“Can I Recycle This?”: Beauty-Product Recycling in Our Offices

Did you know that many beauty products cannot be recycled in your local recycling center? Most are too small — nothing larger than 2” x 2” can make it past the initial sorting — while others may contain mixed materials that are challenging to recycle, or have colors too difficult for the person sorting the recycling to identify.

Here at Beauty for All Industries (BFA), we wanted to do our part to help address this challenge. So this month, when we welcomed employees back to a new hybrid model of working, we also introduced a new fixture in each of our four U.S. offices: a Pact Collection Bin. This bin collects hard-to-recycle beauty empties, diverting them from landfill and preventing “wish-cycling” of beauty packaging (that’s when you hope something is recyclable, so you just throw it in the blue bin).

Pact Collective, the organization behind these problem-solving bins, was formed in 2021 to bring together beauty industry stakeholders to reduce, recycle, educate, innovate, and drive the industry toward circularity. BFA became an inaugural member that same year. The Pact Collection Bins are one of the organization’s lead programs, and after seeing it in action at BFA, we can understand why: It’s as simple as filling up a Pact Collection Bin, then shipping it off for the contents to be sorted and the packaging components to be used in the most effective way for their materials.

We know that action starts at home, and that’s why we’ve brought these simple recycling solutions to our offices. We’ll share more soon about additional ways we are working to reduce our impact on the planet. Want to learn more about how to sort your empty beauty packaging? See Pact Collective’s guidelines.