It’s hard not to notice that most of the products we consume are wrapped in soft plastic (anything you can scrunch into a ball). From your favourite perfume box, your face sheet mask, your shrink wrapped eyeliner, to those little beauty sachet samples we love to receive, and that’s before you hit the supermarket.

 A little known fact is that you can’t recycle soft plastic through your kerbside council recycling as it gets caught in the recycling machines and contaminates the entire process. 

Sadly, most soft plastics end up in landfill, where, exposed to the elements, these soft plastics will generate methane and ethylene, very potent greenhouse gases that exacerbate climate change.

Or they end up in our oceans, where they are very harmful for marine life who will mistake plastic for jellyfish and try to eat them. There, it will take them up to 100 years to decompose.

If you can, try to find options that don’t come wrapped in soft plastic. If you can’t, instead of throwing these into general waste, collect them and drop them into one of the bins at your local Woolies or Coles on your next grocery shop. REDcycle operates soft plastics collection bins through selected supermarkets nationwide. 

It’s also worth checking if your council operates a soft plastic collection program. RecycleSmart operates in Sydney and surrounding suburbs and offers pickups direct from your home or office. 

Sustainability is about being aware of all our small decisions. Forget trying to be perfect. Just do the best you can every day, and eventually all those small habits add up. Our  small actions matter. 


At Flavedo & Albedo, we have eliminated all plastics from our packaging and supply chain. We want to make a positive dent in the number of plastic packaging units produced by the cosmetics industry by letting people say yes to makeup and no to plastic.

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