How To Recycle Nail Polish
Photo of five nail polish bottles on stone-like surface by ClassicallyPrinted from Pixabay
Updated 2024.07.16
If you’re wondering how to dispose of your nail polish, you may also be interested in recycling it first or donating it to someone who needs it.
Receiving donated, pre-owned nail polish can be a treasure for some.
So before properly disposing of your nail polish, consider recycling it first.
If you’re wondering how to recycle nail polish, below are 3 places where you can recycle your nail polish:
Photo of multi colored nail polishes laying in a bed of nail polishes from Pixabay
1. Give Your Nail Polish Away In A Buy Nothing Group
Offer your pre-owned nail polish to your neighbors for free! Join a Buy Nothing Group, which is an online network where neighbors give freely to one another.
The Buy Nothing Project is a movement that believes in the worldwide community of neighbors caring for neighbors. They believe that local social networks have a web of abundance and are full of wealth.
Find a local Buy Nothing Group nearby on Facebook by searching Buy Nothing and your area in the Groups Section.
To join, you usually have to provide the cross streets where you live to verify you are in the area and then the admin will approve you.
When inside a group, share the nail polish you have to give, by posting one photo of your polish (or collection) with text describing what it is, and any person interested will comment. You usually make arrangements for time and place to pick up privately with the receiver.
2. Donate Your Nail Polish To A Thrift Store Near You
Many thrift stores take nail polish. Not all, so you do have to ask or observe who carries what.
Find a thrift store or two that you like, ask if they accept nail polish or look around to see if they do, and then make your delivery.
Nail polish can be a hot item that goes quickly at thrift shops. You can find it in baskets in some shops right near the register. Your pre-owned shades can become someone else’s treasure, really!
3. Mail-In Your Nail Polish with the Zoya Recycling Program
If you’re looking for mail-in nail polish recycling, Zoya Nail Polish offers a nail polish exchange program.
You can send Zoya your pre-owned nail polishes where they are then donated to a local cause.
Last year, they ran a special in this exchange where all recycled polish boxes got a 50% off discount on any new polish ordered from Zoya.
Out with the old, in with the new. Keep an eye out for this deal around Earth Day, which is when we saw it last year.
Okay so those are three options for recycling your nail polish.
If all ways to recycle your polish have run short, finally, consider disposing of your nail at a Hazardous Waste Drop Off site before tossing it in the trash.
How To Recycle Nail Polish text overlay photo of multi colored nail polishes laying in a bed of nail polishes from Pixabay
Is nail polish hazardous waste? Yes, the EPA considers nail polish hazardous waste.
This means that if you want to dispose of your nail polish, throwing it out is not the most environmentally friendly way to discard your pre-owned collection.
It needs to be disposed of in a way that seals the chemicals and prevents the bottles from breaking and leaching into surrounding soil and groundwater sources.
Thankfully, many local county Health Department’s offer free Hazardous Waste Drop Off days, usually twice a year in the spring and fall.
You can take all your nail chemicals to be properly disposed of for free on these event days.
To find your local free Hazardous Waste Drop Off days, check your local county’s Health Department listings for drop off days near you. If you live near a large water body or somewhere environmental projects are a priority, there may be other groups hosting these events too.
So to recap, if you want to recycle your nail polish:
Consider giving it away to a neighbor in a Buy Nothing or giving group
Think about donating it to a local Thrift Store that resells nail polish
Send it to Zoya Nail Polish as part of their exchange program
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