Beautiful Thinking.
The beauty industry has long been associated with glamour and luxury, but its environmental impact has increasingly come under scrutiny. From excessive packaging to the vast amounts of waste generated, the sector’s contribution to environmental degradation is hard to ignore. According to the Courage to Change Report, the global beauty industry produces over 120 billion units of packaging annually, much of which ends up in landfills. Meanwhile, a staggering 56% of consumers do not recycle their bathroom products, and approximately 70% of the industry’s plastic waste is not recycled.
These eye-opening statistics highlight a critical issue, one that the British Beauty Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition is determined to address with its new campaign: The Great British Beauty Clean Up. Launching during Waste Week (3rd-9th March 2025), this is the first initiative of its kind; a collaboration between retailers, brands, and consumers aimed at significantly reducing waste across the beauty industry. The campaign seeks to increase awareness about sustainable practices, encourage the adoption of reuse and refill systems, and highlight the importance of recycling and take-back schemes.
At Free The Birds, we’re incredibly passionate about this cause. As a company that thrives on creative innovation and driving change in the beauty industry, we recognise the pressing need for the sector to evolve. We believe that change can only come when brands, retailers, and consumers come together, and The Great British Beauty Clean Up is an exciting example of just that.
The beauty industry’s reliance on single-use plastics is one of its biggest sustainability challenges. A lack of accessible recycling programs and confusion around which items can be recycled contribute to this;, often consumers are unsure of the proper disposal methods or because the products are difficult to recycle. This behaviour, if left unchecked, will continue to compound the environmental damage caused by the sector’s vast plastic usage.
The Great British Beauty Clean Up aims to address this crisis by promoting a circular approach to beauty packaging. By educating consumers on the importance of recycling, reusing, and refilling, the initiative hopes to encourage a shift in both industry practices and consumer behaviour. A key goal of the campaign is to spotlight the role of take-back schemes, which allow consumers to return used beauty products to be recycled or refilled, reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill.
At the heart of The Great British Beauty Clean Up is a strong collaborative effort. The campaign brings together brands, retailers, salons, and beauty professionals to work towards a shared goal of improving sustainability in the beauty sector. Collaboration is key to driving real change, and the British Beauty Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition has done a stellar job in uniting key industry players.
The main objectives of the campaign include:
Brands like Boots, L’Occitane, and The Hut Group are already making strides in this area, setting excellent examples of how businesses can take meaningful steps towards reducing waste.
The Great British Beauty Clean Up invites all businesses in the beauty industry to participate, whether through in-store promotions, social media activations, or simply offering customers clearer guidance on recycling. The British Beauty Council provides a comprehensive toolkit filled with marketing materials and resources to help brands integrate the campaign into their own sustainability efforts.
For instance, Boots is focusing on its Recycle at Boots scheme, launched in 2021, which allows customers to recycle beauty and wellness products at over 800 locations across the UK. With more than 1,000 daily sign-ups, the programme has gained significant traction, offering consumers an easy and convenient way to recycle beauty items.
Similarly, L’Occitane is tying their participation to Mother’s Day, running a mini-campaign that promotes refill and recycling initiatives in-store. Through their Forever Bottle initiative, customers are encouraged to purchase a recyclable, refillable bottle that reduces plastic waste by 85%, showcasing how the brand is embracing circularity in its product offerings.
The Hut Group has implemented its Recycle Me programme, which enables consumers to return hard-to-recycle beauty packaging directly from their doorsteps. The scheme has been designed to make recycling as convenient as possible, ensuring that products are properly disposed of and recycled, reducing the environmental footprint of the industry.
As we’ve seen with many previous initiatives, education plays a crucial role in changing consumer behaviour. The Great British Beauty Clean Up not only encourages consumers to recycle, but also aims to educate them on the value of circularity in beauty products. Through social media posts, in-store activations, and dedicated sustainability hubs on retailer websites, the campaign will provide consumers with the information they need to make more informed decisions about their beauty purchases and how they dispose of products.
The future of beauty lies in making products not only aesthetically appealing but also environmentally responsible. The campaign promotes refillable packaging, an area we here at Free The Birds have previously highlighted as crucial to reducing waste in the industry. By providing consumers with practical ways to reuse and refill, the beauty industry can significantly reduce its environmental footprint.
The Great British Beauty Clean Up presents an opportunity for the entire beauty community to take collective action. By engaging in the campaign, brands and consumers alike can help pave the way for a more sustainable future. For brands, this campaign is an opportunity to demonstrate a genuine commitment to sustainability – something that increasingly matters to today’s environmentally-conscious consumer. For consumers, it’s a chance to actively participate in reducing waste and supporting brands that care about the planet.
The Great British Beauty Clean Up is a bold, industry-wide campaign which has the potential to enact real, lasting change through collaboration, education, and the empowerment of both businesses and consumers. With a sense of wavering commitment from some on sustainability, reigniting these important initiatives as a more central focus for the beauty industry marks an exciting step forward.
At Free The Birds, we’re proud to support this transformative movement and look forward to seeing how the beauty industry continues to innovate and lead in sustainability. The Great British Beauty Clean Up is not just a campaign, it’s a collective movement towards a cleaner, greener beauty industry.
To get involved and learn more, visit britishbeautycouncil.com.
