Planning a make-up re-up soon?

Now you can bring along your empty beauty product containers to be recycled and get points to spend on new items at Boots.

The pharmacy chain has just rolled out its ‘Recycle at Boots’ scheme to 50 stores up and down the country, making it easier than ever for customers to recycle empty beauty, health, and wellness products.

The scheme is Boots’ latest initiative to help tackle environmental challenges in Ireland by inspiring positive actions – with a promise not to send any of the hard-to-recycle items to landfill or incineration.

“Using Scan2Recycle technology, customers can use their mobile phone to scan products from any brand, including those not stocked at Boots and upload them to Boots Scan2 recycle. Once verified, they can then head to a participating Boots store to deposit empty products at an in-store recycling point,” they told us.

Mascaras, lipsticks, compacts, tubes, pump packs, wipe packets, vitamin tubs, toothpaste tubes, and toothbrushes are all fine to bring along. The items they can’t accept are medicine and food packaging, aerosols, nail varnishes, fragrance bottles, and hair dye packaging.

Where will my old containers go?

After dropping off in-store, the empty products are sent to Boots’ recycling partner, ReWorked, where they are then transformed into new items such as reusable storage containers that are now being used at Boots warehouses.

In return for recycling, customers will get rewarded – for every five products deposited, they will receive a voucher for 500 Boots Advantage Card points (worth €5 when you spend €10 or more) to use in-store or online within three days.

“Recycling processes for plastic beauty products, such as lipsticks and those with inbuilt pumps, can be quite difficult to dispose of.” said Maeve McNamara, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Boots.

“We hope that the scheme will help to streamline this process. As customers are becoming more eco-conscious, we are actively trying to help, and this new initiative feels like a real step in the right direction.”