Beauty entrepreneur Emma Lewisham has launched a new sustainable beauty initiative. Image supplied.
Did you know that the global beauty industry produces 120 billion units of packaging each year and very few of these empty packages are accepted by kerbside recycling programs? Many of the design elements that enable beauty products to be so useable, such as push pumps, make them difficult to recycle. Subsequently, only 9% of plastics produced are recycled and 12% are burned into our atmosphere, the rest ends up in our landfills, unable to decompose. Because of these disappointing statistics, local clean beauty brand Emma Lewisham decided to put out a call to action and has created a way for us to correctly recycle our empty beauty products, minimising the disastrous effect materials such as plastic has on the environment.
Since launching her eponymous brand in 2019, Emma Lewisham has embodied a new sustainability standard in skincare. Emma’s mission is to make a meaningful impact in the flawed beauty industry, and her 100% clean skincare line embodies the brand’s belief that luxurious, efficacious products don’t have to compromise people’s health or our planet.
For years, Emma has strived for clarity around product traceability, with a focus on beauty products’ end of life terminus. It is one thing to claim ‘100% recyclable packaging’, but what does this actually mean? From Emma’s in-depth market analysis the seeds were sown for this initiative. Through her research, Emma realised the enormity of the beauty packaging problem and quickly came to a blunt conclusion, our local beauty industry needs to collectively change and fast if we’re wanting to maintain our clean, green Kiwi ethos.
Founder, Emma Lewisham says “Plastic and other material in the beauty industry is not going to go away anytime soon, that’s unrealistic, so we need to find solutions that solve the situation at hand. If we can show people that plastic is precious, you won’t find plastic waste floating in our oceans. It’s the responsibility of all brands to spearhead this environmental issue, we need to raise social awareness around the responsible usage of plastic, take ownership for recycling plastic, and change the perception and the value placed on materials like plastic.”
Therefore, Emma Lewisham has proudly partnered with TerraCycle® to launch New Zealand’s first sustainable beauty initiative for all brands of facial skincare products, the Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle. Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle is a free, incentive-based recycling programme to ensure beauty products are kept in circularity – it is about rethinking the entire process of a beauty product’s lifespan. Emma Lewisham will offer free returns, rewards and recycling for not only its own facial products but remarkably, for all brands’ facial products within our local economy.
To participate in the Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle, beauty lovers are encouraged to create a TerraCycle account via TerraCycle’s website. Once they’ve activated their TerraCycle account, they can then download a free shipping label to post their facial beauty products directly to TerraCycle for recycling. The Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle requires you to send a minimum of four products at a time, all beauty brands’ facial products will be accepted and consumers will receive a $15 Emma Lewisham voucher for their efforts too.
Images supplied.