TerraCycle’s 2023 beauty recycling report

TerraCycle is a leading recycler of hard-to-recycle beauty products and packaging.

In 2023, we recycled 1,422,848 lbs of hard-to-recycle personal care and beauty packaging waste. This waste was collected at locations including retailers, community centers (schools, places of worship, etc.), homes, and more.

Many beauty packages (like mascara wands, skincare tubes, shampoo pumps, and more) are hard to recycle because it costs local recyclers more to collect and process these items than the results are worth. This economic disparity is driven by a number of factors, including the small size of the items (making it more costly to sort and assemble enough volume), the complexity in composition (making it more costly to separate the materials), the content contamination (driving cost to clean it), and the lower end material value.

While the beauty industry is progressing in using curbside recyclable materials for their products, 62% is still made from hard-to-recycle plastic packaging.

An audit of the outputs from recycling personal care and beauty waste provides a material composition breakdown of:

  • 46% floating plastics (such as polypropylene and polyethylene, which can come from packages like beauty care bottles and caps)
  • 47% sinking plastics (such as polyester, polycarbonate, and polystyrene, which can come from packages like mascara tubes and makeup powder compacts)
  • 3% metal
  • 2% glass 
  • 2% mixed flexible plastic 

Over 98% of the personal and beauty care waste collected through TerraCycle programs is recycled through our specialized recycling process. We strictly control the movement of materials through each step of the recycling process so we can track and confirm where materials were sent and for what purpose.

TerraCycle only disposes of non-compliant materials. In the personal care and beauty category, this is residual content (which is washed off and disposed of during the recycling process).  It is also anything that isn’t personal care packaging waste (which we make every effort to recycle through our other recycling solutions). Waste-to-energy is only used for non-compliant material if we do not have an active capability to recycle it, as waste-to-energy is not recycling, and has a negative impact on our planet, similar to landfilling. Only 1.7% of waste received is sent waste-to-energy. 

We guarantee that we recycle all of the accepted waste sent to us through our recycling solutions.

Through a life cycle analysis (LCA) of our beauty waste recycling process, TerraCycle’s solutions were found to be, on average, 74% better for the planet than landfills and 67% better than waste-to-energy. The LCA evaluated environmental impacts across eight categories, including global warming potential (carbon emissions) and water toxicity.

Audited. Accredited. Accountable.

  • We actively invest in specialized tracking software, expert personnel, and millions in equipment to ensure every step of our supply chain is optimized.
  • For the past three years, we’ve worked alongside Bureau Veritas—a world leader in testing, inspection, and certification services—to develop a first-of-its-kind, auditable standard to ensure strong traceability management practices are in place for all of TerraCycle’s waste streams globally. Bureau Veritas has successfully audited us three times.
  • TerraCycle and the TerraCycle Foundation have engaged with Verra—a world leader in standards for climate action and sustainable development—to audit our processes for carbon credits, plastic credits, and plastic offset credits.

We applaud efforts to create more sustainable packaging for beauty products, especially options that are reusable or municipally recyclable. While this report focuses on our end-of-life recycling services for personal care and beauty waste, we also support our partners across the globe with the following services:

  • Reuse: Through Loop, our global reuse platform, our goal is to make reuse as convenient as disposability for consumers, manufacturers, and retailers. Loop enables any product, from laundry detergent to vitamins, to be packaged in a reusable container, sold at any participating store, and then returned to any participating store. You may find active reusable personal care offerings in Loop with brands like Shiseido, Dr. Bronner’s, Yuskin, Luvhair, Saraya, and many more.
  • Recycled content: Creating packaging from recycled materials generates demand for recycled materials which is key for a recycling-based circular economy to thrive. We have worked with multiple partners globally to create closed-loop and recycled product solutions made from their waste. For example, TerraCycle created the world’s first closed-loop cosmetics cap made from recycled beauty waste for Nature’s Way in Japan. We’ve also developed packaging from ocean waste for REN, Head & Shoulders, and Herbal Essences, and manufactured recycled products like makeup spatulas and building materials for Kiehl’s in Japan and Korea.

 

We’re focused on continued innovation as we work to fulfill our mission of Eliminating the Idea of Waste®.