Every aichabelle parcel that leaves our dispatch table contains exactly four materials: glass, for the vessel; metal, for the closure; paper, for the label; and cardboard, for the outer box. Not five. Not three with an exception for the inner tissue wrap. Four, consistent across every numbered batch we release. This is not a marketing commitment — it is a constraint. And like most useful constraints, it simplifies nearly every decision that follows.
"A package that cannot be returned to the ground is a problem deferred, not solved."
The vessel and the seal
Glass is our primary packaging material because it does nothing. That is its entire virtue. It does not react with the formula inside it. It does not leach. It does not absorb fragrance or alter pH over time. An amber borosilicate jar holding our Boson Botanical Activator presents the same formula on day one as it does on day ninety — because the container contributes nothing of itself to what it holds. The glass we source comes from European manufacturers working to pharmaceutical container standards, the same specifications required by the perfumeries of Grasse.
The closures are metal: aluminium pump mechanisms and aluminium-threaded caps. Chosen for the same reason. A metal-to-glass interface, correctly torqued, seals completely. There is no gasket erosion, no off-gassing, no interaction at the interface over months of storage. The formulations we work with are designed to be stable through their own chemistry — active pH, the absence of free water in key fractions, the inherent properties of specific botanicals. The packaging is not doing the preserving. It is simply not getting in the way.
Why not plastic, even once
The short answer: we cannot trace where it goes. The UK's recycling infrastructure handles glass and metal reliably — both have documented, functional recovery chains. It does not reliably handle small-format cosmetic plastics: the composite pump body, the laminated sachet, the crimped aluminium-and-plastic tube. These typically go to landfill. We do not want to introduce a material we cannot account for at end of life.
There is a second, quieter concern. Certain plastics, over time and at temperature, may interact with oil-rich formulations — a slow migration of plasticisers into a lipid base that we would not be able to observe, measure, or reverse after the jar has left us. This is a formulation-integrity question before it is an environmental one. We do not need to settle the debate in academic literature. We simply chose materials that do not raise it.
The label and the box
Our labels are uncoated paper, printed with vegetable-based inks. No laminate layer. No synthetic adhesive. They can be soaked off the glass with warm water if you want to reuse the vessel — and we encourage that. Glass does not degrade. A clean jar is a clean jar, and the shape of an aichabelle vessel is worth keeping.
The outer box is FSC-certified board, plain kraft on the exterior, with a single black-ink print. No foil on the outer. Inside, a cut-tissue interleaf of compostable corn-starch paper protects the glass in transit. We are still working on eliminating even that last piece — arriving at a parcel that is entirely glass, metal, paper, and cardboard, nothing else. When we have, we will say so here. Until then, if you want to follow the next numbered batch from bench to box, join the Honoured List.
Four materials, then. Glass, metal, paper, cardboard. Every numbered batch, every dispatch, every jar. Everything else — the formula, the provenance, the name on the list — is carried inside them. The packaging is not the point. It is just honest enough not to become a problem.
— with care.