A stakeholder roundtable held by the CTPA has concluded that the beauty industry needs to put an end to packaging waste from cosmetic products.
The meeting was attended by the Resources and Waste Minister at Defra, Jo Churchill, as well as other Defra officials, representatives from WRAP UK, OPRL, Flexible Plastic Fund and TerraCycle, and sought to address the types of cosmetic packaging that are not being recycled.
Mainstream use of reuse and refill models, including take-back schemes and dedicated collection points, was a hot topic at the meeting, and is something that the CTPA said should exist on a larger scale.
“As an industry we have to recognise that a lot of our packaging is not recycled, so the onus is on us to be responsible and develop solutions to reduce the amount of waste,” said Emma Meredith, Director-General of the CTPA.
“Take-back schemes could be a major step in helping to achieve this and there was huge appetite at the roundtable to drive this forward.”
In light of the push to reduce beauty industry waste, the CTPA joined forces with WRAP to add information on how to recycle cosmetics packaging to its Recycling Locator tool.
The digital platform locates nearby recycling stations for consumers in order to dispose of their beauty items in the most effective way.
“WRAP’s Recycle Now brand is very happy to be working with the CTPA and its members to help meet all four of the UK Plastics Pact targets and support [the] UK government’s achieve their objectives,” said Sarah Clayton, Head of Citizen Behaviour Change at WRAP.
“For citizens any recycling scheme needs to be easy-to-use, they need to be motivated to use it and they need to know where to recycle.
“We are very pleased to be supporting citizens to do this through our Recycling Locator and working with the CTPA to increase awareness of the tack-back schemes currently available.”
Churchill, meanwhile, said that she was pleased to see the beauty industry taking steps to make recycling products easier for consumers.
“All sectors of the economy are changing how they design their products and I am looking forward to the cosmetics industry leading the way and driving further innovation and their ambition to cut waste.”