5 Reasons to Recycle your Beauty Packaging

4 Minute Read

The dirty truth behind our trash....

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years (and therefore potentially produced no rubbish at all – yay you!) you’ll be aware that recycling is vital. Beauty and skincare packaging makes a sizeable contribution to the mounds of single-use packaging floating through our systems every day. So let’s look for a minute at why recycling is so important and how you can reduce your impact?

1. It conserves natural resources – when we recycle paper and cartons we help save forests and trees as we are limiting the amount of virgin resource needed each time. In the case of plastics, most plastic comes from fossil fuel and takes centuries to break down, so reusing it makes perfect sense.
2. We protect ecosystems and wildlife – by lessening disruption to the natural world, fewer forests are cut down meaning the natural order can remain.
3. Making packaging from recycled materials actually uses less energy than working with new raw material and it has already been processed to an extent.
4. Recycling also reduces the need to incinerate rubbish, and hence reduces pollution – a no brainer
5. Finally, recycling reduces carbon emissions as it minimises methane released from landfill sites – a climate change must.

Above and beyond the obvious ‘should’ of separating your beauty packaging and always recycling it, how else can you make a positive contribution?

Firstly, look for brands that use material with a lesser environmental impact in their packaging above and beyond the recycling question. At KELSEY we opted for nitrile bulbs for our concentrate droppers instead of environmentally damaging PVC, and all of our cartons are carbon neutral and World Land Trust certified. Our tubes contain recycled plastic, and our glass jars are not only entirely recyclable but also refillable – watch this space.

But we can go one step further. We believe that true sustainability means not just recycling packaging waste, but upcycling as much of what the planet yields as possible.

KELSEY products are ‘field to face’,  meaning our focus is on closing the loop with full circle production. This means that the leaves, seed oils and fruit infusions used in our products come directly from our farm in Kent, with full traceability, minimal transport, and, most importantly, use waste materials that would otherwise be thrown away – instead these are transformed into high efficacy beauty ingredients. Our focus on waste reduction is at the heart of our Eco-centric approach to skin and using everything that nature provides. 

Seeking out skincare that harnesses upcycled material is a great place to start, but bear in mind that many of these are transported across the globe adding a huge amount to carbon emissions. If you can, focus on locally sourced British brands that put the planet at the heart of all that they do.

The benefits don’t stop there – because our active ingredients are locally sourced, they are as fresh as they can be when blended into cosmetic bases, giving rapid results and noticeably radiant and soft skin.

Because getting the elusive glow (we like to call it ‘The Kelsey Glow’) shouldn’t cost the earth.