Today is Earth Day. This means we’ve been thinking (more than usual) about our beautiful Earth, and what we’re doing to make it a better place. Being an eco-friendly brand is uber important to us, and the single biggest way that our Happy little company impacts the Earth is through our packaging (i.e. recycling and rubbish!).
There’s some pretty heavy stuff going down right now so we wanted to take some time to share some good news and some not-so-good news.
We’ll start with the not-so-good. It’s with a bit of a glum note that we are announcing some new restrictions to our Happy Earth Recycling Program. Up till now we’ve been able to receive a huuuuuge variety of beauty packaging back from you, and we’ve been sending it away in bulk to our recycling partner, Terracycle, to have it properly recycled.
However things in the Aussie recycling world aren’t all rosy at the moment. We don’t actually have the facilities in Australia to recycle a lot of the plastics that we’re using, and right now we don’t really have anyone to recycle them for us either.
In the past we (i.e. Australia’s recycling big-wigs, not us personally) have sent our plastics to China, India and Malaysia where they have the proper facilities to recycle it. But recently all 3 of these countries have decided that they’ll no longer be accepting plastic waste from Australia.
For us that’s a massive deal, because it means that there’s a high likelihood of plastic waste heading to landfill, given that we - as a country - don’t really have any other options. Sadly it seems that New Zealand is in a similar boat to us here in Australia.
Coinciding with all of these changes to our recycling industry, Terracycle has decided to restrict which types of recyclables they’re able to accept. Basically the biggest change is that anything that is accepted by your kerbside recycling program is NO LONGER accepted by Terracycle. Terracycle are switching their focus to recycling what is UNRECYCLABLE with your local council (and a massive kudos to them for being leaders in this challenging space!).
What does this all mean?
Firstly it means we can’t accept as many different types of packaging as a part of our recycling program. We’re still fully committed to our program (and rewarding you for returning empties too of course!) but it would be irresponsible of us to accept your recyclables if we’re unable to recycle them ourselves.
The new guidelines for what we can and can’t accept are best explained with the picture below, so please take your time to check it out.
The GOOD news - get ready for new packaging :)
We promised some good news, and after all that glum news you definitely deserve some.
You know we’re so invested in Woohoo Skincare on every possible level, and the thought of our impact upon the planet being a negative one is enough to make us change things up a bit!
We’ve been working (even harder than usual) on some packaging changes that are going to give us more and more plastic-free and low-plastic options for your most loved skincare products :)
In the next month or two you’re going to be seeing some massive changes - we’ve got glass options, eco-friendly refills and bulk sizes all coming VERY SOON. In fact, the first product you’ll see switching over will be our Cloud 9 Deep Cleansing Balm as we’ll be testing out some very, very slick and luxe miron glass jars.
For the most part our new packaging options are more expensive and more difficult to ship (because they’re heavier and fragile), but given the current state of Aussie recycling we felt like this was the most responsible thing to do.
Even though the goalposts of being an eco-friendly brand keep moving on us, we’re 100% on this journey and we are so grateful that you’re here with us, working to make sure our planet stays a happy one for us all. As always we love nothing more than hearing from you, so drop us a comment below :)
XX Aaron and Phoebe
