Beauty Waste. Beautiful Space.
Overview:
Created for the British Beauty Council’s Industry Day at the startof British Beauty Week 2026, this exhibition activation brought the scale and complexity of beauty waste into focus.
Working in partnership with MYGroup, ReFactory designed and built a series of installations demonstrating how difficult-to-recycle cosmetics and healthcare packaging can be collected, separated, processed and transformed into new materials and applications.
The brief was to make the recovery process tangible without resorting to the visual language of a conventional recycling exhibition. Instead, the stand took its cues from premium beauty retail, combining sculptural forms, tactile materials and restrained graphics to create an engaging introduction to circular design.
Three installations brought the story to life: a retail-inspired take-back station, a physical representation of the plastic recovery process, and a suspended sculpture made from hundreds of returned fragrance bottles.
Together, they connected MYGroup’s operational recycling infrastructure with ReFactory’s approach to material innovation, demonstrating how waste can become both a resource and a design opportunity.
How it was made
Beauty Waste. Beautiful Space.
The take-back station explored how recycling could become a considered part of the beauty retail experience. Combining practical functionality with a premium finish, the unit featured a custom countertop made from shredded beauty packaging encapsulated in recovered eco-resin, alongside custom pink MYBoard manufactured from recovered beauty waste.
Partially transparent side panels revealed the recycled material within, enhanced by integrated illumination. The installation demonstrated how take-back points could become part of the retail environment while introducing customers to the complex materials involved in beauty packaging recovery.
Follow the System
A playful, pipe-based installation brought MYGroup’s plastic recovery process to life: Collect → Sort → Shred → Process → Remake.
Inspired by the machinery at MYGroup’s Hull treatment plant, the display used physical material samples to show how plastics change throughout the process. Custom pink MYBoard, developed specifically for the event, featured in the installation and formed the counter beneath it, demonstrating the potential of recovered plastics in furniture and retail applications.
The Scale of Beauty Waste
Hundreds of returned fragrance bottles were transformed into a suspended sculptural installation, making the scale and complexity of beauty waste the visual centrepiece of the stand.
Arranged around a seven-arm spiral, the bottles hung at varying heights beneath integrated illuminated rings that highlighted the glass, colours and reflections. CAD studies and physical prototyping informed the design, while a CNC-drilled mirrored plate controlled the arrangement of individually suspended bottles.
Each bottle was sorted, emptied, cleaned and prepared by hand before assembly. The finished sculpture was built and tested by ReFactory before being transported to London for installation at Freemasons’ Hall.
Materials and exhibition design
The wider stand took its visual cues from premium beauty retail, combining blush pinks, cream and mineral tones with clean forms and concise graphics.
The exhibition walling was made entirely from recycled waste, using MYBoard for the structure and a distinctive render-effect finish created from shredded cardboard beauty packaging. Alongside the eco-resin countertop and custom MYBoard installations, these materials demonstrated how recovered waste could create sophisticated finishes and functional applications.
Bold statistics and physical material samples communicated the story without overwhelming visitors with technical information, showing that circular materials can sit naturally within a premium brand environment.
Turn waste into worth
Through skilled craft from joinery to stitching, materials are transformed into enduring, functional creations.