Finishing off a beloved beauty product can cause a whole wave of emotions: Sadness, then joy at the thought of going shopping to restock, followed by guilt when chucking the bottle away in the bin.
You hit the bottom of that eyeshadow pan or pump the last pump of that foundation and think: 'What the heck do I do with this now?' It doesn't feel right going in the rubbish, but you're pretty sure it won't get recycled either.
You say a little prayer to Greta Thunberg and hope for the best. Well not anymore!
As part of their MeccaLife campaign, the beauty retailer has announced they will be ensuring a lot less beauty waste ends up in landfill by recycling Kiwi's empty bottles, tubes and sticks at all their stores across Aotearoa.
Mecca's partnership with TerraCycle - the leaders in recycling the 'unrecyclable' stuff that gets rejected from kerbside rubbish - started back in Australia in 2019, but it's now rolled out across every store in both countries.
It's now as simple as rounding up your empties (Mecca is accepting any brand) and popping to your local store where you can either chuck them in the appropriate bin near the register or just hand 'em off to a team member.
That includes shampoo and conditioner bottles and caps, lotion bottles, soap dispensers, lip gloss, concealer and mascara tubes, eyeliner pencils and cases, eyeshadow tubes, to name a few.
Just make sure they're as close to empty as possible - Mecca can't accept containers that still have product in them.
Everything is then sent off to TerraCycle where they sort and process the waste into raw materials that can be resued. Even the bins used to collect the products in-store are made from recycled beauty containers that have already been through the TerraCycle system.
How good? I can hear the dolphins celebrating already.
Across the month of August, MeccaLife is also celebrating sustainable beauty by highlighting the importance of mindful makeup, refillable products and eco-friendly packaging solutions.
Thankfully, we're seeing more and more of this kind of thing in the skincare and cosmetics scene, including from Kiwi brands like Emma Lewisham which makes luxury, plant-derived products with a focus on refills, recycling and regeneration.
