Joining a global sustainability effort, Australian luxury skincare brand Aesop introduces its Rinse and Return initiative to Malaysian patrons. As part of the label’s effort to spread awareness on recycling, Aesop Malaysia welcomes used recyclables at their Klang Valley signature stores.
In line with its efforts to evolve into a more ethical, sustainable, and circular brand, Aesop strives to ensure that the formulations are housed in highly recyclable materials. The programme offers this convenient solution to not only their customers, but also anyone who wishes to give new life to recyclable materials. This is especially useful, as recycling is not as straightforward as one might think. It is one thing to separate waste, and it is another thing altogether to classify them.
While paper, glass, and aluminium cans are fairly easy to dispose of properly, plastics can be quite troublesome to separate — especially since of the seven types of plastics, only three types are recyclable in Malaysia.
Aesop Malaysia offers a convenient solution to increase customer awareness. Image credit: Aesop/Instagram.
The first, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the most commonly recycled plastics, and it includes wastes like clear water bottles. The next most recycled one is high-density Polyethylene (HDPE), and it consists of items like bleach and detergent packaging. Finally, we have polypropylene (PP), which mostly includes kitchen items like plastic straws, bottle caps, and tubs for butter and margarine.
Other types of plastics are either considered to be non-recyclable, or difficult to recycle as not many facilities have the capacity to take on the process. To take all this worry off your plate, Aesop partners with iCYCLE to reduce the amount of packaging going to the landfill.
All you have to do is ensure that the empty vessels are rinsed by customers prior to taking it to the Aesop signature stores in Klang Valley. As for the returned aluminium tubes, the team will take care of that for you.
As a bonus, for each Aesop container collected, Aesop Malaysia will be making a RM2 donation to Zero Waste Malaysia — a non-profit organisation dedicated to accelerating sustainable change — which could receive a donation of up to RM15,000 in any one year.
All images credit: Aesop/Instagram