This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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Pact Collective isn’t the first company to try to solve the beauty industry’s waste problem. But in four short years, it’s already become the most successful.
“It feels like a really exciting time for the industry, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do,” Carly Snider, executive director of Pact Collective, told Glossy. “We [as an industry] are creating 120 billion units of beauty packaging globally and only a fraction of those are recycled or reused.”
This widely-shared statistic was one catalyst for Pact’s launch in 2021 as a nonprofit industry collective founded by retailer Credo Beauty and clean cosmetics brand MOB Beauty.
Today, Pact has many pillars. First, it serves as a recycling alternative to city-run curbside bins and private recycling initiatives. The concept is simple: Educate consumers about their products’ end-of-life while creating a data-driven, closed-loop system that reduces waste through in-store collection bins and consumer-friendly mail-back programs.
Pact has been embraced by the industry and actively has 3,300 collection bins across the U.S. and Canada in retailers like Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Credo Beauty, Nordstrom and many more. It also works with brands like L’Oréal USA, Fenty Beauty and Summer Fridays.
Growth across its packaging collection program has helped the company meet volume collection requirements for its biggest program of 2024: a closed-loop manufacturing initiative called New Matter. The initiative debuted in September with pumps made from recovered plastic.
“I didn’t imagine this level of growth so soon,” Snider said. “Right now we have 150 members across the entire supply chain [including] brands, retailers, packaging suppliers, media, you name it. … If you’re working within this space, we want you to have a seat at the table. We want to have your voice heard, because it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation.”
In today’s episode, Snider discusses Pact’s growth, including its plans to get recycle bins into non-retail locations like colleges and libraries and exactly what happens to the empty packaging it collects. Snider also addresses how brands and retailers can lessen their environmental footprint and educate consumers on recycling nuances.
But first in today’s episode, Glossy senior reporter Emily Jensen joins host Lexy Lebsack to address the industry’s top headlines. This includes backlash over buzzy fragrance brand Boy Smells’ new rebrand; Sephora as a bright spot in LVMH’s disappointing earnings; and Amorepacific’s plans to reshore manufacturing to the U.S. amid mounting tariffs.
Excerpts from the conversation, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.
Why beauty packaging is challenging to recycle
“What is so unique about beauty, to start, is that a lot of it is not recyclable, so it’s considered hard-to-recyclable elements. And kind of the three main factors we see over and over again in our work is that a lot of what we’re working with is really small: So anything that’s smaller than two inches by two inches cannot be recycled at your local recycling facility. It’s falling through the cracks of machines. It’s just really hard to capture this with the current infrastructure that we have. Another piece is that things are really flexible, so either they lay flat when they’re empty and fall through the cracks, or they’re made of so many material types that, a lot of the time, they’re not processed as well. And then the last one is similar to that: it is mixed material. So a lot of people think about the applicators being used, like pumps and droppers. Most of this has multiple material types that make up the unit, and it is very challenging, as you can imagine, getting into the metal spring of a pump; you almost need to go through an operation to get that thing out of there. So it’s really difficult to recycle things that have these mixed materials completely fused together, where we can’t physically detach them and properly recycle them.” –Carly Snider
On the emotional connection consumers feel for beauty packaging
“The biggest thing that’s different [between beauty and other consumer packaged goods industries] is our emotional connection to our packaging. So think about if you want to grab a bag of chips at the grocery store. Yes, you’re looking at different branding for that chip bag, but it has a purpose: To hold the chips, get it in your mouth, you’re done, right? With beauty, it’s a very different interaction with packaging because it’s on your vanity. You are interacting with this packaging. You have that emotional attachment. It relates to self-care. It relates to all these things you want to be at peace looking at. … So it’s so charged. And I think that’s the piece that makes packaging so difficult for beauty: Not only are we trying to get a lot of active ingredients onto people’s skin, but we’re also dealing with that moment with packaging and that interaction that really makes it even more challenging to think about sustainability.” –Carly Snider
