Makeup and beauty products might bring out your eyes or add some style to your hair, but the only addition to the environment is more packaging waste. And considering the top 100 personal care, beauty and cosmetic product companies sold an astonishing $195 billion worth of products in 2011.

Through one of TerraCycle’s free Brigade programs, the department has collected more than 1,300 pounds of bags, diverting a huge chunk of waste from local ecosystems and landfills. It even generates points for each unit of waste sent to TerraCycle, which are being turned into cash donations to local schools around Oregon.

Copper River Salons were already running a TerraCycle program to collect and recycle their personal care and beauty waste. At TerraCycle we provide free recycling programs (sponsored by various brands, like in this case Garnier) where we provide free shipping (via UPS) for your waste and will then reuse, upcycle or recycle the collected waste into something new.

Tom Szaky hates garbage. The very notion of it strikes him as preposterous. Ridiculous. Unworkable. We take what is often perfectly good stuff and toss it into a landfill, where it mummifies and oozes out bad chemicals that can pollute our air and water.

Issues of global environmental instability and climate change are becoming nearly impossible to ignore these days, and consumers have taken notice. With demand for sustainably-conscious products and product packaging constantly increasing, it’s no wonder that firms have taken charge at creating sustainable, environmentally-friendly, “green” products to satiate the ever-growing consumer desire to be able to conveniently decrease their environmental impact.

In nature, the waste of one system is food for another. Before humans began creating complex materials that nature can't digest, there was no waste, and humans fit nicely into the ecosystem. In the past 100 years, however, humans developed a range of complex materials that nature can't digest.

Companies like The Naked Grape works with TerraCycle by setting up the the Naked Grape Wine Box Brigade, a program that collects the box, spout and plastic bag for recycling thereby potentially keeping millions of pounds of plastic from ending up in landfills. Creative upcyclers have found unique uses for the bags in the box as well. They refill the bags with water and turn it into ice packs or fill it with air to use as a makeshift pillow. Not only is upcycling the package a great way to keep the environment clean but it also adds to the product's packaging useful lifecycle.

The history of retailers collecting recyclables from their costumers is evolving, if slowly. At first this started with small independent grocery stores collecting plastic bags or other items. But, today, consumers are clearly becoming more eco-aware, which is creating a demand for major retailers like Whole Foods Market, Best Buy and Sur La Table to place collections in their stores.

As I reflected on the end of 2012, I decided to write a letter to our more than a hundred employees around the world to discuss the role profits play at TerraCycle. TerraCycle is a social business, which means that we focus on the so-called triple bottom line: planet, people and profits. For us, this has meant creating a business model that involves capturing nonrecyclable waste — like chip bags or diaper packaging — before it goes to a landfill or incinerator and finding a way to recycle, upcycle or reuse it. Basically, we’re giving garbage a second life by creating a system for otherwise nonrecyclable waste to be recycled.