What happens to the packaging that goes to Pact?

So much (so much!) beauty packaging cannot be recycled—it is too small, made of mixed materials, too flexible, made of material that has no end-market.… there are a lot of reasons that about 90% of plastic packages are not recycled.

Pact is committed to finding the highest and best use for the materials we collect and to being radically transparent about where stuff goes. Ideally, packaging will become packaging again. Unfortunately, this is a rare outcome today. We’re working on it.

So—What happens to beauty packaging we collect? This is the general hierarchy—best possible outcome to least favorable — that Pact prioritizes.

• Upcycled into another product (e.g. packaging)

• Downcycled into a lower value item (e.g. warehouse pallets, flowerpots)

• Molecularly recycled (e.g reduced to chemical monomers that can then be used to build something else)

• Waste-to-energy (packaging that cannot be used in any other way is burned. Pact doesn’t consider this recycling but at least it isn’t in the landfill or environment). Learn more about this process here.