Are you doing the most that you can with your beauty and skin care items once they are empty? If you are like most, you either toss them in the trash or put in the recycling bin hoping for the best.Earth Day has us re-evaluating our efforts and untapped opportunities to help preserve the planet and reduce the guilt of our beauty buying habits. Here's a few ways you can easily step up your beauty-product recycling efforts and reduce the amount of items that end up in a landfill for eternity.
Step 1: Find out what is accepted in your recycling bin.
What is accepted varies from city to city so check with your local waste management and recycling companies to see what they take. Once you've got that list, check your beauty stash and keep in mind that each component is a different material, which means that when your items are empty you will have to take the cap off, unscrew, rinse and then sort what can go in your recycling bin.
Putting items in the recycling bin that can't be recycled can contaminate the recycling stream. Not only can this cause damage to recycling equipment, but this also forces items to be sorted which raises costs for the recycling facility. Not sure what recycling mistakes you may be making and what the best practices are? Check out Recycle Nation for the best tips on being and staying green.
Step 2: Don't throw it in the trash!
Just because your item isn't accepted in your local recycling program doesn't mean that your only option is to toss it in the trash. There are other options to send your items on their way or to hopefully be reincarnated into something new.
Ship them to TerraCycle for free and earn points towards a donation to the school or charity of your choice. All you have to do is create an account (for free) and take advantage of the many programs they offer. If they don't have a solution to recycle your waste, they probably have a great idea for you to DIY up-cycle the items. Up-cycling is not only great for the environment, but makes for fun projects and earth saving teaching opportunities to do with kids
With a little bit of homework, you can reduce the environmental footprint of your skin care routine and help keep the Earth that beautiful place we all call home.
