You shopped your stash. You actually emptied some products. Congratulations! But what’s the next step? I set out to recycle my empty makeup and skincare products, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Here’s what I learned: how to recycle beauty products properly.
What I wanted to do
Easypeasy: I was going to find out how to properly sort your empties and how to recycle beauty products. In my mind I saw a wonderful list that looked somehow like this:
- Perfume bottles – waste glass container
- Powder compact – recyclable waste
- Outer packaging – paper, if it’s not a compound
- Etc.
Every company I contacted (L’Oreal, Estée Lauder, Lancome, Paula’s Choice) and asked about their products claimed they can be chucked in the recyclable bin to be recycled. But then I started to research, and to my surprise found out it’s neither that clear nor that easy.
Germany is big on recycling, isn’t it? … coughcough
Germany is big on recycling. We had five bins for trash when I grew up (paper, glass, organic waste/compost, recyclable waste e.g. plastic, metal etc., general waste). I generally felt really, really smug about that. We even had print outs in my student dorm saying what waste goes where!
We were responsible consumers, and stuff would get recycled and get a second life and all that. MY plastic bottles didn’t end up in a landfill in Malaysia, thankyouverymuch, because I did separate my trash. Isn’t that kind of naiveté wonderful?! But here’re the problems with that.
Problems with plastic recycling
The biggest problem
Even if you sort your waste into all the different coloured bins (speaking about Germany here, obvi), and your country has a recycling programme – there’s no guaranty that your plastic waste will be recycled. I’ll give you the numbers for Germany: Of all the plastic out there, only about 45% make it to a waste disposal company. That’s the plastic you correctly placed into the recycling bin.
If you now think ‘well, 45%, that’s a bummer, but not too bad’ – sorry to burst your bubble. It gets worse. Only about 16% will actually get a second life (Bundesumweltamt) as another plastic bottle, or whatever: everything else gets burned.
But why?
Most plastic won’t be recycled, but burned. This is because it’s more expensive for waste disposal companies to actually sort through the waste. They have to sort through it, because most products aren’t just made from one material: look at yoghurt. Pot = plastic, lid = aluminium. Both can only be recycled if they’re separated (SWR3), which most people don’t do. But only one kind of material can be easily recycled (plastic, aluminium e.g.) – there can’t be a mix of two or more materials. So, a perfectly recyclable item lands in an incinerator, where filters can’t properly hold back all the toxins released by burning.
Weirdly, scanners in the sorting machines don’t realise that black packaging is made from (possibly recyclable) plastic, so your black bottle of shower gel (SWR3)? Will be burnt, as well.
But wait: things GET recycled!
And new packaging made out of recycled plastic? A great thing, always advertised nowadays: when a company promises they use only recycled plastic for their bottles. Let me tell you a secret: It’s very likely not your recycled yoghurt pots, but industrial waste (SWR3). Again, because it’s less expensive, it’s a pure form of plastic that doesn’t have to be sorted through beforehand.
Back to cosmetics and how to recycle beauty products
From what I’ve found out above, you can see why it’s extremely complicated to actually recycle empty skincare and makeup products: they are just made out of so many different compound materials!
But how?
And here’s the only advice I can give you to make sure your empties will actually be recycled: take them apart as much as you can. Remove labels, pry out that aluminium pan from your powder compact, and don’t chuck that mascara simply into the bin: remove the wand. You get the gist.
Also, if you absolutely have to trash products that are still half-full, try to either find alternative uses for the unloved product (look here!), or empty it first into your general waste bin.
What you can do instead
Some companies take back their empty beauty products
Again, I learned that nothing is easy or simple: the only company I know of that takes back their packaging and recycles those for a new generation of packaging is Lush. And they only do it with their pots.
But what about MAC, you’ll say? They take back empty products! Maybe, but they work together with subcontractors to recycle them, and nobody seems to know what happens to the products then. Are they properly recycled? Are they burned? I certainly don’t know, and MAC doesn’t tell. Trust me, I asked.
Terracycle
Companies like The Body Shop and L’Occitane now partner with Terracycle. Terracycle is a company that recycles hard-to-recycle materials. It’s starting to expand worldwide, with the vanguard in the US, where you can even send your private waste to their disposal facilities. It has a rather slow rollout here in Germany, but I do encourage you to look into it, especially if you’re in the US.
Little known secret: TBS does actually allow you to bring back ALL your cosmetic empties (not only TBS ones, and they don’t allow empty nail polish bottles, aerosol cans or perfume bottles) to be recycled by Terracycle.
Don’t buy plastic packaging
Obviously. I can’t add anything to that.
5 Comments