Bring back beauty products from any brand to get £1 worth of Boots points for every item. Sounds like a winner to us! Here's how to join in
There’s something ever-so satisfying about finishing a beauty product and it’s about to become even more rewarding with the launch of Boots’ new recycling scheme. The initiative encourages customers to bring in empty pots and tubes. For five empties you’ll receive 500 Boots Advantage Card Points, worth £5. The scheme is now available in 50 Boots stores up and down the country.
How does it work?
Much like H&M’s clothes recycling scheme where you can take back clothes from any shop and receive £5 to spend in H&M, Boots' scheme allows you to return beauty products purchased from anywhere in exchange for your precious points.
Boots has partnered with a recycling company Scan2Recycle for the scheme. First, you need to scan your empties on the Scan2Recycle website using your mobile phone, before heading to a participating Boots store to deposit them at a Boots in-store recycling point. Boots ask that you only bring in empty packaging, cleaned out as best you can, but understand this may not be possible with tricky-to-empty items such as mascaras.
The empties are returned directly to Boots recycling partner, ReWorked where they are formed into new products. It's the circle of life, just without lions.
Can anything be recycled?
No. While tricky-to-recycle items such as mascara brushes and finished lipsticks can be deposited, aerosol cans, nail polish bottles, hair dyes, brow and eyelash tints, safety razors and razor blades, disposable razors and razor heads cannot be taken in for health and safety reasons. Perfume bottles are considered ‘hazardous waste’, so for health, safety and environmental reasons, these cannot be accepted at the moment they tell us.
MORE GLOSS: Can you recycle nail polish bottles?
Other 'any-brand' beauty recycling schemes
While Boots has made recycling appealing with the points incentive, they’re not the only brand doing their bit when it comes to recycling products from across the board rather than just their own offering.
Maybelline Makeup Not Make Waste recycling scheme
Earlier this month Maybelline launched their Makeup Not Make Waste scheme in partnership with recycling firm TerraCycle. Recycling bins popped up nationwide in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Superdrug and Boots for consumers to drop off used eyeshadow palettes, foundation, concealer, mascara, lipstick and eyeliners.
Cloud Nine hair irons recycling scheme
Cloud Nine, makers of chic hair tools, have been doing their bit too with their straightener recycling service which has recycled over 50,000 straighteners since it launched last August, They’ll take straighteners from any brand; just visit cloudninehair.com/recycle to download a free pre-paid postage label and post them off to be recycled.
L'Occitane recycling programme
In January 2019 L'Occitane partnered with TerraCycle to provide a collection and recycling programme where customers could recycle any brand empties at all of their boutiques. Everything collected is transformed into new material and made into things such as waste bins, storage boxes and outdoor furniture for a new lease of life. To check what the scheme accepts got to www.loccitane.com/en-ca/terracycle
If you don't live near a L'Occitane store it can be done via the post too. Just enter the code RECYCLE in the promotion box at the online checkout and you'll be sent a fully recyclable envelope to fill with your empties which can be sent back via free-postage.
To find out more Boots' in-store recycling scheme including participating stores paste boots.com/boots-recycling-scheme into your browser