How to recycle your beauty products?

Published on : 11 September 20203 min reading time

What are the right gestures to adopt once your fetish cosmetics are finished? Recycling them, giving them a second life and reducing their impact on the planet: an eco-guide to follow to be at the cutting edge of cosmetics with a clear conscience.

How to recycle your beauty products?

What to do with your glass jars?

Most serums, foundations and other star products are wrapped in glass packaging. This material is easy to collect, since after having taken full advantage of the cream of the moment, the jar is carefully cleaned before being put in with the glass to be recycled. To make sure you can do the right thing, you should choose cosmetics with containers made of sustainable materials from the outset. Note that nail polish is not yet designed to be recycled, even though it is made of glass.

The eco-friendly gesture? Since 2010, Sephora, for example, has been recovering empty perfume bottles for recycling, and offers a 20% discount on your next olfactory purchase. Seven years after a pioneering initiative, more than one million perfume bottles have been collected and recycled, equivalent to 53 tonnes of CO2 saved.

What to do with your plastic tubes?

Plastic containers account for the vast majority of the cosmetics industry and not all of them can be reused. Easy to decipher thanks to the pictograms stamped on the back and the Möbius loop – which contains a significant number on the recycling tape – The two most common to spot are Polyethylene Terephthalate, indicated on the Möbius loop N°1 PET and High Density Polyethylene, HDPE N°2, are easily recyclable. To give these products a second life, always empty and well cleaned, bottles of shampoo or body fluids should be placed in the special plastic bin. However, for those equipped with a pump, this cannot be recycled, simply remove it and throw it in the household waste before putting the bottle in the yellow bin.

The eco-friendly gesture? Today, plastic tracking is being launched both by consumers and by brands that need to adapt to current requirements. To minimise the influx of non-recyclable materials and especially single-use packaging, new innovations are emerging: vegetable-based plastic. This alternative to oil and conventional plastic is made from sugar cane residues. A choice to be favoured, because in addition to reducing CO2 emissions during manufacturing by more than half, vegetable plastic is slightly better quality than recycled plastic.

What about other materials?

Concerning our fetish hairsprays and hairsprays to increase the volume tenfold… Banco! Aluminium aerosols are also collected by placing them directly in the yellow bin. Editor’s tip? In order to be able to recycle your cosmetics as well as possible, it is essential to check the components of the products as not all aerosols are eligible. Other favourite objects in our bathroom are small electronics, which are more difficult to transform. Once they run out of use, you drop off your cleaning brush or straightener at a specialised collection point so that the parts can be sorted and reused.

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