Recycle Beauty Empties at Nordstrom

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Since makeup and skincare empties are not generally recycled by city and county curbside recycling programs, and placing all of those empty tubes and jars in the landfill isn't a sustainable solution, finding a place to recycle all of those empty containers can be a challenge. However, Nordstrom offers free recycling of empty skincare and makeup empties.  

Here is more information about the Nordstrom BEAUTYCYCLE Waste Recycling initiative:

According to Nordstrom,

At Nordstrom, reducing waste is an ongoing journey. We’re continuously looking for ways to shrink our footprint as we aim to divert 80% of operational waste away from landfill and to make our customer-facing packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Our Goal:

Reduce waste across our value chain by:

• Diverting 80% of waste from our operations away from landfill
• Making all customer-facing packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable
• Mapping Our Waste Impact. 

To reduce our impact, we first need to understand it. We’ve conducted a comprehensive analysis of waste across Nordstrom facilities, uncovering hotspots and opportunities for improvement. What we found was that our distribution facilities are already performing well, diverting 91% of waste away from landfill and incineration. With current diversion rates of 38%, stores emerged as a key focus area, so we are mapping waste flows—tracking volumes, identifying inefficiencies and assessing the infrastructure needed to support more sustainable waste management and divert more waste away from landfill.

Our customers and employees have told us that lower-impact packaging is a priority for them. That’s why packaging is central to our waste strategy. Across stores, deliveries, restaurants and operations, we’re reducing unnecessary packaging, increasing recycled content and working to make all customer-facing packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable.

We’re also working to minimize single-use plastics in our value chain, replacing them with alternatives like paper, reusable packaging and recovered plastics, moving closer to our goal.

Although 75% of U.S. consumers think sustainable cosmetics packaging is important, beauty packaging is often small, flexible or made from mixed materials, making it difficult to recycle in traditional curbside programs. Since 2020, our dedicated in-store take-back program BEAUTYCYCLE has helped recycle beauty packaging, diverting it away from landfills. BEAUTYCYCLE helps customers responsibly recycle waste materials that aren’t typically accepted in municipal recycling bins. 

At every Nordstrom beauty department and Nordstrom Rack, our customers can simply drop off beauty empties in easy-to-find collection bins. See how it works: Watch their video HERE.