How to actually recycle your empty beauty products

As a beauty editor, I inevitably collect copious amounts of products for work — and every few months, this leaves me with a hefty pile of empty or used products to dispose of. As someone who regularly recycles in my household, I actively try to cut through the greenwashing and find eco-friendly solutions to the waste. For beauty products, there are some obvious and not so obvious hurdles to jump through on the way to the recycling bin. In addition to purchasing clean beauty products, another way to make sure your beauty routine is sustainable is to recycle empty beauty products.

“Beauty packaging often contains a mix of materials (metals, plastic, glass) that are not accepted by municipal recycling curbside bins,” says Gigi Ganatra, vice president of corporate affairs at Nordstrom. Despite this fact, many products that you may think (or simply hope) can be recycled will end up in the recycling bin anyways — a practice that’s known as “wishcycling” that does more harm than good.

Overall, more than 120 billion beauty packages are created each year, and less than 10% of those ultimately get recycled (an oft-repeated statistic I found in my research). Now, many brands are taking action to improve this number and reduce the amount of beauty packaging that ends up in the landfill. This means there are more sustainable solutions and recycling options available to consumers, too.

Ahead, I’ll walk you through all the ins and outs of recycling beauty products, along with some of the programs I’ve found most helpful in giving my empties a second life.

What beauty packaging is recyclable?

With all of the tubes, pumps, bottles and jars, the question of “what is actually recyclable?” is totally valid — and unfortunately, there isn’t a clear-cut answer. Different cities have different rules when it comes to recycling. “Municipal recovery facilities (MRFs) are independent companies and as a result, have different sorting and processing capabilities,” explains Carly Snider, Pact program director. “A package or material type that might be accepted in one city might not be accepted in another, making it difficult for consumers to determine what to do with their beauty packages.”

On top of this, beauty companies may mislead consumers into thinking non-recyclable materials are recyclable. “The chasing arrows (the recycling triangle we all recognize) is a symbol that implies that the package is recyclable,” says Snider. “Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, as beauty stakeholders can use this on any packaging — even if it can’t be recycled.”

This is a larger issue that starts way before a falsely labeled product reaches the consumer, and the Environmental Protection Agency has been campaigning to put an end to the widely recognized recycling symbol on plastics that aren’t actually recyclable. Moreover, California recently enacted a “Truth in Recycling” law that sets statewide recyclable criteria and requires businesses to accurately label recyclables.

Before these changes become widespread, however, consumers must educate themselves about what materials are actually going to be recycled. “Beauty packaging that is most likely to be recycled are glass packaging (pending opacity), metal packaging and large format plastic packaging made of PET #1 or HDPE #2 — larger than 2 inches on more than one side,” says Snider. “All other beauty packaging has a very small chance of being recycled by MRFs because they’re usually too small (e.g. compacts), too flexible (e.g. squeezable tubes) or made of too many materials (e.g. fused layers or pumps) to be traditionally recycled.”

To this point, plastic containers marked with a number one or two within the chasing arrows — which indicates the type of plastic they are made from, not their recyclability (hence the bid to do away with the symbol) — are typically accepted through curbside recycling programs across the US. In New York City, all plastic bottles, cups, jars and jugs are accepted, regardless of the item’s “recycling number”. However, there are exceptions, with tubes used for cosmetics, toothpaste and more excluded from the city’s recycling program. So again, it’s important to check your local recycling guidelines before separating your empties — How2Recycle has some helpful resources and search tools for checking your area.

Thankfully, there are companies trying to help consumers through this gray area of recycling. Some, like Junk Theory and Flamingo Estate, utilize eternally recyclable materials (namely aluminum) in their packaging, while others provide recycling programs to take the guesswork out of whether your empties will actually get a new life. Nonprofit organizations Pact Collective and TerraCycle are two of the biggest names in this effort, with major retailers like Nordstrom, Sephora and Credo, along with independent brands, either partnering with them or creating their own recycling programs. In terms of convenience and getting the job done with the least-headache-inducing process, I found these resources to be the easiest way to ensure my empties are being properly sorted and diverted from the landfill.

Hang in there, I’ll go into more detail about the specifics of these programs and what packaging they accept later on.

How to prepare empty beauty products for recycling

So once you’ve figured out which products are actually recyclable, you might need to clean the containers before you send them off. Aluminum and plastic packaging that will go into your household recycling should be rinsed out, just like you would with used food containers. If you are going through a program like Pact Collective or Nordstrom Beautycycle, there may be more stringent rules. For Pact, Snider says they must be completely clean. “Packaging with any goop left is considered contaminated and means they can’t be properly recycled,” she explains.

For Nordstrom’s Beautycycle program, however, Ganatra says that the products do not need to be 100% clean, “simply pouring or scooping out the product is sufficient.” Either way, check the guidelines for the specific program you choose.

I found that having a tool like these tiny cosmetic spatulas from Jenny Patinkin helped me reach the bottom of hard-to-reach products like foundation bottles or scrape out every last bit of product from jars. And if you do need to get your containers squeaky clean, giving them a good rinse and “letting your empties soak in a bowl of water can help you remove as much of the remaining product from the containers as possible,” Ganatra advises.

Where to recycle old beauty products

While there are a growing number of companies and brands that have recycling programs, these are the ones I’ve found most helpful based off of accessibility, ease and transparency.