Better Beauty Month: Tips to make-over your beauty buys

Throughout August, TerraCycle is investigating beauty waste for Beauty Better Month. We’re exploring why skincare, oral care, and hair and makeup products present such a problem for the environment, and how you can clean up your beauty routine.

We asked more than 1,200 Aussies about their beauty shopping and recycling habits as part of a Better Beauty Month survey, and the results were clear.

Aussies have a strong preference for sustainable personal care and beauty products. 

Do you align with the 82 percent of respondents who said the ability to recycle products impacts what they buy? Or the 67 percent who are willing to pay more for these recyclable products? Then we’ve got some great tips for you to protect the planet while you pamper yourself.

While 85 percent of our survey respondents are recycling some or all of their beauty products and packaging, there are limitations to kerbside recycling services. A great deal of beauty products are also thrown out by retailers and brands when they are unsold, expired, or returned. 

Our free beauty recycling programs and Zero Waste Boxes help provide a solution — but recycling your beauty products alone won’t solve the waste crisis.

It’s important to support brands that are minimising their impact and taking charge of end-of-life solutions for their packaging. Being more conscious about your beauty purchases can drastically change the amount of rubbish we generate, and together we can have collective impact. 

Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you buy beauty products with the planet in mind: 

• Could you use a multipurpose serum or lotion rather than solo-ingredient products to cut down on packaging?
• Is that new cleanser you’re looking at practically identical to something already in your cabinet?
• If you’re buying a new-release product, has the brand incorporated sustainable elements in its packaging? Perhaps it’s refillable in store, made from recycled materials, can be recycled kerbside, or uses minimal packaging.
• Do you need to add a new fragrance to your collection, or is it more about the cute bottle that you’ll inevitably discard? 
• Does the brand offer an end-of-life solution for its products?
• What are the brand’s claims about other sustainable initiatives and can you verify these?
• Can you cut any products out of your beauty routine?

The first step should always be to buy less, and then shop for more sustainable or reusable options. You can keep even more rubbish out of landfills by recycling your hard-to-recycle beauty items with TerraCycle – read our Better Beauty Month Recycling Guide to find out how.

The next time you’re on the hunt for beauty products, remind yourself that every purchase counts on the path to better beauty. Together, we can work towards a circular economy.