Recycle at Boots: Turn Your Empties Into 500 Free Points: Up to £480 worth a year!

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 five 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:

1. Help recycle and divert plastic waste from landfills and oceans, which has numerous environmental benefits. 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).
   

2. The scheme rewards environmentally conscious Boots customers with extra Advantage Points to use towards a purchase made at Boots. To participate, you'll need to be a Boots Advantage cardholder (free to join) and download and register the Boots Recycle app.

What items can you recycle at Boots?

The idea is that you recycle the empty packaging from your health and beauty products, and these are typically small, tricky-to-recycle items that can’t go in your household recycling bin:

• Travel-size bottles and mini product tubes

• Mascara, lip gloss, lipsticks, foundation bottles and compacts

• Plastic skincare and cosmetic tubes (like moisturiser, cleanser, serum)

• Pump-top bottles (e.g. hand sanitiser, spray mists)

• Cream pots, hair mask tubs, night cream jars

• Toothpaste tubes, floss containers, manual/electric toothbrush heads

• Sheet mask wrappers and similar pouches

• Small health, wellness, and beauty items (including mixed materials)

  
  

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. You can view all the recyclable items that are accepted here.

What items can't be recycled at Boots?

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:

Boots doesn’t accept:

• Full-size shampoo, conditioner or body wash bottles

• Glass items (e.g. jars or perfume bottles)

• Perfume, nail polish, nail polish remover

• Medicines or anything classed as hazardous waste

• Aerosols or pressurised containers

• Items that can already be recycled at home (e.g. simple plastics or card)

How does the Boots recycling 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 verify whether the items qualify for the scheme and then accept or decline the products accordingly.
  

• Verification can take up to 48 hours. The verification will only take place during working hours (Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm), so bear this in mind when adding items to the app over 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! Visit one of the 700 Boots stores offering the recycling scheme and locate the designated recycling bin. Open the recycling app and scan the QR code on the side of the recycling bin. Boots scan to recycle locations near me: Use the store locator site, enter your postcode, and select your store. Then, check the "Store Details" and "In-Store Services" sections to see if the "Recycle at Boots" scheme is offered.

• Add the five 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 located at the bottom of the app screen.
  

• This voucher is only valid for 3 days. 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 five items when you actually need to spend £10 or more on more than one product, so perhaps recycle the five 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 self-checkout tills or for online purchases. You'll need to go to a 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 that you have £5 of points on your Advantage Card, head back into the store and select something else you'd like to buy. Then, return to the tills and redeem your points on that item.

  
  

• Please note that you can't pay with points and a card; you must have enough points to cover the total cost of the product. As long as the product costs less than £ 5, 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. This means that you can earn £40 of points every month, provided 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 Advantage 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 one year and then expire, 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!

Other recycling at Boots

• Blister Packs - Recycle Your Medicine & Vitamin Blister Packets. Check for a separate recycling box, deposit 5 or more blister packs in one go, and you will receive 100 Advantage Card points when you spend £5. T&C's apply.
  

• Used Insulin Pens – Empty, pre-filled Novo Nordisk pens are accepted for recycling through the PenCycle scheme in Boots pharmacies.