Greenwashing at it's finest. Positioned as a revolutionary recycling program. Any metropolitan or other recycling program that takes plastic also takes the caps. Aveda just lost a lot of respect with me.

The goal of Aveda's bottle cap recycling program is to help combat the devastating effects of plastic cap pollution—and to increase awareness around this critical issue. Marine life mistake colorful plastic caps for food, leading to malnutrition and often death. Plastic caps are currently not widely accepted into many recycling streams in the U.S., so Aveda encourages consumers to check with their local recycling facility about including caps in recycling bins.

I've lived in several communities over the last few years, according the recycling guidelines in most of them (current township included) plastic caps should be removed from plastic bottles, which would imply that they don't get recycled. I dutifully remove the caps, but feel bad about throwing them away. Now I can save them up and drop them off at the Aveda school when I get my hair cut by their students. Thank you Aveda!

you'll find that bottle caps are the bane of the recycling company's existence. The pvc they are made of can ruin an entire batch of resin (the soup made from the plastic in the bottles.) When the caps are left on, the company has to cut off the top of the bottle, wasting part of the recyclable bottle as well as the cap, not to mention a waste of time and effort. So save your caps and recycle them on their own!

Dear Anonymous,
How lame to be critical of this innovative program when your criticism is based simply on a lack of knowledge. Unlike metal caps, plastic caps can not be recycled with the bottles that they come with. If you have been putting them in with your plastic recycling, you're contaminating the rest of the recycling. You should start removing your plastic tops and bring them into Aveda. Perhaps it would also be wise to hold off your public criticism of a company that is doing so many good things environmentally until you have your facts straight. Thanks Aveda for leading the way again - the genuine depth of your committment is appreciated.

To the person who wrote that any metropolitan recycling program that takes plastic takes the caps as well: WRONG! You obviously don't know what you are talking about. MANY recycling programs in the country only accept blow-molded plastics for recycling (if you don't know what this is, google it). Plastic caps are injection-molded and are therefore not acceptable. Give Aveda a break and do some research before making uneducated claims.

I think Aveda is filling a need. Our city and county recycle bottles, but ask us to take the caps off and throw them away. This is a great way to recycle my caps which would otherwise end up in the trash.

"Accepting" plastic caps is not the same as "recycling" them. Most caps are just cut off in the process and thrown into landfills.

I am a Package Design Engineer. Here's the truth about bottle caps and recycling from the inside. Most caps are made from "PolyPropylene" (Not PVC as someone else posted). PolyPropylene is actually one of the most widely used and useful, and one of the most "recycle-ABLE" of all the plastics. So why doesn't more of it actually get recycled, as others in this forum have pointed out? Because simply, it is difficult for the recyclers to sort it out from the bottles (usually made from PET or HDPE). Think about it from their point of view of running a business...they only sort out what is most easily separated quickly, and in the largest quantities. This means that the larger bottles are much easier to deal with than the much smaller caps. So it is not generally worth their time, money, and effort to try and sort out and recycle all of those small (and annoying) bottle caps. So they just separate out the easy larger items (the bottles) and discard everything else, no matter what it is or how recyclable it actually is as a material. That's the sad truth. This is in fact one of my biggest pet peeves about the recycling infrastructure (or lack there-of), and something that I and others like me are trying to figure out how to solve and improve.

So what Aveda is doing is absolutely great!! They are directly helping to improve one of the worst lackings about the recycling industry...making it easier to collect and recycle all of those valuable PolyPropylene bottle caps! Basically you, the consumer, are helping to accomplish the difficult sorting job, there-by making it more worthwhile and valuable to recycle these things! Way to go Aveda!

I have contacted over four Aveda salons in my community and none of them had even heard of Aveda's recycling cap program. I contacted Aveda via email several times to get an address of an Aveda Salon within 100 miles of where I live to take the recycled caps to, but Aveda did not respond at all. Today, I phoned Aveda and did get an address to send the caps to. The address to send caps to in the Western United States is:

Distribution Center
Veda Cap Program
Attention: Cesar Soto
475 West Apra Street
Rancho Dominguez CA 90220

The Aveda reycling cap page looks great and sounds great, but the program is not that great since many salons do not participate in the program. Perhaps the program is just new, and hasn't worked out its communications and promotion yet.

Whats the deal on glass bottles with metal caps? Should those be separated as well? And will Aveda accept metal caps?

http://aveda.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.asp

check here to see what they say about metal lids.