Watsons extends recycling programme to Hong Kong with L’Oréal

A.S. Watson Group’s flagship health and beauty brand Watsons is extending its recycling programme to Hong Kong. This builds on launches in Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia and is in partnership with L’Oréal.

In Taiwan, Watsons has worked with Maybelline to set up recycling bins in stores.

For every empty bottle that is recycled, Maybelline will make a donation to Re-Think to run sustainability education programmes.

Meanwhile in Thailand, Watsons’ customers can recycle their PET plastic bottles at the Garnier Refund Machine in selected stores and earn a free Garnier Pink Micellar Water.

While in Indonesia, the retailer has launched a recycling programme with Garnier to encourage customers to recycle plastic bottles at Watsons stores.

Watsons Hong Kong has partnered with L’Oréal to roll-out a Beauty for the Future recycling campaign.

Customers can now recycle the cleaned containers of any beauty brand, including foundation bottles, mascara wands, skincare tubs, and lipstick tubes at around 170 Watsons stores across the city in exchange for rewards in the loyalty platform MoneyBack.

V Cycle will then break these down, separate them by materials, and work with local partners to transform them into new raw materials.

The scaled up campaign goal is to collect 250,000 containers in the 12 months following the official launch.

“Pre-loved beauty packages have their place, but that place is not in landfills,” says Eva Yu, President and Managing Director at L’Oréal Hong Kong.

“Our goal is to meet it head on with the first cross brand recycling programme involving 18 of our beauty brands in 2021. Today, we are thrilled to work with partners along the value chain to expand the programme and positively impact people’s lives while preserving the planet.”

“With the scaled up recycling campaign as part of our L’Oréal for the Future sustainability programme, we want to further inspire and influence how our consumers think and what they do about packaging wastes.”

“Not as something to toss out, but as a resource that can be recycled and used again, and sustainably, reducing the impact on our environment. Our partnership with Watsons and V Cycle will help make this a reality.”

“We believe going green is the new beautiful. We made it our purpose to do the right things for our customers and the planet,” says Malina Ngai, CEO at A.S. Watson (Asia and Europe).

“Sharing a common sustainability vision with L’Oréal, we believe this Beauty of Recycling partnership in the region will educate customers as well as engage them in action so that together we can create a bigger impact to the planet today and tomorrow.”