When you’ve used up the last of your favorite Youth To The People product, we recommend looking for a way to repurpose the glass bottles and jars. But if you’re ready to put the packaging back into the recycling cycle, make sure you follow these directions to ensure everything gets where it needs to go.
Important to know: we package all of our formulas in glass from the start to help reduce the amount of plastic waste created by the beauty industry. Properly recycling that glass is a relatively small act that can make a big impact. Since glass is a permanent material, it can be reused and recycled repeatedly without a loss in quality. To get recycling, start with thoroughly washing the glass with hot, soapy water, rinsing it out, and letting it dry.
RECYCLE
- Separate your lid, pump, or dropper from the glass container. Pull apart the pump or dropper to ensure the materials are stripped down to their singular source. With the pump, for example, you'll want to remove the metal coil from the plastic pump. Because recycling centers don't accept mixed materials and there are no machines to pull apart mixed materials, you'll want to dispose of your lid, pump, or dropper properly.
- Ensure your glass has been properly cleaned. If the glass isn’t properly cleaned before being recycled, it may contaminate other materials in a mixed waste stream, and may not be recycled.
- When your glass is clean and ready to go, place it in your recycling bin, or look for curbside, school, or work recycling bins, or locate a recycling drop-off center near you. To determine your recycling options, contact your local recycling authority or use an online resource like I Want To Be Recycled—which gathers local recycling information on what to recycle and how.
To find your local recycling options, how to recycle, and what to recycle, check out I Want To Be Recycled here.
UPCYCLE
- After finishing a product, wash and sterilize the glass container before its next use. To sterilize glass using the oven, place the containers on an oven rack with equal spacing and heat them at 120° for 15 minutes.
- If you’d rather use a stove, another option to sterilize your bottles and jars is to place them in a large pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. Let the glass cool and dry before use.
- Now that your glass containers have been washed, sterilized, and dried, it’s time to get creative! Your containers are ready for anything—use them to store supplements, propagate plants, or hold a room spray. When you finish another bottle of Superfood Cleanser, refill the glass container with hand soap—or the Superfood Cleanser refill size. Repot small plants in old Superberry Hydrate + Glow Dream Mask jars, store a homemade lip scrub in an old Superfood Hydrate + Firm Peptide Eye Cream or Superberry Dream Eye Cream jar, and repurpose the new 15% Vitamin C + Clean Caffeine Energy Serum container as an on-the-go hand sanitizer bottle.
