Avon | Beautifying zero-waste

Scrapp® partnered with global beauty retailer Avon to tackle one of the industry's trickiest waste challenges: helping customers correctly dispose of cosmetics and personal care packaging. Starting with Avon's top 100 bestsellers across the UK, the pilot delivered clear, location-specific disposal guidance through the Scrapp mobile app — and the data made a compelling case for a full product line rollout.

Why is beauty packaging so hard to recycle?

Beauty and cosmetics packaging is some of the most confusing waste in any household. The products are small, the materials are mixed, and the rules change depending on where you live. A mascara tube might contain three different material types. A moisturiser jar might be glass with a plastic lid and a paper label — each component with a different disposal route.

For consumers, the result is paralysis. They want to recycle, but they don't know what goes where. So the packaging ends up in general waste, or worse — it contaminates a recycling stream because someone made their best guess and got it wrong.

For a brand like Avon, operating across multiple markets with a product catalogue spanning hundreds of SKUs, this creates a specific set of problems. Customer service teams field questions about packaging disposal. Social media fills up with confused comments. And any attempt to create static disposal guides fails almost immediately — because recycling rules are hyperlocal, changing not just country to country, but town to town.

With Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations putting increasing financial pressure on brands to account for the end-of-life impact of their packaging, Avon needed more than good intentions. They needed a tool that worked at the point of disposal, scaled across markets, and didn't require changes to existing product artwork or packaging.

How Scrapp made disposal guidance instant and scalable

Scrapp worked with Avon to design an education-first approach, starting with a focused 3-month UK pilot across Avon's top 100 bestselling products. The goal was simple: give every customer and Avon representative the ability to scan a product barcode or search for an item and get an instant, location-specific answer on how to dispose of every component.

The products were uploaded into Scrapp's system through the brand-verified program, where each item was broken down by component — the bottle, the cap, the pump, the label — and mapped against local recycling infrastructure. From that point, any user of the Scrapp mobile app could scan an Avon product and see exactly what to do with each piece, based on where they live.

What made the approach distinctive was the emphasis on speed and convenience. Scrapp's own research showed that convenience is the single biggest driver of consumer recycling behaviour. If the answer takes more than a few seconds to find, people default to guessing — or giving up. With Scrapp, the answer arrived in under one second.

The pilot was also designed to generate data that Avon's internal teams could use beyond the consumer-facing tool:

• Packaging component mapping across 100 bestselling products, identifying every material type and its disposal route by region
• Consumer engagement tracking to measure how customers and representatives interacted with disposal guidance
• Data management streamlining to centralise packaging information across departments — estimated to save 6 weeks of internal work
• Marketing integration with 10+ touchpoints during the pilot phase, giving Avon's marketing team real content to communicate their sustainability efforts

No additional artwork or packaging changes were required. The tool sat on top of Avon's existing product line, adding a digital layer of disposal intelligence without disrupting anything in the supply chain.

What the pilot data revealed

The 3-month UK pilot produced results that told a clear story about both consumer appetite and business impact:

• 523 packaging components disposed of correctly through the platform
• 2.54 kg of waste avoided from landfill during the pilot period
• 4.1 kg estimated carbon emission savings
• 10% of interactions involved products outside Avon's top 100 bestsellers — showing customers were actively looking for guidance beyond the initial scope
• 6 weeks of estimated time saved through Scrapp's centralised data management
• No additional artwork required, cutting potential execution time by over 12 months compared to on-pack labelling changes

When the data was scaled to model a full product line rollout, the projected impact was significant:

• 10 tons of consumer waste diverted from landfill annually
• 1,000+ products tracked across the entire UK market
• 2,000+ hours of estimated time savings through streamlined data management across multiple departments
• 12+ months of execution time saved by avoiding artwork redesigns

It's worth noting that the 10-ton projection only accounts for waste that's scanned or searched through the platform. If the tool succeeds in educating consumers — so they know what to do next time without needing to scan — the real impact is likely much higher.

What consumers actually said

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Beyond the operational data, Scrapp and Avon surveyed users and representatives to gauge real sentiment around the initiative. The feedback was unambiguous:

• 90% of users wanted to see more of Avon's products available in Scrapp
• 85% agreed that Scrapp made it significantly easier to correctly dispose of Avon's products
• An overwhelming trend emerged: consumers want to see brands taking visible, practical action on packaging end-of-life — not just making claims

This is a critical insight for any brand weighing the business case for disposal guidance. The consumer expectation is already there. The question isn't whether customers care about packaging waste — it's whether your brand is giving them the tools to act on it.

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The bigger picture: why beauty brands can't afford to wait

The beauty industry generates an estimated 120 billion units of packaging annually worldwide. Much of it is small-format, multi-material, and difficult to recycle. Consumers are increasingly aware of this — and increasingly frustrated by the gap between a brand's sustainability messaging and what they experience at the bin.

EPR legislation is closing that gap from the regulatory side. Under EPR frameworks, brands become financially responsible for the end-of-life management of their packaging. Products that are harder to recycle cost more. Brands that can demonstrate clear disposal pathways, accurate consumer guidance, and measurable waste reduction will face lower fees — and avoid the reputational risk of being caught without a credible plan.

Avon's pilot demonstrated that an education-first approach to consumer packaging disposal can be deployed quickly, at low cost, without changing existing packaging — and that the data it generates has value far beyond the consumer-facing tool. From EPR reporting to marketing content to internal data management, the return on a pilot like this compounds across departments.

Through Scrapp's partnership with Plastic Bank, every scan and search also contributes to removing ocean-bound plastic from the environment — adding a tangible environmental action to every customer interaction.

Want to understand the real end-of-life impact of your products?

If you're a brand or retailer looking to give customers clear disposal guidance, generate packaging intelligence for EPR compliance, and turn sustainability into a measurable marketing asset — book a 15-minute call with the Scrapp team.

See how other brands are tackling packaging waste with data: Beech-Nut | Oddisea | Sunrays