L’Oréal Canada partners with London Drugs and TerraCycle to recycle cosmetic packaging

08 Jun 2022 --- L’Oréal Canada Consumer Products Division is collaborating with retail store London Drugs and waste management company TerraCycle to allow Canadians to recycle their empty cosmetics products at all London Drugs outlets across the country. Once collected, TerraCycle will break the waste down, separate it by material and convert it into reusable recyclable forms.

Customers will be able to recycle their beauty empties, including foundation, mascara and lipsticks, at the cosmetics section of their local London Drugs.

“In partnership with London Drugs and TerraCycle, we wanted to develop a program for Canadians to commit to a greener future,” says Carole Maury, brand director at L’Oréal Canada.

“We are providing an opportunity to our consumers to integrate [environmentally] sustainable shopping practices that can enable everyone to be a part of the change.”

Through this partnership, consumers will be able to recycle their beauty empties, including foundation, mascara and lipsticks.“We are looking forward to collaborating once again with TerraCycle and with our partner L’Oréal to give our customers the chance to recycle their cosmetics and help us in our commitment to sending zero waste to landfills,” says Clint Mahlman, COO and president at London Drugs.

According to the Canadian minister of environment and climate change, Canadians discard 3 million tons of plastic waste every year, with only 9% of it being recycled. The majority of plastics end up in landfills, with approximately 29,000 tons making their way into the environment.

L'Oréal’s environmental efforts
L’Oréal Group International previously introduced “L’Oréal for the Future,” which sets measurable climate, water, biodiversity and natural resource targets for 2030, in line with what scientific experts demand and what the planet needs.

L’Oréal’s Consumer Products Division welcomed this global program as part of its aim to meet its sustainability goals by 2030.

The company also formed a consortium with Henkel, LVMH, Natura & Co and Unilever to urge the industry to co-develop an environmental impact assessment and scoring system for cosmetics products.

In other developments, L’Oréal invested €50 million (US$53.7 million) into the formation of the Circular Innovation Fund, recognizing the increasing pressure on natural resources and the urgent need to scale-up circular economy solutions.

Looking into where recycled items go after being thrown away, PackagingInsights previously reported on TerraCycle, which was accused of recycling failures and customer misinformation, as revealed in an investigation by BBC Panorama. The company has disputed allegations made by investigative journalists that it was exporting and incinerating plastic waste that it had promised to recycle in the UK.

By Nicole Kerr

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