Working Toward Reducing… (and Ending!) Beauty Packaging Waste
When you’re finished with your glass olive oil bottle or your plastic bottle of shampoo, you can toss it in the recycling bin for curbside recycling and feel like you’re doing at least something to help the planet.
Well, what about the little empty tub that held your eye cream or the sample sizes of that great new face cream you picked up over the weekend?
Just throw those in there, too, right?
Unfortunately, not so fast.
The global cosmetics industry produces approximately 120 billion units of packaging each year, and industry estimates indicate that the vast majority—up to 95% (or roughly 114 billion units)—are discarded rather than successfully recycled (1)!
While some brands are making waves offering refills of beauty products from lipstick pods to body wash to face cream, independent audits like the Good On You Beauty Sustainability Scorecard show that only 15% of a broader sample of 239 surveyed brands offer meaningful, transparent refillable packaging across multiple items (11% at-home, 4% in-store) (2).
So what is a well meaning, conscious person to do in this situation?
Sure, we may be able to find a use for the containers that once held certain products; perhaps a small glass perfume bottle can be turned into a tiny vase for a single rose or an extra, empty tub of body butter becomes the back up one you bring with you to the gym.
Yet there’s only so many little tubes, bottles and jars we can find a new place for!
Fortunately, there are forward thinking individuals working on a solution for this massive dilemma.
One such group is the Pact Collective (3), a nonprofit collective uniting the beauty industry to reduce beauty packaging waste and work collaboratively toward more circular solutions for the industry.
I first learned about Pact when I signed on to help launch Atmosphera (4), a successful, clean-beauty brand based on choosing our skincare based on climate.
Pact is an official partner of Atmosphera and customers can use local collection bins or mail-in options to recycle packaging that is not curbside recyclable.
Using their three pillars of
-
- Uniting the beauty industry to take responsibility for packaging waste and solve packaging problems together
- Closing the loop on the industry’s hard to recycle packaging through collection programs
- Serve as a knowledge hub to empower the industry to design more sustainable packaging, produce less waste and drive sustainable solutions
They’ve created real impact that both consumers and industry insiders can be a part of today.
I recently took advantage through Atmosphera of ordering my own mini bin with which I will collect appropriately sized, beauty product empties in my local community (stay tuned for updates on when and where).
You can also use their searchable database to locate a bin near you and even send empties in to them directly!
With billions of waste being dumped each year in our country alone, we’ve all really got to do our part, no matter how small it may seem.
Collectively, it’s massive!
- https://earth911.com/health/cosmetics-packaging-the-ugly-truth/
- https://goodonyou.eco/refillable-beauty-packaging-explained/
- https://www.pactcollective.org/
- https://atmospherabeauty.us/?ref=nellstephenson
