An average American bathroom cabinet contains about 40 personal care items, such as shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash, moisturizer, sunscreen, deodorant, and makeup. Most of these containers ultimately find their way to landfills, regardless of whether they are initially placed in a recycling bin.
In 2018, U.S. manufacturers produced 7.9 billion rigid plastic units specifically for beauty and personal care, excluding tubes, flexible sachets, aerosol cans, cardboard packaging, and shipping materials. Globally, the cosmetics sector generates 120 billion units of packaging each year. There exists a notable gap between what the industry labels as “recyclable” and what the system actually recovers, a reality often overlooked during daily makeup routines.
What Your Curbside Bin Actually Takes
Materials recovery facilities (MRFs), commonly known as “murphs,” are the sorting centers for curbside recycling. These facilities are designed to process a limited range of materials: cardboard, paper, aluminum cans, glass bottles, and rigid plastic containers made from PET (#1) or HDPE (#2) that measure over 2 inches on at least one side. Much of the personal care and beauty packaging is too small for processing and ends up in landfills.
Curbside recycling typically accepts large HDPE #2 shampoo and conditioner bottles, some body wash bottles (if made of PET or HDPE), and full-size liquid soap dispensers, though the pump mechanism must be removed. This list is nearly exhaustive.
Items that are not accepted include pump dispensers (due to mixed metal and plastic springs), mascara tubes and wands (black plastic goes undetected by MRF optical sorters), lipstick tubes (metal and plastic bonded), compacts (mixed materials, often with mirrors), items smaller than a credit card, deodorant sticks (made from linear low-density polyethylene with multiple materials), travel-size containers, tinted or opaque plastic jars, and aerosols with leftover product.
“Wishcycling,” or placing an item in the recycling bin in the hope it will be sorted downstream, can be costly. Contaminated loads are rejected at MRFs, meaning one mascara wand can cause an entire bag of otherwise recyclable plastic to be landfilled.
The Take-Back Programs That Exist
To bridge the gap between what curbside recycling handles and what consumers produce, dedicated take-back programs have emerged. The largest is Pact Collective, a nonprofit established in 2021 with retail partners like Ulta, L’Occitane, Nordstrom, and Credo Beauty.
Pact’s 2024 Impact Report reveals the collection of over 227,000 pounds of beauty packaging across 3,300 bins in the U.S. and Canada, engaging an estimated 546,000 consumers—more than double the reach in 2023. These numbers are significant for a five-year-old initiative.
TerraCycle offers a complementary solution with its Zero Waste Boxes for personal care packaging, accepting nearly everything—tubes, wands, compacts, razors, nail polish bottles—at per-box fees ranging from $131 to $343, depending on size. The cost tends to limit participation to committed sustainability buyers rather than average households.
Origins stores accept empty cosmetic packaging from any brand, with Kiehl’s providing a similar in-store program. The handling of collected materials varies by program.
What Responsible Brands Are Actually Doing
More durable solutions are emerging at the product design stage, before packaging is created, rather than at the collection level after it becomes waste.
Solid formats present a significant shift. Shampoo bars, conditioner bars, toothpaste tablets, solid deodorant sticks, and waterless concentrated formulas eliminate the need for containers by removing the liquid component. Brands like Lush, Ethique, HiBar, and numerous smaller brands have built business models around this concept; major companies like Unilever and Procter & Gamble have introduced solid format lines under mass-market brands. The global shampoo bar market was valued at $11.57 billion in 2025 and is growing at about 6 percent annually, indicating it is no longer a niche category.
Another growing trend is refillable packaging, which involves designing containers durable enough to be reused rather than discarded, along with a distribution system that makes refilling as easy as purchasing new. In-store refill stations are available at Kiehl’s, Lush, and a growing number of independent retailers. The concept of durable packaging as a service, returned and cleaned between uses, is being explored throughout the market, though scaling the logistics remains a challenge.
Designing packaging for true recyclability, rather than for marketing purposes, is transitioning from voluntary to mandatory. Oregon’s comprehensive packaging EPR law was enforced on July 1, 2025, mandating brands selling in the state to join a producer responsibility organization and pay fees based on the volume and recyclability of their packaging.
California’s program is under review, with producer fees anticipated in late 2026. States like Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland, Maine, and Washington are at various stages of implementation. Brands selling nationally are beginning to standardize on EPR-compliant packaging rather than managing separate supply chains by state.
What We’re Paying Either Way
The cost of personal care and beauty products for households is substantial. On average, American consumers spend $303 annually on beauty products per person, which may underestimate actual household spending, averaging $1,064 annually for women and $728 for men across various products.
Each purchase includes a packaging cost covering materials, molding, printing, and shipping, already paid by the consumer. Whether packaging is recovered or landfilled, the consumer has funded its production. When landfilled, the public system absorbs disposal costs through tipping fees, managing recycling contamination, and maintaining landfill capacity. The recycling gap doesn’t appear on receipts, but consumers still bear these costs.
Extended producer responsibility laws reallocate some of these costs back to brands. Oregon’s fee structure will eventually incorporate packaging material, weight, and recyclability into brand cost structures, incentivizing recoverable packaging. California’s program is expected to generate hundreds of millions in producer fees annually, some of which will support recycling infrastructure efforts like those by Pact Collective and TerraCycle. EPR doesn’t eliminate costs—it changes who pays them.
What You Can Do
At home, with curbside recycling:
- Large HDPE #2 shampoo, conditioner, and body wash bottles are generally accepted. Rinse them and remove pump dispensers before placing them in the bin. The bottle: recyclable. The pump: trash.
- Mascara wands, lipstick tubes, compacts, deodorant sticks, travel-size containers, and tinted plastic jars should not go in curbside recycling.
For everything curbside won’t take:
- Pact Collective bins at Ulta, L’Occitane, Nordstrom, and Credo Beauty locations accept tubes, wands, compacts, and pumps. Use pactcollective.org to find the nearest drop-off.
- Origins stores accept empty cosmetic packaging from any brand, no purchase required.
- TerraCycle’s personal care Zero Waste Box accepts razors, packaging, and beauty accessories; the per-box fee makes it most practical for households accumulating significant volume over time.
Shifting what you buy:
- Look for solid format shampoo bars, conditioner bars, toothpaste tablets, and solid deodorant that eliminate the packaging problem by eliminating the container. Ethique, Lush, HiBar, and Unwrap Life are dedicated solid-format brands; most major brands now offer at least one solid line.
- When buying liquid products, look for large-format HDPE #2 or PET #1 containers, avoid black or deeply tinted plastic, and skip pump dispensers where a squeeze bottle or bar alternative exists.
- Refill programs at Kiehl’s and Lush reduce the packaging footprint across multiple purchases. Ask at independent beauty retailers about in-store refill programs, which are expanding faster than they’re advertised.
Pushing the industry:
- Pact Collective’s brand member list at pactcollective.org identifies companies that have committed to take-back and packaging recyclability. It’s a useful signal when choosing between similar products.
- If you’re in Oregon, California, or another EPR state, your purchasing decisions signal demand to brands now paying attention to packaging composition. EPR fees are already reshaping packaging decisions; consumer preference accelerates that.
Related Reading
Editor’s Note: This is part of Earth911’s “Where Waste Comes From” series, which examines the largest sources of waste in a typical American household — what it costs you, what it costs everyone, and what to do about it.
