Say goodbye to packaging guilt

We love our multi-step skincare routines and holy-grail serums, but there’s a noticeably less glamorous side to the beauty industry: the mountain of empty bottles left behind. Globally, the beauty sector pumps out an estimated 120 billion units of packaging every year, with a dismal 9 percent actually getting recycled. For an industry obsessed with what is inside the bottle, the outside has largely been an afterthought.

To tackle this growing issue locally, Filipino skincare brand Habitude, beauty platform The Beauty Edit and lifestyle destination Spatio have teamed up with Greencycle Innovative Solutions to launch The Beauty Loop — a recycling initiative designed to give beauty empties a sustainable afterlife.

The program was born out of a very real sense of “packaging guilt.” Habitude co-founder Nikki Santiago-Rivera, drawing from her years as a beauty editor, saw firsthand the massive pile-up of press kits and unrecyclable containers.

“The Beauty Loop is our attempt to do something real about it — a system and a habit the whole community can get behind,” Santiago-Rivera shared. “We buy and use beauty products regularly, often as part of our everyday routines. We hope returning the empties becomes part of that routine.”

Making recycling a routine

Located at The Beauty Edit Gallery inside Spatio at Opus Mall, the drop-off point accepts clean, rinsed and dry empties from any brand. The accepted materials cover almost your entire vanity:

Plastics: Bottles and tubes from cleansers, lotions, shampoos, and sunscreens.

Glass: Jars and bottles from serums, face creams, and perfumes.

Paper: Outer cartons, product boxes, and paper wrapping.

By placing the bins in a premium retail space, the founders want to make eco-conscious habits as effortless as shopping for a new moisturizer. The Beauty Edit founder Nicole Morales notes that housing the program in their gallery feels like a natural extension of building a space where Filipino beauty is taken seriously in every sense.

Why your data matters

While it is tempting to just toss your empties into the bin and walk away, The Beauty Loop asks participants to take a few extra seconds to scan a QR code at the drop-off site. Registering logs your visit with a unique reference ID.

This step is crucial because successful sustainability programs run on data. Tracking the weight, material types, and frequency of drop-offs helps the team and Greencycle measure the program’s true environmental impact and figure out how to improve the system moving forward.

The afterlife of your empties

Once collected, Greencycle Innovative Solutions ensures these materials are diverted from landfills. Rigid plastics like high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) are processed into new products like sacks and twine. Hard-to-recycle flexible plastics are routed to cement plants to serve as fuel substitutes. Meanwhile, glass and paper are sent to specialized partner facilities for repurposing.

A blueprint for the industry

The Beauty Loop is currently a pilot program, but its ultimate goal is much larger. The entire framework — from staff training and collection protocols to impact reporting — is documented and designed to be shared. Habitude and its partners actively want other brands, malls, and organizations to borrow the system and adapt it for their own communities.

“We knew good intentions weren’t enough. We needed something that works, that other people can pick up and run with — a system that’s practical, honest about what it does, and built to grow,” Santiago-Rivera said.