Did you know that Boots have a recycling scheme for hard-to-recycle beauty and healthcare packaging and it’s now available in Harpenden. It’s intended for items that can not be recycled elsewhere so you are still encouraged to use local recycling where possible, but it’s great for used make-up packaging and toothpaste tubes amongst others.

I recently joined the scheme and tried it out for the first time this week, once I had collected the minimum of 5 accepted products. The idea is that you register with the Boots Scan2Recycle scheme and can earn Advantage card points for making deposits. If you don’t have an Advantage Card you can still deposit items in store without being part of the scheme, but you won’t earn any rewards.

The process does seem a little cumbersome the first time but once you’ve tried it it’s not too bad.  You first need to create a Scan2Recycle account. When you have an eligible empty item (you can check what is and isn’t accepted here) you log into your account to photograph and identify the item in order to “bank” it. Within 24 hours (on working days) the item will have been checked and validated (or not) to indicate whether or not you can deposit it. 

Once you have banked 5 or more validated items in your account you can take them to the store to deposit them.  This is done by logging into your account, indicating the items you are depositing and scanning a barcode on the deposit box.

When you deposit 5 items you will receive a voucher in your Scan2Recycle account worth 250 Advantage Card points. Be aware that the voucher is only valid for 3 days and you can only redeem it when you spend £10 or more in a single transaction, so you may want to be organised to coordinate your recycling deposits and new purchases! When the voucher is successfully scanned at the till it adds 250 points to your Advantage Card.

As I said it does seem a bit involved, but don’t be put off. It’s great to have somewhere to recycle those tricky items and to get rewarded for it too! Full details of how it all works are explained on the Scan2Recycle website.

You can find details of lots more places to reuse and recycle things in Harpenden in our article.

Update April 2024: There's now a Scan2Recycle app, which makes things a little easier because you no longer have to log on to the website each time you want to scan or deposit!