Did you know that Boots offers a recycling scheme for a wide selection of your used health and beauty recyclable containers and that for every 5 items you recycle, they'll give you 500 Advantage Points, worth £5, that you can redeem on a purchase of £10 or more!?
The Boots scheme called 'Recycle at Boots' is a useful way to do two things:
Help recycle and divert plastic waste from landfills and oceans, which has obvious advantages for the environment. The scheme has been set up to help to recycle 'hard to recycle' beauty, health, wellness product packaging which cannot typically be recycled through household kerbside collections, for example, products that are too small (such as travel minis), made of composite materials (eyeshadow palettes, lipsticks, floss dispensers) or from unrecyclable materials (toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes). You can view all the recyclable items that are accepted here.
The scheme rewards environmentally conscious Boots customers with extra Advantage Points to use against a purchase they make at Boots. To participate, you'll need to be a Boots Advantage cardholder (free to join) and download and register the Boots Recycle app.
The idea is that you recycle the empty packaging from your health and beauty products, and this includes items such as: Plastic bottles
Tubes and pots
Pumps and sprays
Roll-on deodorants
Importantly, the scheme is not limited to Boots' own products; it accepts packaging from all brands. This inclusive approach maximises the potential for recycling and encourages customers to responsibly dispose of a wide variety of beauty and healthcare items, regardless of their origin.
How does it work?
You need to download the Scan2Recycle app from the Boots website. Once you have the app, follow the process below for recycling your empty packaging and get your extra 500 points:
You snap a photo of the products you want to recycle using the app. You can do this at any point; you don't have to scan the items on the same day you want to recycle them, and you can do this from anywhere, such as your home.
The app will check whether the items qualify for the scheme and then accept or decline the products. This can take up to 48 hours. The validation will only take place during working hours (Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm), so bear that in mind if adding items to the app at the weekend. Once accepted, these items are 'banked' in your ‘recyclables’ section in the app, ready for recycling.
Once the items you want to recycle are accepted on the app, it's time to recycle them! Go to one of the 700 Boots stores offering the recycling scheme and locate the recycling bin. Open the recycling app and scan the QR code on the side of the recycling bin.
Add the 5 items to the recycling bin and complete the recycling process on the app. You'll then be issued a voucher via the recycling app for use at the till. You can find the voucher by tapping the star icon on the menu at the bottom of the app screen.
This voucher is only valid for 3 days, and the idea is that when you make a purchase of £10 at the till, within those 3 days, you'll then be allocated 500 Advantage points, worth £5 to use on your next visit.
Therefore, it makes sense only to recycle your 5 items when you actually need to spend £10 or more on more than one product, so perhaps recycle the 5 items, activate the voucher on the app (which is only valid for use for 30 minutes once activated!), grab an item you want to buy, costing over £10 and head to a No7 till point to pay. (The Reward voucher cannot be used at a self-check-out till, or normal till), show the cashier your recycling voucher and pay for your product. Once you've done that, the £5 of points will be added to your Advantage Card, and can be used on your next purchase.
Now you have your £5 of points on your Advantage Card, head back into the store and grab something else you want to buy and go back to the tills and redeem my points on that item!
You need to remember that you can't pay with points and cash/card; you have to have enough points to cover the total cost of the product. As long as the product is less than a fiver, it'll be free. If it's more than £5, and you don't have extra points, it won't work!
You can, however, recycle 8 times per month. These must be separate transactions, and only one reward can be issued in a 24-hour period, but this means that you can earn £40 of points every month, as long as you have enough items to recycle! Items once Banked cannot be submitted again for a further Reward as these are counted as part of the previous Deposit. Items cannot be removed from the recycle bin and resubmitted!
This means you 'could', potentially earn £480 a year in Advanced Card points over a year, (That's a lot of items to recycle, but where there's a will there's a way!), which, if you saved them up, might buy a load of Christmas presents or keep you stocked up on perfume, etc! That said, remember that the points are only valid for 1 year and then wiped, so you'll need to keep an eye on your expiration date to avoid losing those points!
It makes sense to stack the free Advantage Points by using them on special Boots discount events, such as the weekly Boots £10 Tuesday event or Black Friday/ Sales events, as you'll get even more for your free points!
What can't be recycled?
For health and safety reasons, Boots cannot accept licensed medicines and any products or packaging that are labelled with a hazardous or dangerous materials symbol including, but not limited to, the following:
Aerosol cans, perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, permanent or temporary hair dyes in any type of packaging, brow and eyelash tints, safety razors and razor blades, disposable razors and razor heads, used PPE (disposable masks, gloves and visors), blister packs and foils, any electrical items such as hairdryers and straighteners, any medical devices, electrical or not, food packaging of any type, including crisp packets.
Widely recyclable card and paper packaging, glass jars, aluminium packaging, shampoo and conditioner bottles, shower gel plastic bottles, etc., that can be recycled via household waste recycling channels are excluded from the scheme, so it's not suitable for everything!