Take a look at your bathroom and what do you see? It’s probably cluttered with shampoo bars, your favourite scented shower gel, lavender bubble bath that is reserved for stressful days, and various lotions, potions, polishes and scrubs – the list goes on. Although we try our best to live minimally, bathrooms can very easily become a dumping ground for unused or part-used cosmetics. If this sounds familiar (and no shame if so), fear not, as there’s a solution. We caught up with Karen Harvey, founder of the Toiletries Amnesty, to find out more.
A few years ago I was looking in my airing cupboard and I came across a couple of bottles of shampoo that I had bought but wasn’t going to use and wondered ‘what do I do with these?’ It would have been a waste to get rid of them and I thought maybe homeless shelters would want them. I got in touch with Winter Comfort (wintercomfort.org.uk), a company in Cambridge who support those who are homeless by offering them welfare services and opportunities for learning and training. They said they would take them, so I started speaking to friends and asked if we could start collecting other bits, as there was no point taking just two bottles of shampoo. I posted about it on my own blog and people kept getting in touch offering products. Dozens of people were saying ‘can we send stuff to you to pass on’ and from there it went crazy.