Get free beauty products by recycling

We’re all aware that recycling is a good thing, right? However, sometimes it can feel like too much effort to be worth doing, but what if we told you there are free products up for grabs if you can be bothered to keep hold of your empty packaging?

MAC

The biggest (and most famous) makeup recycling scheme is Back to MAC, which gives you the chance to get any MAC lipstick for free (worth £15.50) when you bring back six empty MAC packages.

There are a few rules though, the packaging has to be the primary packaging of a full sized item, i.e if you brought back the box that your MAC Paint Pot came it it wouldn’t count, only the actual jar the product came in does. Samples and the packaging from fake eyelashes don’t count, unfortunately.

Also when it says you can get any lipstick free, it does not include MAC’s VIVA GLAM line, because 100% of the selling price of those goes to charity.

To read more about it go here.

Boots

This is a brand new recycling scheme, and amazingly you get 500 Advantage card points worth £5 when you bring in only 5 pieces of empty packaging from ANY brand. We’ve written an entire post on how to get free Boots vouchers for recycling, but it really is as simple as it sounds.

The Body Shop

This has JUST (as of May 2019) been announced. Love Your Body members can get a free £5 credit on their loyalty card when they bring in five empty tubs, bottles, tubes or pots. There are a few terms and conditions – you can’t bring in packaging that could be classed as “hazardous or flammable” to be recycled. This includes perfume bottles, gift packaging and accessories.

This is really generous as it doesn’t exclude travel sizes, either!

Read the list of excluded stores (mainly small train station ones) and join the Love Your Body club on The Body Shop’s website.

Lush

Although a lot of Lush products don’t come with any packaging, you can actually earn free products by recycling the ones that do.

When you bring five full sized black pots in to be recycled you’ll be given a free fresh face mask of your choice (worth £6.95). Not bad!

Also, if you have bottled Lush products (shower gels etc), you can recycle the bottles at home and bring the lids back to Lush for recycling. You won’t get anything for doing it, but it saves them going into the bin.

To read more about Lush’s recycling policies click here.

Origins

In the past Origins have run an offer on Earth Day (22nd of April) where you can bring back any old skincare product to a counter and they’ll recycle it and swap it for a new Origins product.

Keep an eye on Origins’ social media channels to see if they’re doing it again this year, it’s a good chance to get rid of products you hate and try out something new.

Liked this? Check out six more moneysaving beauty hacks.

Bronni Hughes

Hey! I’m Bronni and I’m a financial journalist and deals hunter in my mid 20s. I’m really into cats, pop music, the internet and barely substantiated celebrity gossip.

bronni.co.uk