Cosmetics Packaging Is A Recycling Disaster. Can Turning It Into Furniture Help? | World Wide Waste

the packaging for health and beauty products is a recycling disaster every year people throw away more than a hundred billion of these items and the corporations that make this stuff toss mountains of products that never even hit shelves most recycling centers won't take them because they're just too hard to process but one British business has found a way trying not to get banned about the machines refactory turns the waste into plywood-like boards they can be used for anything from planters to furniture we decided to go and invest into something that nobody thought would work as more and more Brands want to be seen as sustainable this company helps them clean up their act so do these boards have any downsides and what does it take to recycle the unrecyclable about a third of the Cosmetics waste refactory handles comes from collection boxes placed at stores around the UK people are only supposed to drop Cosmetics Packaging but all kinds of things end up at the factory to be sorted by workers like Curtis anything you can think of is be there he goes through about 20 bags like this every day metal s glass and batteries so they all go to separate sections some products have a little of everything in them like makeup palettes which often have a glass mirror metal trays and a plastic shell we'll split the medical palette apart one will go into the metal power and one will go to the glass panel pallets from this brand can cost around fifty dollars and like a lot of items in this pile this one is Barely Used I never thought anybody would throw as much as I do away sorting like this takes time and money and that's one reason why many recyclers around the world only take two of the seven kinds of plastic plants often recheck the other types along with anything that's too dirty and send them to landfills or incinerators refactory says it doesn't turn anything away I don't believe there's a material out there that does not have a route to recovery or recycling but manufacturers throw a lot of items away before they even go to market including entire shipping pallets of recalled mislabeled or expired Goods Brands tend to be pretty secretive about this so no one knows how much they destroy but about 70 of the Cosmetics waste refactory handles comes from manufacturers including this luxury perfume by Tom Ford perfume is considered hazardous waste partially because it's flammable historic clay that material allows 100 gone into incineration refractory sends the Glass and Metal Elsewhere for conventional recycling and all of the plastic ends up here in the washing and shredding room it smells lovely it's a mix of Subs shower gels and perfumes anything so yeah it's the people like to work in this area this machine cuts the bottles and tubes into pieces about the size of a peanut shell and washes them with hot water and we'll shred it first to make it nice and small so it will clean better then empties are washed two more times the process requires a lot of water but the company says about half of this is rain water it collects and reuses to recycle the recovered at least three fall times back through the wash once the pieces are clean it's time to shred them even smaller [Music] the material is fed into this big Shredder and where it's got a 20 mil screen on it so it'll take it down nice and small the way a magnet removes some metal pieces like the tiny Springs inside soap pumps electrical currents pull out the others the clean pieces head to the mixing room this pulverizer grinds granules into a powder which will become the outer layer we powdered the material down and we mix it in these big mixes behind me a giant Corkscrew inside this machine stirs it all together final Blends head to the middle operators cook up three layered boards on machines that work like giant waffle makers laying down the outer coating first today's client asked for boards that look like a birthday cake with what the sprinkles on first which is a bottle caps frosting is a white powder layer that provides a smooth finish it's made from recycled items like bottle of Whaley bins crates and the final thickest layer is the core last a very difficult to recycled materials what I've got mixed polymers and different melt points that part is key pressing it into boards means all the packaging can mix together and nothing goes to waste making something more sophisticated like a water bottle would mean only using one type of recycled plastic and blending it with a lot of new plastic this clam shell closes and heats the mixture to about 410 degrees Fahrenheit fusing takes about eight minutes I'm done with cool down for about 25 minutes if it is any quicker it'll be marked but we'll do it nice and slowly then it comes out nice and flat these cuttings can go right back through the process along with plastic sweepings from the floor there's nothing that goes the waste from this process the boards have lots of uses benches bookshelves planners bus shelters they can even outfit a whole room it was designed to replace plyboard we do toilet cubicles and shower rooms and all kinds of weird wonderful things but the product isn't perfect it's not a silver bullet obviously when these are cut and worked on they do create a microplastic conventional methods often have the same problem Studies have found higher levels of microplastics in the waters near recycling plants refactory tries to keep the issue under control by selling finished products not building materials so it can deal with the shavings in-house the key to us is we know where that product is if that product becomes damaged or they decide to change it we can recycle it back into the next product for them refactory says it can recycle the boards and goods made from them over and over even so there just isn't much demand for products made from this stuff we gift a lot away showed a lot of charitable events and we run a scheme called skull cycle the company encourages its clients to think up uses for the boards like decorating their offices we can refit this we can replace this so we can go as big or small as you want so how does a business turn a profit making stuff people barely want well it didn't at first this portion of the business for the first time in the last two years has become profitable the revenue mostly comes from clients paying refactory to take the waste it's all based around the success of getting so many brands on board and making a success story out of what we are doing clients include boots Pharmacy and The Body Shop which have waste collection boxes in many of their stores people pay for a box and as part of that fox fee you will get your delivery and collection included in there and also the AMC to processor waste and is the beauty industry faces criticism for creating a lot of garbage more retailers are turning to recycling to clean up their image so it's really refreshing to actually see Brown's approaches in the way that they're doing for the first ever time here at the body shop this box fills up about every week people can put any special care bottle to any brand that's all there's not just bunch of items in there [Music] refactory claims its boards create less Planet warming pollution than shipping waste to landfills what we found was there's actually a 50 saving on carbon with a recycled board versus putting that same plastic into a landfill site workers at refactory said they were proud to be part of an operation like this well taking rubbish and we're giving it a new purpose a new life so to speak the company has plans to expand but it will take a massive scale up to address the Sea of packaging waste Steven says the ideal scenario would be designing packaging with its disposal in mind we've always had a very hard time understanding why Brands bring certain products to Market without actually understanding if there's a recycling route for them

Channel: Insider Business

Views: 915,540

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, Body Shop, makeup, recycling, World Wide Waste, toiletries, ReFactory

Id: fYFkDnN8IIo

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023