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Refresh Your Beauty Routine with BEAUTYCYCLE

Recycling is important, but it can be complicated and confusing trying to understand what qualifies. Plastic delivery pouches? Often not. Jars of peanut butter? You have to wash (and likely scrub) them first. Beauty products? Now you can take them to Nordstrom. 

As of today, we're the first and only major retailer to offer a beauty take back and recycling program accepting all brands of beauty packaging. Each year, more than 120 billion units of plastic packaging are produced by the beauty industry, but less than nine percent gets recycled. That's because many municipal recycling centers do not accept beauty materials and packaging, as they often contain a mix of materials that are not locally recyclable. 

We hope to change that and aim to take back 100 tons of hard-to-recycle beauty packaging by 2025 to ensure it's recycled.

What can you do?
Bring your empty beauty products to any Nordstrom or Nordstrom Local to be recycled. BEAUTYCYCLE boxes will be available in the beauty department.  

What can you bring?
Empty cosmetics, haircare or skincare packaging regardless of brand or purchase location can be dropped off at our locations. This includes:

  • Shampoo and conditioner bottles and caps 
  • Hair gel tubes and caps 
  • Hair spray bottles and triggers 
  • Hair paste plastic jars and caps  
  • Lip balm tubes 
  • Face soap dispensers and tubes 
  • Lotion bottles, tubes, dispensers, and jars  
  • Shaving foam tubes (no cans) 
  • Lip gloss tubes 
  • Mascara tubes 
  • Eye liner pencils and cases 
  • Eye shadow and tubes  
  • Concealer tubes and sticks 
  • Click here for a full list

What will we do?
We will send the content of these BEAUTYCYCLE boxes to our partner, TerraCycle, where they are cleaned and separated into metals, glass and plastics. Those materials are then recycled based on the material composition. For example, plastics are recycled into a wide range of new products including park benches and picnic tables, while metals are reused as base materials for stamped product applications like nuts, bolts, washers and rings.