Bottle Recycling
Brand new and a little experimental
Send Me Your Empties
Five dollars of credit for every empty glass bottle you mail back. Pop the dropper off, keep the glass, and it stays out of the landfill.
Here is the deal before you start. I have wanted to do this for years and I am finally trying it, which means you are looking at version one, and version one of anything is held together with tape and good intentions.
It costs the business real money and it adds real hours to my week, so I am starting small and finding out what it actually takes before I promise anything grander. If something is slow or clumsy in the first few months, that is me learning as I go. Be easy on me and I will keep making it better.
Rae
Four steps
How it works
- Collect five or ten empties. Five or ten. Not seven, not twelve. Counting in fives is the only way I keep this straight, and I would hate to lose track of yours.
- Drop a note in the box. Your name and the email you order under. Without it I am standing in the lab holding a box of beautifully anonymous bottles.
- Mail it over. Postage is on you. That is the part that keeps this cheap enough to exist at all.
- Send me the tracking number. Email it to support@formulaflawless.com. Once your box lands, your credit goes out that same week.
What you get
Five dollars a bottle
Five empties
$25
store credit
Ten empties
$50
store credit
Your credit arrives as a gift card rather than a discount code, and there is a reason for that. Discount codes in Shopify cancel each other out, so a code would force you to choose between your recycling credit and whatever sale is running that weekend. A gift card behaves like money, so it sits on top of a sale code instead of competing with it. It also never expires.
Where to send them
The mailing address
Mail your empties to
Formula Flawless
1027 S Rainbow Blvd, Suite 181
Las Vegas, NV 89145
United States
This is a receiving address rather than a store, so please mail your box rather than stopping by. Pack the bottles so they do not rattle loose, and keep the box small. A padded envelope works for five.
Empty bottles only
This address is for the recycling program and nothing else. If you want to return a product for a refund, please do not mail it here. Email support@formulaflawless.com first and wait for me to confirm it, because returns that arrive without being approved first cannot be processed or refunded.
Before you pack
What I can and cannot take
Yes please
- Glass serum bottles
- Glass toner and hydrosol bottles
- Glass cleanser bottles
- Glass jars
- Glass only, rinsed, with the top taken off
Please no
- Droppers, pumps, lids or caps, throw those away at home
- The tiny 3ml sample vials, we cannot recycle those
- Bottles from other brands
- Anything still holding product
- Broken glass, it is a hazard for whoever opens the box
- Returns or refunds, which start with an email
- Boxes, cartons or packing material
Pull the dropper, pump or lid off and put it in your household trash. Then rinse the glass with warm water, give it a shake and let it dry. No scrubbing and no sterilizing, there is no need for either.
Being straight with you
What happens to them
We recycle the glass, and only the glass. Glass is the one part of a serum bottle that goes into a recycling stream clean and comes back as glass again, which is why the entire program is built around it.
The droppers, pumps and lids are where it falls apart. Each one bonds plastic to metal to a rubber bulb, and there is no facility that will separate them, which is why cosmetic packaging almost never survives curbside sorting. I cannot recycle them either. So please pull them off and put them in your household trash rather than paying postage to mail them to me for the same ending. Your box stays lighter and your shipping stays cheaper.
I do not refill your bottles and sell them to anyone else. Refilling used packaging safely takes equipment and validation I do not have.
Questions
The things people ask
Can I send more than ten?
Yes, as long as it lands on a multiple of five. Fifteen earns $75, twenty earns $100. Please do not send me seventeen. Counting in fives is how I keep this accurate, and if the number is odd I cannot promise I will credit it correctly. I might simply miss it, and neither of us wants that.
How empty is empty?
Just rinse them, simple. A few drops clinging to the glass is not an issue. But if I have to clean them it adds more steps and more time, and I do not have a washing facility where I do the recycling work.
Can I use the credit during a sale?
Yes, and it is exactly why I send a gift card instead of a code. Use your weekend sale code at checkout and pay the balance with the gift card.
Does the credit expire?
No. Spend it whenever you like.
Do the little sample bottles count?
No, and please leave them out of your count. The 3ml sample vials that come free with your orders cannot be recycled, so they earn no credit and they do not count toward your five. Five full size glass bottles is five, however many samples are rattling around in your drawer.
Can I send bottles from other brands?
No. I am a small skincare lab, not a recycling center, and this program already costs me money to run. Formula Flawless glass only.
How long until the credit arrives?
Within a week of your box reaching us. If it has been longer than that, email me and I will track it down.
Do I get my postage back?
No, and I want to be upfront about it. Paying return postage for everyone would cost more than the credit itself and the program would not survive its first season. The $5 a bottle is set where it is so the math works for both of us.
Thank you for bothering with this. Rinsing bottles and standing in line at the post office is not nothing, and the fact that any of you are willing to do it is the reason I am trying it at all.
Treat this as a program we are both working on. You will find the clumsy parts before I do, so tell me the moment you hit one. Ideas, complaints, a better way to do any of it, all of it is welcome and all of it makes the next version better.
Email me at support@formulaflawless.com and it comes straight to me.
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