With e-commerce growing as a leading source of beauty sales, there has been a spike in packaging needs to fulfill the growing amount of online orders being placed. Luckily, top beauty retailer Sephora is recognizing this and prioritizing sustainability in their packaging. They recently announced a collaboration with Pact Collective, a nonprofit seeking to minimize beauty and wellness packaging waste. The collaborative project is called Beauty (Re)Purposed, and it is Sephora’s very first North American empties collection program, which is set to be incorporated into over 600 stores in the US and Canada, as of this month.
“The launch of the Beauty (Re)Purposed program is an exciting step forward in Sephora’s commitment to leading the industry and offering more sustainable solutions for the communities we serve. And the reality is that discarding beauty packaging can be complex for many consumers.” said Desta Raines, Director of Sustainability at Sephora. “It was important for Sephora to find a partner like Pact who shares our values and, in collaboration, can help to educate our clients and the broader industry in making the process more accessible for all.”
The goal of Beauty Re(Purposed) is to make waste reduction of hard-to-recycle packaging much more accessible and easy for the everyday consumer. An unfortunate reality of the beauty industry is that many factors, such as size, flexibility, or amount of materials used, prevent the packaging used to end up in landfills rather than qualifying to be recycled. As much as 80 percent of all plastics today,unfortunately, find themselves in landfills, along with a devastating 8 million tons of plastic in the oceans per year. Sephora is recognizing the role they have in plastic waste, and is taking a stand to minimize it.
“We are thrilled to announce the partnership between Sephora and Pact Collective, and to see Beauty (Re)Purposed collection bins in all Sephora doors. Partnering with a major player like Sephora is a critical step in scaling our collection program and making it more widely available to beauty shoppers. Together, we’re excited to take responsibility for beauty’s packaging problem and encourage more sustainable packaging decisions to drive industry-wide change,” said Carly Snider, Pact Program Director.
How It Works
Beauty (Re)Purposed is an opportunity for consumers to bring any empty beauty packaging—regardless of brand or where they purchased it— to Sephora so that it can eventually be recycled. All of this recycled packaging will go towards all sorts of projects, such as carpets, pallets, asphalt, or even new packaging.
Shopper can drop off their beauty packaging in three easy steps:
- Clean It Out: At home, make sure the packaging is clean, unbagged, and free of liquid or product.
- Drop It Off: Visit any U.S. or Canadian Sephora store and drop your empties that meet Pact’s collection guidelines in the dedicated collection bin. To find a participating location, please visit www.pactcollective.org/locations.
- Close The Loop: All done! Instead of being thrown away, the beauty empties could become something else.
Although we have a long way to go in terms of reversing plastic waste related harm on our planet, it is amazing to see big brands like Sephora taking a stand to facilitate change and make it easier for consumers to do their part.
To learn more about Sephora’s Beauty (Re)Purposed Program, be sure to visit https://www.pactcollective.org/pact-x-sephora.
