Boots, John Lewis, and The Hut Group (THG) are among more than 50 brands coming together for The Great British Beauty Clean Up – a waste management campaign to tackle the beauty industry’s environmental impact head on.
L’Oréal, Elemis and L’Occitane are also among the cohort involved in the waste management campaign, which centres on helping educate consumers on the ways to manage their empty packaging.
Running throughout March, the initiative comes following several studies that highlight the level of waste in the industry. In 2020, the British Beauty Council uncovered that 86% of plastic beauty packaging is not recycled and, of all packaging, 14% of empties make it to a recycling plant and only 9% is actually recycled.
Additional research in 2023 from skincare brand bareLUXE found that although 79% of consumers view sustainability as important when making purchasing decisions, only 23% use refillable skin care products.
For The Great British Beauty Clean Up, the British Beauty Council is revamping its interactive recycling map which identifies the various recycling programmes offered by UK beauty businesses, where consumers can drop off their ‘hard to recycle’ packaging.
Consumers are being urged to collect all their empties which cannot be put in at-home recycling bins, such as small items like travel minis, samples, mascaras, and those made of composite materials including make-up palettes and lipsticks, and then locate the destinations to recycle them.
Boots is supporting the campaign by highlighting it’s Recycle at Boots scheme, and L’Oréal – which heads up the Maybelline recycling programme found in over 1,500 UK stores in the UK – is raising more awareness of this waste management option.
John Lewis’s BeautyCycle scheme is being marketed more this month, and consumers will be able to claim a reward in the department store chain’s shops to spend on B-Corp certified beauty products including Medik8 and Elemis.
Elemis itself is educating its customers about the recycling programme at its London locations No.23 Monmouth Street and The House of Elemis, while THG brands Cult Beauty and Lookfantastic will be spotlighting the ‘recycle:me’ programme that was revamped in October last year.
Global Recycling Day is 18 March and the United Nations International Day of Zero Waste is 30 March.
[image credit: THG]
