus is only on clean and sustainable brands, then that's better. Like, If I'm only accepting gifts from sustainable brands, if I'm only writing about sustainable brands, I can feel better about my participation in the system. It got to a point where I was only accepting packages from and writing about brands that that marketed themselves as eco-friendly in some way. And then I had this moment of realization: I was looking at my front door, and there were about 25 boxes waiting to be broken down, all from these supposedly environmentally-friendly brands. This was like, a week's worth of PR. And I very clearly saw how much waste I personally was amassing — just as this low-level beauty editor. I could only imagine the amount of waste that big-time editors and influencers and celebrities must accumulate, and how much waste these brands — who are supposedly sustainable, supposedly environmentally friendly — are generating just through PR, not counting production or sales or anything else. It was a moment where I just had to walk away completely.

Dazed: What are some of the options for donating or recycling some of these gifted products?

JD: That was a problem for me, too. I was looking for places to donate some of these beauty products and having a hard time. There are very few beauty-focused recycling initiatives — TerraCycle was one, and I believe Credo Beauty locations have recycling stations at some of their stores. But I'm still pretty skeptical of all of that. Studies show that in the US, only about 5-6% of plastic actually gets recycled. Recycling is essentially a scam — people in the plastics industry are being sued right now for lying about the reality of recycling. And TerraCycle claims to recycle beauty products, but it’s also come under fire for not really being clear about how it’s recycling; it's very murky. Reselling beauty products is tough too, because there are a lot of safety concerns. Once a product leaves the brand — once it leaves a store, once it leaves a warehouse – the potential for contamination is high. What I did with a lot of my products was I donated to local homeless shelters, women's shelters, domestic abuse shelters, and gave away all my unopened personal care products locally.

Dazed: So how can we move past this trend of excess?

JD: The obvious solution lies in shifting our values away from mass consumerism as a marker of success. On an individual level, the best way to do this is to not interact with this kind of excessive content. By not clicking, sharing and engaging with the post you’re impacting the very metrics that determine whether these stunts are successful for brands. It's a small thing, but I do think it’s something.

Dazed: How do you think brands can do better here?

JD: In all honesty, brands alone cannot fix this waste problem. It requires government regulation — laws about what materials can be used, legislation about supply chain management and traceability — and a collective divestment from the beauty industry. I think it's pretty misguided to think that brands can be part of the solution and still get to have their big publicity moments.

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This interview has been edited for clarity.

1. A great data point here from Goyal’s article: Influencer Anna Astrup’s “Gisou fridge unboxing video has 2.5 million views and over 3,000 comments on TikTok. Another PR unboxing from a few weeks before, featuring heaps of simple cardboard boxes, only has 250,000 views and 170 comments. The virality and performance of the mini fridge garnered the creator ten times more engagement than a typical video and this appears to be the norm, not the exception.”