How Britain's beauty brands are tackling the industry's waste problem through new initiative

Boots, John Lewis and Cult Beauty are among over 50 brands and retailers to join The Great British Beauty Clean Up, working together to tackle the industry's waste problem.

Established by the British Beauty Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition, the "first-of-its-kind" initiative is designed to educate consumers on responsible beauty packaging disposal while driving awareness on what can and cannot be recycled at home.

It aims to increase recycling rates of beauty empties by spotlighting take-back schemes and household recycling, as well as strengthening the adoption of reuse and refill systems.

As part of this, the British Beauty Council has updated its interactive recycling map to pin-point the various recycling programmes offered by UK beauty businesses, where consumers can drop off their "hard to recycle" beauty packaging.

The brands and retailers involved

High street chain Boots is supporting the campaign by highlighting its 'Recycle at Boots' scheme, currently available in over 800 stores with more than 330,000 registered users. Through the scheme, customers can unlock 500 Boots Advantage Card points (worth £5) for every five eligible empty health and beauty product deposited when they spend £10 in-store.

Candice Smith, Head of ESG at Boots, said: "Many of us are guilty of holding on to products in the bathroom unnecessarily – either it’s the last bit of product that you can’t bear to throw out, you have an empty bottle you keep forgetting to put into the kitchen recycling bin, or you are holding on to items you don’t think you can recycle. This Spring we want to help by encouraging everyone to finish every drop of those forgotten products and recycle the empties at your local Boots. You can clear more space in your bathroom and get rewarded in the process – a spring clean win."

Found in over 1,500 UK stores, Maybelline is spotlighting its recycling points that are found in Sainsbury's, Superdrug and Tesco.

Consumers will also be able to head down to John Lewis stores across the UK to use its 'BeautyCycle' scheme and claim a reward to spend on B-Corp certified beauty products as a result.

Meanwhile, Elemis is educating its community at the brand's store and spa in London with communications highlighting its take-back scheme, including a new customer loyalty initiative. It will also spotlighting the campaign across its digital channels.

Online, THG – owner of Cult Beauty and Lookfantastic – will be spotlighting its 'recycle:me' programme under the initiative, which enables recycling via a collection service and network of 14,000 drop off locations and rewards customers for doing so.

The programme is running throughout March with businesses activating to align with key dates including Waste Week (3–9 March), Global Recycling Day (18 March) and the United Nations International Day of Zero Waste (30 March).