Aveda Introduces Caps Recycling Program

Aveda has introduced Caps Recycling Program in the U.S., aiming to create new personal care packaging made from 100% recycled caps to help prevent pollution on beaches and in oceans. The Caps Recycling Program debuts with Aveda’s Limited Edition Vintage Clove Shampoo, which launches September 14, 2008. It is the first-ever use of collected materials on a dispensing closure for the company. For Aveda’s 30th anniversary, the re-launch celebrates its first-ever shampoo, Clove, originally launched in 1978. The new Clove bottle is made of a minimum of 96% post-consumer recycled, high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

“Recycling caps is a meaningful form of environmental activism,” says Chuck Bennett, vice president of Earth and Community Care for Aveda. “Every cap we prevent from becoming trash is one less piece of plastic in the mouth of a baby seal, penguin or turtle.”

Enlisting the participation of its salon and retail network, as well as schools throughout the U.S., Aveda is asking participants to collect water, soda, detergent and shampoo plastic polypropylene bottle caps. The program began in partnership with primary and secondary schools in New York. With students’ help, the Aveda Caps Recycling Program has already accumulated more than 50,000 pounds of plastic to date.

“Our goal is to inspire long-term change in how the beauty industry approaches package design,” says Dominique Conseil, president of Aveda. “Aveda’s Caps Recycling Program is a first step in that direction—and helps set an example for environmental leadership and responsibility.”

Aveda is also working with suppliers to help them develop ways to make personal care product containers from recycled caps.

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