Old lotion shouldn’t be piling up in your bathroom. Breathe easier with more space, and take this chance to find some new products to replace your expired ones!
Expired lotion is not hazardous but doesn’t provide proper nutrients to the skin. Lotion can be thrown in the trash, reused, and recycled. Lotion and other skin care products should not be poured down the drain as they can clog pipes. People should prepare their bottles for recycling.
Old lotion shouldn’t be piling up in your bathroom. Breathe easier with more space, and take this chance to find some new products to replace your expired ones!
What to do with old lotion
Lotion can stay good for years, but it does expire. Once it has expired, your body lotion will no longer provide the same nourishment to your skin. If your lotion comes in a jar rather than a tube or bottle, then there’s also a chance it may have collected bacteria.
Expired lotion isn’t any more toxic than good lotion, but it’s not useful, and it can be kind of gross. To get rid of the stuff, don’t feel bad about throwing old lotion into the trash can. Lotion itself cannot be recycled, so you don’t need to hold on to it. There isn’t any risk of it reacting chemically with anything in the average trash can, so just pour it in!
The only thing you don’t want to do is pour lotion down the sink. Lotion is full of oils, fats, and waxes that are great for your skin, but don’t dissolve in water. Lotion can clog up sink drains and pipes, and be hard to get out because the water won’t melt away.
If you do have lotion in your drain, pour down some dish soap, and let it sit for a few minutes before washing it away with hot water. Soap is designed to absorb oils. You may want to put your lotion in a biodegradable container to keep it from getting everything in your trash can slimy, but if that isn’t a concern of yours, just toss out the old stuff.
What to do with old lotion bottles
Recycling is a great way to keep trash out of landfills and oceans! Unlike lotion, lotion bottles can usually be recycled and reused. The bottles are usually made of tough, recyclable plastic bottles and tubes. Glass containers can be recycled as well.
Take the bottle apart and clean out all of the lotion. Once you have cleaned out the lotion, put the plastic and glass in the recycling bin. If you want to reuse the bottle at home, that’s great! You’ll need to clean it out really well with lots of soap and hot water.
Once clean, you can refill the bottle with whatever you want, or cut it to a specific shape to be used for a project. If the bottle is big enough, a fun craft is to cut off the top of the bottle, and cut a hole towards the top on one side. Use the hole to hook the empty bottle on a nail or hook on the wall, and use it to hold anything from your keys to makeup brushes!
If you don’t want to hang it up on the wall, you can use the empty cup to hold pens and pencils on your desk. Pat yourself on the back, you just made a cute craft out of a regular piece of trash!
How to tell if your lotion is expired
Lotions should have an expiration date on the container, but they can stay good for longer, or not as long. And sometimes you may just lose or scratch the container!
If you’re unsure whether your lotion is still usable, here are a few ways to tell. The biggest indicator is going to be texture. The more watery lotion is, the less it works. Expired lotion won’t feel as nice on your skin since it’s not moisturizing it the way it’s supposed to. The lotion may start to separate, and become a thicker paste and watery liquid that doesn’t quite mix together.
The smell is another big indicator. You should never use any product that smells rancid or musty, and that includes lotion. Lotion that comes in jars can become contaminated with bacteria if you don’t wash your hands before using, so keep a closer eye on those containers and don’t apply lotion with dirty hands or on dirty skin! It’s not just bad for the lotion, it’s just gross. If your lotion is fuzzy, spotted, or discolored, don’t risk it! Throw that nasty stuff out. Lotion is not worth spreading bacteria on your skin.
Which Lotion Bottles Cannot Be Recycled
Recycling centers are forced to throw away thousands of products every day because of misinformation on what can be recycled and what cannot. If you want your lotion bottles to be recycled and not thrown away at the recycling center then read on to learn how to prevent that.
Lotion cannot be recycled. The actual substance of lotion can actually contaminate the other recycling products it is stored with if it gets on it. Therefore, if you put your partially full lotion bottle in the recycling you can hurt other recyclable goods. You will need to use soap and water to scrub out all the lotion inside of your lotion bottle
Also, if you have a lotion bottle that has a pump on it remove the pump entirely. Most recycling agencies do not like products with pumps, because pumps have different materials than the recyclable plastic that your lotion bottle will have. You can just throw away the pump. This will also make it a lot easier for cleaning out your lotion bottle.
If you have travel-sized lotion bottles recycling centers will not take those either. Recycling centers only take bottles that are over 2 inches in length. The small travel-sized bottles are just too hard to deal with in their mass production.
Another lotion bottle that cannot be recycled is a lotion bottle with a dark color. The dark color cannot be recognized by the MRF machine in charge of recycling the materials.
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