With new expansion, Ulta Beauty’s Beauty Drop-Off becomes largest US beauty store take-back program

With the small components of makeup packaging and pumps, they typically slip through the cracks of most municipal recycling programs and facilities, ending up in landfills. This new program at Ulta is trying to combat that with having instore drop off collection bins. Ulta has partnered with Pact Collective who is working towards closing the waste issue among the beauty industry and create more circular practices within packaging choices.

In collaboration with the packaging waste solutions non-profit Pact Collective, as of Monday, Ulta Beauty has rolled out an expansion of its in-store take-back initiative to its more than 1,350 U.S. stores. The company and Pact first piloted the program, dubbed Beauty Drop-Off, in 2023. At the time, take-back services were introduced in 90 of its stores (Zwieglinska, 2024).

The expansion of Beauty Drop-Off places collection bins where customers can deposit their beauty product empties in all Ulta stores. These items are then processed by Pact Collective through methods including upcycling, downcycling, molecular recycling and waste-to-energy conversion. These bins not only facilitate recycling, but they also educate customers about the environmental impact of their disposal choices through visuals and information on their exterior. Customers can use the drop-off for free. The retailer is marketing the Beauty Drop-Off expansion through in-store displays, emails and social posts (Zwieglinska, 2024).

By creating a system where shoppers can easily participate, and also learn more about the choices they're making seems like a perfect opportunity for Ulta and other beauty stores. It encourages more engagement when customers know that they can bring back their old and used up container as they are repurchasing another.

“It takes a portfolio of approaches to address the [beauty packaging] issue, and there is not one silver bullet answer,” said Wolf. “Most people aren’t aware that beauty packaging [elements] that are typically smaller than the size of a fist, like the pumps and the spray tops, are not curbside recyclable. So when people throw them in their home recycling bin, they go straight to the landfill.” (Zwieglinska, 2024).

According to data insights from Ulta Beauty, over 86% of its customers, including 90% of Gen-Z and younger-millennial customers, are interested in purchasing clean and consciously-made beauty products. In addition, 64% of customers are interested in recycling empties in-store. To meet the growing demand, the company has introduced over 300 certified brands within its Conscious Beauty assortment (Zwieglinska, 2024).

With more people becoming aware of areas that they are able to reduce waste, there is an opportunity for designers to create towards increasing that participation in reduction or recycling. Whether it is in more educational content like the drop off bins that are at the Ulta locations, or some extension that consumers could have at their homes to help collect those hard to recycle materials. The awareness to reduce packaging has started, especially in the wake of "unboxing videos" and other heavily packaged product reviews online, so how could we reduce even more?

Reference.

Zwieglinska, Z. (2024, March 18). With new expansion, Ulta Beauty’s beauty drop-off becomes largest US Beauty Store take-back program. Glossy. https://www.glossy.co/beauty/ulta-beauty-expands-beauty-drop-off-the-largest-us-beauty-store-take-back-recycling-program/