The Beauty Industry's Waste Challenge
Updated: Sep 15
The problem with beauty packaging
Beauty packaging has a significant waste problem. A single makeup product can combine glass, aluminium, plastic, pumps, caps, mirrors, magnets, wands, and labels. These materials are often too small or complex for standard kerbside recycling systems to process. This is not a niche issue; the beauty industry produces an estimated 120 billion units of packaging every year. Much of it is designed for single use rather than circular recovery.
For Emma Peters, founder of Auckland-based Aleph Beauty, this was both a design problem and a business responsibility. Aleph creates high-performance, clean makeup for health and sustainability-conscious customers across New Zealand and Australia. These products are built to do more with less. However, that commitment to doing less harm could not stop at the product itself.
What They Built
Aleph launched ReAleph as a take-back programme. This allows customers and stockists to return empty Aleph packaging by mail or in person through participating retail partners. It was not designed as a token collection point. Instead, it was designed as a working loop.
Customers are encouraged to collect five or ten empties before returning them. Once received, every unit is counted, separated, and sorted. Some packaging formats—like their Concealer/Foundation, Cheek/Lip Tint, and Hybrid Eye Pigment jars—were designed from the beginning to be refillable. Suitable glass components are cleaned, commercially sterilised, inspected, and prepared to re-enter the production cycle right here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Other materials, including glass, aluminium, paperboard, and selected plastics, are separated and directed through local recovery or recycling pathways where infrastructure allows. What makes this genuinely unique in the beauty industry is the refill loop. Many take-back claims stop at collection; the harder part is proving what happens next. Aleph has built the operational process to sort, assess, recover, and reuse packaging where possible.
In Their Own Words
"ReAleph matters because it turns responsibility into action. It gives our customers a simple way to return their empties, while giving us the insight we need to keep improving how we design, recover, and reuse our packaging. It is not a perfect system, but it is a practical one, and every return helps strengthen the loop." - Emma Peters, founder, Aleph Beauty
The Impact of ReAleph
The numbers
Since returns tracking began, ReAleph has collected and processed more than 11,000 Aleph packaging components. The programme has recovered an estimated 400 kg of glass. Aleph became a certified B Corporation in 2023, scoring 83.9 against a median score of 50.9 for businesses completing the B Impact Assessment. ReAleph sits alongside Aleph’s wider sustainability commitments, including formulations certified by Zero Plastic Inside as free from microplastics, and products listed by PETA as cruelty-free and vegan. Most of the Aleph range is deliberately designed to be multi-use, helping reduce consumption and packaging waste.
Why This Matters Beyond One Brand
The beauty industry generates billions of units of packaging annually. Very little of it comes back. What Aleph has built—imperfect, local, and continually improving—is proof that product stewardship in beauty is operationally possible. It takes design intent, customer education, practical systems, and the willingness to count what comes back and act on it.
For any New Zealand or Australian product business wrestling with complex packaging, ReAleph is a practical proof of concept.
Want to Try Something Similar?
Emma Peters’ advice: Start with the packaging you already have, and be honest about what can actually be recovered. Understand your materials, supply chain partners, contamination risks, and local recycling options before launching anything public.
The ReAleph model can be replicated by product businesses using durable, cleanable packaging formats and serving a customer base willing to participate. It works best when reuse is designed in from the start, rather than retrofitted later.
A Practical First Step
One practical first step: Map every material in your top three packaging formats and find out which local processors can actually handle them. That single exercise will tell you more than any take-back programme launch plan.
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