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Scroll through your bathroom and vanity and take a mental note of all of the plastic and glass bottles, jars and containers. Now, ask yourself, ‘How do I dispose of these items?” For most of us, the answer is the trash. And, by most we mean that more than 50% of people surveyed by Unilever state that they’re not diligent about taking all of those containers from the bathroom to the recycling bin. Honestly, how many of us are diligent about cleaning out toothpaste tubes and separating the cap to ensure that it’ll be taken by recycling facilities? Unfortunately, what that means is that millions of shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes and moisturizer jars are thrown into landfills yearly.
7 Zero Waste Products To Make Your Beauty Routine More Sustainable
Thankfully, some brands are now concerned about their packaging waste thanks to their conscious shoppers. When more conscious shoppers like you and I speak out and write to brands demanding stronger sustainable initiatives, they listen. Beauty conglomerates announce their decision to use recycled materials. Heritage brands offer take-back programs to help us recycle better. With small, but consistent steps like these sustainable packaging materials switch from being an environmentalist’s pipe dream to a new way that the beauty industry is starting to look at the future.
“Companies must act quickly to prove their social and environmental credentials and show consumers they can be trusted with the future of the planet and communities.”
Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief Marketing and Communications officer.
Post Consumer Waste Materials
There has already been a big push to use recycled and post consumer waste materials like plastic water bottles in the fashion industry. Now, beauty brands are looking to trash for their packaging solutions.
Estee Lauder recently announced that 75- 100% of their beauty packaging will be made from sustainable packaging materials like post consumer waste. This is a big step for a mega beauty brand with an international presence and can hopefully lead to change when it comes to how the industry looks at sustainable packaging materials.
Tata Harper, a clean skincare line, has long been dedicated to using recycled sustainable packaging materials. To date their tubes are made from bioplastics that rely on corn as its base source instead of fossil fuels. Other materials include post consumer waste like recycled cardboard. Even the ink on their bottles has been consciously considered and are soy based to ensure that they’re non-toxic or not harmful to the environment.
Refillable Beauty Brands
A whooping 120 billion units of packaging are produced by the cosmetic industry alone. And, if we’re being honest when was the last time that you thought to recycle your lipstick tube or eye shadow container? Some brands have caught on this extreme waste and have developed systems that aim to minimize waste by offering customers refills of their favorite items.
Ilia is one beauty brand that is slowly offering refills on their products. Several of their plant-based products can be refilled at their stores or purchased online. Its translucent powder brushes and lipsticks help to minimize plastic waste by being a product that can be refilled in compacts that can also be recycled.
Outside of the cosmetic industry refillable brands like Humankind are helping consumers to cut down on plastic waste with solid products like toothpaste tabs and deodorant. Items come in a container that can be refilled and reused. Choose a subscription model and your refills will be sent to you monthly in compostable non-plastic packaging. In case you’re concerned about the carbon footprint from all of this shipping, know that they’re a carbon neutral company that offsets carbon emissions by planting trees and adopting other sustainable initiatives.
Return & Recycle
Recycling can be a tricky business for consumers. A single container can be comprised of several different types of plastic that have to be separated in order to be recycled. And, depending on where you live, certain types may or not be accepted by your local recycling facility. That ultimately means that even if you are dedicated to filling up your blue bin, all of those packaging materials could still end up in the landfill if you’re mixing different types of plastic.
To help take the guesswork out of recycling for customers, some brands are offering to recycle for you through take-back programs where you can drop off the used packaging to the store.
Break Up With Single-Use Plastics With These Eco Beauty Products
A few brands like L’Occitane En Provence even offer their customers opportunities to not only bring in their packaging materials to them, but also that of other brands. You can save all of the containers, boxes, plastic wraps, tape and other wrapping materials from your favorite beauty brands and place them into the recycling containers in their stores where they will properly recycle the materials for you.
Adopting a similar method is Ulta, one of the biggest beauty retailers in the U.S who has collaborated with Loop, a reusable packaging service on a new feature- ‘Conscious Beauty’. Through this partnership, customers are able to choose sustainable packaging options from brands like Burt’s Bees, Mad Hippie and Dermalogica (coming soon). These sustainable packaging materials include items like glass or aluminum bottles that can be taken back to Ulta stores where they will be recycled and reused.
