Aveda is my new favorite hair & skin care company with the announcement of their new recycling initiative, called the ‘Recycle Caps’ program.

Plastic bottle caps can become dangerous pollutants, littering our beaches and oceans. Birds and other marine creatures mistake them for food. The magnitude of this pollution problem is devastating to our oceans and wildlife. Aveda realizes that we do not have an operable system in place to recycle plastic bottle caps, so they created one.

Aveda is now collecting all hard, plastic bottle caps, which will then be shipped for recycling into new Aveda packaging, thus keeping them from entering our waterways and harming wildlife. You can return the caps through any of their stores, beauty salons and participating schools. Some of what they’ve already collected are being made into tops for the limited edition retro Clove Shampoo that will be out in September, 2008. The shampoo bottle will also include 96% post-consumer recycled content.

Aveda is a great company with a long history of environmental concern, frequently changing packaging to reduce materials, making recycling easier and adding more post-consumer content to their packages. They are also the first beauty company manufacturing with 100% certified wind power. Plus, this year they earned Cradle-to-Cradle certification for four ingredients. Wow! Now that’s an eco-friendly company to support!