NewMatter™ HDPE: How beauty empties become architectural surfaces for commercial spaces.
A look at how Pact and Marble Plastics turn hard-to-recycle packaging into surfaces people interact with every day.
Every year, billions of beauty packages are produced — and most of them end up in landfills. Not because they can't have a second life, but because the systems to give them one have not previously existed. Pact's collection programs were built to catch what most recycling systems miss: hard-to-recycle small packaging and muti-material packaging. This same problem-solving was brought to, NewMatter™, answering the question of what a second life could be.
What is NewMatter™?
NewMatter™ is Pact's suite of circular materials made from hard-to-recycle beauty packaging collected through our hard-to-recycle beauty collection programs. When you drop your empties in a Pact bin, we sort, process, and work with our partners to transform that material into something tangible and useful, striving to close the loop right here within the beauty industry.
What do we create?
Our HDPE (high-density polyethylene) stream captures rigid plastic packaging from our collection programs and transforms it into 100% post-consumer sheet material. The result? A durable, speckled material with a terrazzo-like appearance — and designed to be installed in physical spaces.
NewMatter™ HDPE
You may haveseen NewMatter HDPE featured recently on the Today Show! To bring NewMatter™ HDPE to life, Pact partnered with Marble Plastics, a manufacturer built on a simple idea: waste shouldn’t be wasted! Together, we take the HDPE beauty packaging collected through Pact's programs and transform it into post-consumer sheet material that can be fabricated into a range of architectural and interior applications.
SPOTLIGHT: Credo Beauty's NewMatter countertop!
Credo Beauty installed a NewMatter™ HDPE countertop in one of its store locations — putting the story of circularity directly in front of every customer who walks through the door.
NewMatter™ HDPE sheets are being used to create:
Countertops — durable surfaces with a distinctive terrazzo-like finish, suited for retail environments and back-of-house spaces.
Retail fixtures and in-store displays — giving brands and retailers a way to bring circularity into the physical store experience.
Brand activations and educational experiences — helping brands bring circularity into pop-ups, installations, and consumer engagement initiatives.
SPOTLIGHT: Sephora’s in-store collection Pact bins feature NewMatter™ HDPE tops!
Why It Matters
Most beauty packaging — the tiny tubes, caps, and containers that make up the majority of what we use — is too small or too mixed-material to be caught by traditional recycling facilities. It goes straight to the landfill. NewMatter™ is proof that this doesn't have to be the fate of that material. Products made using NewMatter™ are designed to show consumers their tangible, real impact. They can see and feel the difference their beauty drop-off can make.
Want to bring NewMatter™ into your brand?
NewMatter™ creations are available exclusively to Pact members for use in packaging, retail environments, PR seeding, employee gifting, and consumer education. To explore options, reach out to us at hello@pactcollective.org!