Of all the bonkers commemorative dates in the calendar (looking at you, Hug Your Cat Day), one that deserves all the airtime it can get, is Global Recycling Day, which happens every year on 18th March. Both Garnier and L’Occitane have partnered up with recycling company TerraCycle to ensure that our empty beauty products are being dealt with accordingly. Simply drop of your bottles (from any brand) at a local drop off point and they’ll sort, separate and recycle to ensure the absolute minimum ends up in landfill.

Now, brands like Garnier, Maybelline, Kiehl's and L'Occitane are working with recycling company TerraCycle to create drop-off points (you can usually find them in supermarkets) for your beauty empties, with some exceptions such as aerosol cans, perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, and nail polish remover bottles.

Looking to boost your green credentials? Then welcome to Plastic Free July, a global movement that helps millions of people to be part of the solution to plastic pollution on our streets, in our oceans and our communities. Fortunately, big brands are making it easier for us to do our bit. First up is cosmetics giant L’Oréal, which will take back and recycle its empty packaging — its Maybelline brand and recycling company TerraCycle have installed recycling points in branches of Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury’s and Superdrug. Meanwhile, Aveda, The Body Shop and Faith In Nature all offer refills of your existing bottles.

Approximately eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into our oceans each year, and just nine per cent of plastic is recycled worldwide. And the beauty industry – with its large amount of packaging and non-recyclable items such as cotton buds and face wipes – has historically been one of the number one culprits. Fortunately the beauty world is now catching up, with many brands making concerted efforts to adopt more sustainable practices in an effort to limit their impact on the environment. Because of its fiddly packaging and tough formulas, make-up used to be one of the trickiest beauty products to recycle. In fact, Maybelline found that a third of make-up wearers didn’t even know that these products could be recycled. Here to tackle the problem, Maybelline has teamed up with Terracycle to introduce make-up recycling bins in over a thousand Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury’s and Superdrug stores across the country. Simply drop in any old cosmetics, from ANY brand, and you can be sure they’ll be properly recycled. Click here to find your nearest drop-off point.

Our beauty routines should feel positive, with mood-boosting makeup and comforting scents. Our bathroom stash should feel like somewhere to escape to for small acts of self care. Now, brands like Garnier, Maybelline, Kiehl's and L'Occitane are working with recycling company TerraCycle to create drop-off points (you can usually find them in supermarkets) for your beauty empties, with some exceptions such as aerosol cans, perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, and nail polish remover bottles.

The three Rs of sustainability are reduce, reuse and recycle. So once you’ve reduced your consumption by using up everything, reused the products you can repurpose, and ended up with empty bottles and make-up cases, it’s time to recycle — and that’s easier than ever. A number of beauty brands have partnered with TerraCycle, which recycles the unrecyclable. For makeup empties, find a Maybelline recycling point at maybelline.co.uk/store-locator, while Kiehl’s, Deciem and L’Occitane help recycle other empties — and all will collect empties from any brand. Go to terracycle.com/en-UK/brigades to find out more.

Maybelline Makeup Recycling Scheme

Maybelline has recently teamed up with Terracycle to enable consumers to help fight plastic waste by recycling their used makeup.  The programme launched in over 1000 stores across the UK, and one of the closest collection boxes is inside Superdrug on Oxford Street. You can also check the location of other Manchester collection points using their interactive map.

