How to Recycle your Beauty Products

There is so much confusion these days about the best way to recycle your beauty products and more specifically, what can and cannot be recycled. Here at Shimmer, we are proud to offer the TerraCycle program to make recycling easier than ever. If you’re not located near a TerraCycle program affiliate however, you may be tempted to just toss a few odd and ends out of frustration. Before throwing your hands up, keep reading for tips for recycling responsibly!

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What can I recycle with TerraCycle?

Use this Zero Waste Box to recycle any brand of cosmetic, hair care, or skin care packaging. This includes items such as:

  • Shampoo bottles and caps

  • Conditioner bottles and caps

  • Hair gel tubes and caps

  • Spray bottles and triggers

  • Hair paste plastic jars and caps

  • lip balm tubes

  • Face soap dispensers and tubes

  • Lotion bottles, tubes, dispensers, and jars

  • Shaving foam tubes (no cans)

  • Lip gloss tubes

  • Mascara tubes

  • Eye liner pencils and cases

  • Eye Shadow tubes

  • Concealer tubes and sticks

Do not send in aerosol cans, perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, and nail polish remover bottles, electronic items such as blow dryers and straighteners, any bio-medical or bio-hazardous waste or any contents of packaging such as nail-polish, lotion, soap or ointments. 

How do I recycle at home?

This is where things can get a bit tricky. Every local recycling program is different. A great place to start is with Earth911. They’ll not only provide you with tons of ideas to reuse your product containers, they’ve also compiled links on where to recycle locally and what each municipalities rules and regulations are.

No matter where you are located, there are some general rules of thumb to follow.

• Paper and cardboard are generally safe to toss in any curbside recycling program.

• Glass containers have almost endless possibilities! Glass beauty products containers are especially easy to repurpose as makeup brush holders or vases.

• Be sure to completely rinse out and dry any containers you are recycling.

• Most plastic containers have a Mobius loop, the internationally recognized recycling symbol, somewhere on them which denotes what type of plastic it is. You can use that number to determine whether or not your local program accepts that type. Numbers 1 and 2 are the most easily recyclable.

Like everything else, it may take some getting use and some research in the beginning, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it’ll become second nature! Thank you for helping us make this world a better place!

Katherine Lowe