First and foremost you can reuse and give your packaging another life, before you even think about recycling. Got an empty pot or bottle? You could...decant products to make your own travel sizes, plants seeds to create a mini herb garden or even use to carry around your vitamins and probiotics.
Fashion and Beauty on Female First
Recycle empty beauty packaging right, so it has the best possible chance of being recycled (otherwise it might go straight to landfill!). Wash and dry your tubes, bottles and pots, making sure they’re clean with no residue. If you’re concerned about aerosols, don’t be. If your dry shampoo, hairspray or deodorant is packaging in aluminium or steel, it should be recyclable. Remove all you can from the bottle, such as the lid and nozzle and make sure it’s empty. Any items that really are difficult to recycle, save them up andpost them to TerraCycle. Always separate the different materials, removing any caps and plastic labels. Check what your local council can and can’t recycle, no matter whether it’s collected or dropped off.
Send it back (it’s not what you think). What’s better for the earth than recycling? A circular recycling scheme, where an empty product is returned to make another. At BYBI we’re committed to working towards a circular economy model and reducing the production of virgin packaging materials across the entire range. We now offer a circular recycling scheme for our Booster bottles because glass can be sterilised and reused.
Every UK order placed on BYBI.com will come with a free Royal Mail returns label (made from 100% recycled paper), so you can simply pop your Booster bottles back in the post to us, to reuse. Once returned, we will fully sterilise in-house and reuse like for like, omitting the complicated and energy-intensive industrial recycling process. As this is a UK based initiative there will be no air freight. And for the UK we believe this is a strong enough trade off for the carbon associated with the posting, as we reuse glass bottles, helping and hoping to move towards a circular economy.
Recycling makeup is when it gets tricky. Unfortunately most makeup including mascara, eye shadows and lipsticks can’t be processed with your standard cardboard and glass. However, brands such as MAC and Lush offer product incentives to return your empties to store, so that they can recycle them on your behalf. Opting for refillable makeup compacts and lipsticks can dramatically reduce the amount of packaging created. Brands such as Kjaer Weiss have created refillable, luxe silver compacts that not only easy on the eye, but easy on the earth too.
Despite being beauty essentials, toothbrushes and toothpaste are notoriously difficult to recycle due to using mixed materials and residue left in the tube. Thankfully Colgate and TerraCycle have collaborated to create drop off points across the country , so that any oral care products can be recycled free of charge. You can even set up your own public drop off and collect points that can be redeemed into financial donations to a school or charity of your choice. https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/brigades/colgate-uk
BYBI was initially supported by Virgin StartUp - who recently announced public pledge to commit to a 50/50 funding target for women and men entrepreneurs by the end of 2020, becoming the first business funder in the UK to make this promise.
The pledge represents a crucial step towards achieving gender balance for start-up investment in the UK but Virgin StartUp will also address the nationwide barriers faced by many women in business, such as childcare and gender based discrimination, including unconscious bias.
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