Life
- Beauty
- Ethical Living

5 Ways To Recycle Your Old Makeup

If you, like me have gone through or are planning to go through your makeup and beauty stash to recycle and pass on older products, you may wonder how you can do that. This is what this post is for! These are my favourite ways to recycle old makeup. I wanted to share with you my top tips to recycle and pass on your old makeup that you no longer use.

Always make sure your beauty products are still in date. Passing out of date beauty products onto someone else can be really harmful for their health. Your beauty products expiry date is normally 12 months (depending on the product) from the date of opening. You should be able to find an outline of a container with ’12M’ inside it on the bottle or packaging. This indicates it has a 12 month/year shelf life.
READ MY POST ON MAKEUP EXPIRY DATES HERE

5 WAYS TO RECYCLE YOUR OLD MAKEUP // SELL, DONATE OR PASS ON

01. DONATE TO FRIENDS OR FAMILY

Ask members of your family, friends or even work colleagues if they are interested in taking any of your old products off your hands. Always make sure your products are still in date before passing them onto someone else, as it could cause some serious health issues.

Read my post above for how to find your products expiry dates and what out of date products could do to your health. It’s always a great way to save time to check with friends and family first before sending it to someone else. They will definitely be greatful for some freebies!

02. DONATE TO A WOMANS CHARITY

There are plenty of women’s charities out there that would love donations, especially toiletries and female products. Make sure you check if the charities are still active before you send your makeup, you don’t want to send it to somewhere that’s not running anymore and it be a waste on postage and products.

03. SELL TO OTHER BEAUTY LOVERS

There are plenty of other beauty lovers that would love to take your products off your hands. Join a beauty lovers group on Facebook and share pictures of the products you’d like to pass on and see if anyone wants to take them or buy them off you.

Image Credit: https://www.maybelline.co.uk/recycling

04. VISIT A MAYBELLINE DONATION BIN

Maybelline have now set up a recycling bin which you can find in all big Tesco stores (Find a location near you). You can donate your old makeup to their bins which goes to women in need and can sometimes even be recycled into reuseable plastic to make other products.

Maybelline accepts these products into their recycling bin:

• Compacts and palettes such as eyeshadows, blushers and powders
• Mascara including the plastic tube and wand
• Eyeliners such as the retractable plastic liners and liquid liners
• Lip products such as plastic lio gloss tubes and lipstick bullet tubes
• Plastic tubes and bottles such as foundation and concealer tubes
• Other makeup packaging such as caps, pumps or trigger sprays

What they won’t accept:

• Glass bottles and cardboard packaging (this can already be recycled at your local council recycling scheme)
• Makeup brushes and nail polishes (even if they’ve been cleaned)
• Aerosols (most parts of the UK recycle aerosols)

05. RECYCLE YOUR EMPTIES WITH KIEHLS

You can visit any Kiehl’s store to recycle your old Kiehl’s empty bottles and pots. 1 empty bottle equals 1 rewards stamp. Once you receive 5 stamps, you can get 5% off products in store and 10 stamps can get you 10% off products. You can choose which charity you want to support with your recycling, with £1 for every kilo of packaging being donated.

If you know of any other ways you can recycle makeup, please let me know in the comments and I can update this post.

Image used in this post is by Shiny Diamond from Pexels. Other images are my own and from Maybelline’s website.