Yorkshire-based waste management and recycling business MYGroup has partnered with Harrods on a trial scheme to recycle used cosmetics products in one of the brand’s regional “H beauty” stores.
MYGroup says the scheme will be piloted for three months from Saturday 14 January in H beauty Milton Keynes, with customers encouraged to bring used beauty, fragrance and skincare products back to the store to be recycled.
In what MYGroup says is considered a first for the UK high street, customers will even be able to return hazardous nail polish products and fragrance bottles, usually considered “unrecyclable.”
Mia Collins, Head of Beauty at Harrods, commented: “The launch of the scheme marks another incredible milestone for Harrods and H beauty, showcasing our commitment to bringing a more circular and sustainable shopping experience to our customers and encouraging the H beauty community to recycle beauty packaging and products that are not able to be recycled by traditional kerbside collections.”
Showcasing our commitment to bringing a more circular and sustainable shopping experience to our customers.
MYGroup says it has provided recycling bins where customers can return their used cosmetic products in the store; the deposited items will then be recycled at MYGroup’s facility in Hull.
The recycling bins will be placed next to the tills and H beauty colleagues will be on hand to monitor any deposits from customers during the pilot, MYGroup says.
The scheme will be aligned to Harrods’ MyBeauty rewards programme, with customers incentivised to recycle cosmetics items to access a range of experiences and benefits, both online and in-store.
MYGroup says it has invested in a series of advanced technological processes at its Hull facility, meaning both the packaging and inner product of the cosmetic items can be fully extracted, processed and recycled.
We’re proud to be working alongside one of the iconic, luxury brands of British retail to reach new customers.
Consequently, MYGroup says H beauty customers will be able to recycle a range of products in store, including make-up items, such as compacts, mascara and eye shadow containers, to shampoo and skincare bottles, lotion pumps and vitamin bottles.
The collected products will be either composted, repurposed and returned to the supply chain or manufactured into MYGroup’s “solution” for “unrecyclable” plastic waste: MYboard™ – a material similar in consistency to plywood.
Commenting on the trial’s launch, Steve Carrie, Director, MYGroup, said: “We’re proud to be working alongside one of the iconic, luxury brands of British retail to reach new customers with our ground-breaking cosmetics and plastic recycling offering.
“MYGroup is trusted by a growing number of high-profile, forward-thinking partners in the retail space, who see the tangible, visible difference our in-store takeback schemes can make to meeting their sustainability goals.”
