With sustainable fashion collections at the forefront of our favourite high street stores, charity shop boutiques popping up online, and the latest ‘shwopping‘ trend allowing us to trade in last season’s trends for brand new vouchers, we’re making strides towards curbing our fast fashion impulses and curating a kinder, conscious wardrobe.
If we’re to keep pace with the zeitgeist and truly lessen our environmental footprint though, we need to upgrade our beauty habits. And that starts with recycling the constant stream of empties from our bathroom shelves.
If you don’t know the first thing about sorting your deodorant cans from your mascara tubes, you can familiarise yourself with the best ways to upgrade your beauty practices with our guide to recycling your old packaging.
And while the idea of recycling and refilling our beauty empties seems to have only just surfaced in the industry, it’s not an entirely new idea. Eco-friendly pioneers The Body Shop, who launched a trailblazing recycling and refill initiative back in 1992, has just announced plans to reinvent their in-store recycling scheme in a bid to tackle plastic pollution.
Starting from 5th June, the high street store will introduce a new ‘Return. Recycle. Repeat.’ initiative in partnership with Plastics For Change, which will allow customers to return their empty beauty packaging in exchange for a voucher off their next Body Shop purchase.
‘What’s the catch’, we hear you thinking. There is none: you simply bring your empty bottles, jars, tubs, tubes and pots into a selected Body Shop store, where recycling bins will be positioned around the shop floor. Bring in five, clean items, and you’ll receive a £5 voucher off your next shop – it’s that simple!
After you’ve traded in your empties, The Body Shop’s plastic partners, TerraCycle, an innovative recycling company which aims to help the world “recycle and upcycle products using circular methods, so less recyclable products are incinerated or sent to landfills” steps in, recycling some of the packaging, and repurposing other waste into new items like park benches and playgrounds.
Even if you’re not a Body Shop customer, you can still bring in your beauty empties from other brands and recycle them in store while you browse – you just won’t receive a voucher, which sounds totally fair.
“As a company, we’ve always had the conviction to stand up for our principles when it comes to helping empower people, especially women, while protecting our planet,” The Body Shop global community trade manager, Lee Mann commented.
“Our new partnership with Plastics for Change and our other partners will not only help support waste pickers but also champion plastic as a valuable, renewable resource when used responsibly.”
You can check out the full list of participating store here before your next shop.
