1 Million Pounds Collected: A Milestone Five Years in the Making

Published April 22, 2026 | Pact Collective

Five years ago, Pact Collective set out to solve one of the beauty industry's most overlooked problems: what happens to your products after the last drop is gone?

The answer, for most beauty packaging, was the landfill. Lipstick tubes, mascara wands, compacts, pump bottles — the tiny, complex, multi-material containers that carry the products we love every day — are almost universally rejected by curbside recycling programs. They're too small. Too mixed. Too hard to sort.

So we built a different system. And this Earth Day, we're celebrating what that system has made possible: 1 million pounds of hard-to-recycle beauty packaging collected, properly recycled and processed, and diverted from landfills — in just FIVE years!

How We Got Here

This milestone didn't happen in a single moment. It happened one empty at a time.

It happened when a brand decided that their responsibility to a customer didn't end at the point of purchase. When a retailer opened their doors and their floor space to a drop-off bin. When a consumer rinsed out a mascara tube, looked for a Pact bin, and made the trip.

Over the past five years, more than 150 beauty companies have united under the Pact Collective membership, committing to give their packaging a second life. We've grown to 3,000+ drop-off locations across the U.S. and Canada — including major retailers like Sephora, Ulta Beauty, and Nordstrom — making it easier than ever for consumers to close the loop on the products they use every day.

Together, those individual acts of care added up to something extraordinary.

What 1 Million Pounds Really Means

Numbers this large can be hard to grasp, so here's some context: 1 million pounds is roughly the weight of 40 full dump trucks. It's enough hard-to-recycle beauty packaging to fill 6 full-size swimming pools, or 16,500 bathtubs filled with lipstick tubes, mascara wands, and compacts. It's 46,500 fully packed suitcases worth of empties that didn't end up as pollution.

But beyond the weight, this milestone represents something harder to measure: a shift in how the beauty industry thinks about its own waste. End-of-life matters. And more brands, retailers, and consumers are starting to act like it does.

The Honest Truth About What "Recycling" Means

Transparency is a core part of how Pact operates, and this milestone is a good moment to be clear about something important: when we say we properly recycle and process beauty empties, we mean exactly that — not all material collected can be recycled in the traditional sense.

Some packaging, because of how it's designed or because of product residue, must be sent to waste-to-energy facilities rather than recycled. Waste-to-energy is not recycling — but we consider it a significantly better outcome than landfill.

Our commitment is to handle every empty responsibly, transparently, and with the most sustainable outcome possible given the realities of material science and manufacturing. It's also why we continue to advocate for smarter packaging design across the beauty supply chain — because the best recycling solution is packaging that's easier to recycle in the first place.

What Comes Next

Reaching 1 million pounds is a milestone, not a finish line.

Beauty packaging waste is a systemic problem, and solving it requires systemic change — more brands taking responsibility, more drop-off access for consumers, and a continued push for better packaging design from the start. Pact will keep growing our network, deepening our partnerships, and advocating for a more circular future for the entire beauty industry.

If you're a beauty brand interested in joining the movement, we'd love to hear from you at hello@pactcollective.org.

And if you're a consumer ready to do your part: find a Pact drop-off bin near you at https://www.pactcollective.org/locations, and bring back your beauty empties. The cycle of your product can start at the store — and end there too.

This Earth Day, we celebrate with gratitude for every brand, retailer, and individual who made this possible.

Here's to the next million!

#DropoffWithPact #EarthDay2026