MYGroup is playing a central role in the Great British Beauty Clean Up 2026, a nationwide campaign launching today and running through March to mobilise beauty brands, retailers, salons and consumers to refill, reuse and recycle their used products.
The Great British Beauty Clean Up (GBBCU) 2026, powered by the British Beauty Council and its Sustainable Beauty Coalition, arrives at a critical moment, with 86% of all used beauty and cosmetics products never making it to a recycling facility,1 being too small, composite or complex for kerbside collection. UK households generate an estimated 21kg of plastic packaging annually, with bottles, pots, tubs and trays – all synonymous with cosmetics and personal care items – being a significant contributor.2
MYGroup, as the British Beauty Council’s first waste management and recycling patron, is providing its established take-back solution as a backbone of the campaign, providing a tangible, managed route for hard-to-recycle empties, with discounts available to supporters of the Beauty Council and Sustainable Beauty Coalition.
The MYGroup x British Beauty Council take back scheme covers the safe and complete recovery of a wide range of used cosmetics and beauty products, including hazardous items and blister packs. All waste items can be deposited loose into specially designed, branded collection boxes placed in stores, salons and more. More details on the scheme are available here, with a video on the user experience and onward journey of returned items here.
MYGroup’s specialist zero-to-landfill take-back model is what sets the company apart as the industry’s recycling partner of choice. The company currently runs nationwide schemes in partnership with Boots, Harrods (H beauty), Cult Beauty, LOOKFANTASTIC, Selfridges and Superdrug. Together, these schemes have diverted more than 40,000 tonnes of used products from landfill to date, equivalent in weight to 3 x London’s ‘Big Ben’ Elizabeth Tower.
Critically, MYGroup handles the items most commonly left out of other take-back schemes, including hazardous fragrance bottles and nail varnishes, as well as residual cosmetic product, converting it into bio-fuel. Recovered packaging materials are remanufactured into new products through the company’s ReFactory™ operation, including usually unrecyclable plastic transformed into MYBoard™ furniture and fittings.
MYGroup’s role in the GBBCU 2026 also reflects a broader ambition to reshape how the industry thinks about its waste. Its six-acre Bio-Park is pioneering the next generation of bio-derived materials through leading edge processes, including insect bioconversion, mycelium and algal cultivation.
Steve Carrie, Group Director, MYGroup, said: ‘The industry knows it has a waste problem. The Great British Beauty Clean Up is about facing up to it, and MYGroup is here to make sure that action leads somewhere real. The campaign does something regulatory pressure alone cannot: it creates a moment where the whole industry is pointed in the same direction, asking the same question: “what happens to my beauty waste?”. Answering that question has been our business for years. We’ve built the infrastructure, developed the processing capability and proved the model.’
Victoria Brownlie MBE, Chief of Policy and Sustainability at the British Beauty Council, said: ‘Whilst there is some great work going on in the industry, we can and must do better. With the industry accounting for one-third of all landfill waste, simply recycling is no longer enough. The 2026 Great British Beauty Clean Up is about reimagining waste completely. Whether it is donating surplus stock to companies like In Kind Direct to help those in need, or using MYGroup to turn compacts into construction materials, we are asking the industry to think more purposefully about closing the loop when it comes to packaging.’