Truly ethical and sustainable beauty brands aren't easy to find. Can Jessica Jones go a whole year without using anything else? Zero waste products might be the future of clean beauty but they have yet to reach the mainstream. The lack of accessibility and convenience when purchasing zero waste items means that it is significantly easier to just buy non-recyclable products.   When switching to sustainable beauty I found that I had many products which I needed to use up before searching for better alternatives. These were mostly half used makeup items in non-recyclable packaging, often with different parts and materials such as a mascara wand or a foundation pump, which makes it impossible to recycle them in local council bins.   Introducing TerraCycle.   TerraCycle is a recycling scheme for waste that cannot easily be recycled. Founded by Tom Szaky in 2001, who was then a student, the concept is simple: free recycling programmes are funded by worldwide brands, manufacturers and retailers in order to allow us to collect and recycle our hard-to-recycle waste. All you have to do is pick the programmes you want to use, collect waste in your home, school, office or organisation, download a free shipping label and finally, send your waste in to be recycled. Points are earned and can be exchanged for rewards for your school or a non-profit. Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle(TerraCycle)   Since it was established, TerraCycle has rapidly become a global leader in recycling and to date, over 202 million people in 21 countries have collected billions of pieces of waste, raising more than 44 million dollars for charities all over the world.   TerraCycle is not just for makeup and personal care products; there are programmes designed for almost every kind of waste from bread bags and empty medicine packets to childrens’ toys and disposable gloves. The ones I was most interested in were the Garnier personal care and beauty recycling programme and the Maybelline makeup recycling programme.   Although the names suggest that only Garnier and Maybelline products can be recycled, they actually accept waste from all brands. The Garnier programme allows waste to be sent in however the Maybelline programme works slightly differently, yet is still free and easy. All you have to do is find your closest store through their maps and drop off your empty (clean) packaging to be recycled.   Once your empty waste has been received it is sorted by material type, shredded and pressed into plastic pellets, which can then be reused for various new plastic products. Recycling waste earns points that are redeemed as financial donations so the more waste that is recycled, the more that is donated to various charities such as Mind. Beauty brands such as Weleda, Baylis & Harding and Colgate also have their own individual recycling schemes.   TerraCycle is a revolutionary way of recycling, reusing and upcycling waste to prevent it being incinerated, which produces huge amounts of pollution, or landfilled, which generates the high levels of methane gas and CO2 that contribute to global warming. Waste is redirected from a linear system with a finite end to a circular one, which keeps it flowing in our economy.

Zero waste products might be the future of clean beauty but they have yet to reach the mainstream. The lack of accessibility and convenience when purchasing zero waste items means that it is significantly easier to just buy non-recyclable products. When switching to sustainable beauty I found that I had many products which I needed to use up before searching for better alternatives. These were mostly half used makeup items in non-recyclable packaging, often with different parts and materials such as a mascara wand or a foundation pump, which makes it impossible to recycle them in local council bins. Introducing TerraCycle. TerraCycle is a recycling scheme for waste that cannot easily be recycled. Founded by Tom Szaky in 2001, who was then a student, the concept is simple: free recycling programmes are funded by worldwide brands, manufacturers and retailers in order to allow us to collect and recycle our hard-to-recycle waste. All you have to do is pick the programmes you want to use, collect waste in your home, school, office or organisation, download a free shipping label and finally, send your waste in to be recycled. Points are earned and can be exchanged for rewards for your school or a non-profit. Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle(TerraCycle) Since it was established, TerraCycle has rapidly become a global leader in recycling and to date, over 202 million people in 21 countries have collected billions of pieces of waste, raising more than 44 million dollars for charities all over the world. TerraCycle is not just for makeup and personal care products; there are programmes designed for almost every kind of waste from bread bags and empty medicine packets to childrens’ toys and disposable gloves. The ones I was most interested in were the Garnier personal care and beauty recycling programme and the Maybelline makeup recycling programme. Although the names suggest that only Garnier and Maybelline products can be recycled, they actually accept waste from all brands. The Garnier programme allows waste to be sent in however the Maybelline programme works slightly differently, yet is still free and easy. All you have to do is find your closest store through their maps and drop off your empty (clean) packaging to be recycled. Once your empty waste has been received it is sorted by material type, shredded and pressed into plastic pellets, which can then be reused for various new plastic products. Recycling waste earns points that are redeemed as financial donations so the more waste that is recycled, the more that is donated to various charities such as Mind. Beauty brands such as Weleda, Baylis & Harding and Colgate also have their own individual recycling schemes. TerraCycle is a revolutionary way of recycling, reusing and upcycling waste to prevent it being incinerated, which produces huge amounts of pollution, or landfilled, which generates the high levels of methane gas and CO2 that contribute to global warming. Waste is redirected from a linear system with a finite end to a circular one, which keeps it flowing in our economy.

Zero waste products might be the future of clean beauty but they have yet to reach the mainstream. The lack of accessibility and convenience when purchasing zero waste items means that it is significantly easier to just buy non-recyclable products.