Empties ✰ Beauty + Makeup Recycling Programs

This Sunday, we’re talking empties. Those dozens of cute little skin cream jars, lip gloss tubes, foundation bottles and more that we all accumulate and don’t know what to do with afterward. While it can be easy not to have a second thought throwing it in the trash, there are programs out there made specifically for recycling our makeup and beauty products. Good news, babe. These hard-to-recycle products are no longer hard to recycle. Let’s get into how easy it is. 

Before we begin, I know this week was hard for all of us. It filled us with a plethora of emotions and left us feeling discouraged and drained, to say the least. I want you to know that Gab With Me is a safe space. For your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions – all of it. Let’s let go of our empties ~ everything that makes us feel empty. Together, let’s work towards grasping for all of the things that make us feel full. Please feel free to reach out via email or Insta DM if you want to talk or need some extra good vibes for the week ahead. I gotchu. ♡

Alright, let’s dive into a quick statistic for ya. ✰ The beauty industry is worth more than $500 BILLION and growing each year. From that, can you imagine how many of those products are made in plastic or hard-to-recycle containers? The amount is staggering. This is why the seemingly “little” choice you make to recycle your beauty and makeup products rather than resort to the trash is so crucial. Please remember how much of an impact you have on this world (in many, many more ways than one ☺️)

There are a handful of awesome companies that have recycling programs to accept empty beauty and makeup products. Many of them don’t even mind if it’s a different brand. Because hey, all of the empties go to the same place at de end of da day (iykyk). 

Many brands partner with TerraCycle for these recycling programs. TerraCycle is a global enterprise that is tackling the issue of recycling. It collects nearly every hard-to-recycle product under the sun (woohoo!) and turns them into new pretty little products.  Many leading companies work with TerraCycle to make it easy for consumers like you and me to actually make sure our skin care and makeup products are recycled. More to come on all things TerraCycle in another post. ✨

For those of you who want to drop products off ✰ safely ✰ in-person, these options are for you. 

You can use TerraCycle’s website locator per store of choice to find locations near you and see specifics of what products are accepted. The three stores that partner with TerraCycle and have the most locations nationwide are L’Occitane, Nordstrom, and Garnier partners. Being mindful of shutdowns and limited hours, you should call the store to be sure it is still open before taking your cute recycling self over there. Once you’re there, you can ask an associate or look for a tall skinny box that has a recycling symbol on it.

The one at L’Occitane is bright yellow (hello how cute!!) and hard to miss. Simply drop your items off in the box and you are GTG. BTW, many stores that do this will offer points or a discount off your next purchase as an incentive to recycle with them. Who doesn’t love that?

CREDO RECYCLING PROGRAM

Okay, so if you live in NYC, CA, Chicago, Boston, or Plano, I have to hit you with my favorite clean beauty company of all time. Credo. If I’ve written about them once, I’ll write about them 100 more times. These stories are like the Sephora or Ulta of makeup and skincare, except for all the products they carry are squeaky clean. Once you’re in the store (or on the website) you will find dozens of new-to-you brands you will become obsessed with. I know I do!! 

The Credo Recycling Program lets you bring back your empties and gives you 10 Credo Reward Points PER full-sized empty. It will take every beauty and personal care product with the exception of nail polish/remover, perfume, and aerosols. When you bring your empties in, just make sure you’ve given them a good rinse. Credo takes up to 12 products per visit, which equates to up to 120 reward points. Hello, this is literally free money to redeem for travel or full-size goodies!! You can learn more about Credo and its amazing reward system in this blog post.

If you want to stay home & ship your empty beauty and makeup products, try this free recycling program.

Next up is Ilia’s Recycling Program. Ilia offers pre-paid shipping labels so you can utilize its recycling services from the comfort of your own home. They allow up to five empty beauty products per month. So, save those empties, and every time you reach five, go print yourself a new label and get to saving the planet!

P.S. If you haven’t tried Ilia’s products, I would highly recommend them! Ilia is a clean beauty brand that has been around since 2011, and truly has incredible options to choose from. Its carbon black liquid eyeliner is the best non-toxic eyeliner I’ve tried in the years I’ve been using clean products. It has a felt tip and the precision is, you could say ~ on point ~ hehe. Also, its new Super Serum Skin Tint (which has an SPF of 40!) is my go-to. You won’t be disappointed.

I hope this post encourages you to check out the free and super easy options available above. Recycling doesn’t need to be hard, and in fact, it can be easy AND save you money on future skincare and beauty purchases you’ve would’ve bought anyway.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve used one of these recycling programs before for your makeup and skincare empties and what you thought! It’s exciting to see these brands making a conscious effort to help reduce waste and reuse materials.