We invite you to join The Great British Beauty Clean Up
A brilliant initiative has kicked off this week, via The British Beauty Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition (of which Jo is part). The Great British Beauty Clean Up wants us to start thinking more about what we do with our beauty packaging – and make it easier to recycle our empties.
Did you know that 86% of plastic beauty packaging is not recycled? It’s a pretty shocking figure, we think. (We’ve long encourage people to keep a small separate bin in the bathroom for empties. It may only be used occasionally, but having it handy is a nudge to remember to recycle, when you’ve finished something.)
It’s actually easier to recycle packaging than you might think. Many different retailers – online and bricks and mortar – have recycling schemes, often with a ‘send-it-back’ programme offered for online. (And in quite a few cases, you exchange empties for credits against future purchases.) To find out whether your favourite brands take back empties, simply Google ‘X brand send back your empties scheme’. We’ve been amazed to discover how many beauty companies offer this, under the radar.
But loud and proud about their recycling schemes are the names involved in The Great British Beauty Clean Up, who include ELEMIS, L’Occitane, Cult Beauty, LOOKFANTASTIC, Boots, L’Oréal, John Lewis and Tesco, who are all backing this first cross-beauty-industry waste management scheme.
The campaign’s also encouraging the use of refills – we LOVE refills – as currenly, only 23.4% of us use refillable skincare products.
The British Beauty Council is also hghlighting their interactive recycling map (find it here), which can help you locate your nearest drop-off spot – ideal for empties that can’t be put in recycling bins at home, including packaging that is…
Too small (travel minis, samples, mascaras, etc)
Made of composite materials (make-up palettes, compacts, lipsticks, etc)
Made from non-recyclable materials (toothpaste tubes, lotion pumps, etc)
We hereby pledge never to bin our empties, ever again – because this initiative may be highlighted for a month, but it’s worthy of a lifetime commitment..
And a reminder: you can find that map here.
