The Glossy 50 honors the year’s biggest changemakers across fashion and beauty. More from the series →
The Changemakers: These passionate advocates forwarded fashion or beauty for good.
Victor Casale has been thinking about sustainability since the ’80s, when his brother-in-law, Frank Toskan, co-founded MAC Cosmetics. Casale became MAC’s chief chemist. In those early days, when the brand was a small, family-operated business, “we were creating a lot of garbage and small plastic pieces. So we started ‘Back to MAC,’” he said, referring to the brand’s original recycling program.
Flash forward nearly 40 years, and Casale is the co-founder of MOB Beauty, a “clean” makeup brand that focuses on biodegradable and recyclable packaging. Building on the concept, he launched Pact Collective in 2021. The take-back program now has 154 brand clients.
Though beauty brands and retailers are often in competition, Casale was confident they could come together in the name of sustainability. Initially, Pact launched with Credo Beauty. And this year, the company secured Sephora and Ulta as partners. Sephora became a full partner in June 2023 after a soft launch in May 2022, while Ulta Beauty began its pilot program in March of this year.
Now, across its retail partners in the U.S. and Canada, the organization has 1,105 physical bins where customers can drop product empties to be recycled. To date, it has diverted over 207,000 pounds of hard-to-recycle packaging from landfills.
In addition to recycling products, the organization aims to provide education to both the brands it works with and their customers.
“We’re getting consumers used to coming back with packaging and learning about [the recycling process],” he said. “It’s not as easy as just dropping something into a bin; it’s not ‘wish-cycling,’ or, ‘Throw it in this bin, and all your sins are wiped away.’ … If it’s something that can’t be recycled, [the sales associates] tell you that [in the store]. [They] say, ‘Throw it out, and know that when you buy this product in the future, that’s where it’s going to end up.’”
Click here to see all 2023 Glossy 50 honorees.
