The Realities Of Running A Circular Beauty Brand

If you’d told me nine years ago that I’d have built a brand on the concept of collecting coffee waste and turning it into skincare, I probably would have laughed. But, here we are. I bring you UpCircle Beauty: the brand that began by asking a local café what they did with their leftover grounds, and now diverts hundreds of tonnes of by-products from landfill every year. And we’re just getting started.

UpCircle was founded on a simple (but ambitious) question: what if we could make skincare and haircare from things that would otherwise go to waste? Circularity — reusing, repurposing, reinventing — isn’t just part of what we do, it’s everything. Our name. Our mission. Our reason for jumping out of bed in the morning. But, as with any story worth telling, ours hasn’t been without its fair share of plot twists.

Let’s start with the big guys. The beauty industry is massive — full of century-old brands with legacy status, bottomless budgets, and a resistance to change that’s, well, let’s just say “resilient.” In 2023, Dove alone produced 6.4 billion plastic sachets. That’s not a typo. We knew from the get-go that we were trying to disrupt an industry that hadn’t had a proper shake-up in decades. But we also knew someone had to try. And what better way to challenge the status quo than by proving you can perform for your skin and protect the planet?

We never wanted to settle for entry-level ethics. Vegan? Natural? Cruelty-free? That’s the baseline, the bare minimum. We wanted to go further. That’s why every UpCircle product is made with upcycled ingredients — from coffee and chai spices, to fruit peels, pulp and stones, to flower petals and stems. Ingredients that have had two lives: the first in someone else’s product, the second in ours.

That double life, however, makes things interesting. For example, we’re Soil Association and COSMOS-certified organic — but for some of our products, we can’t get certification simply because over half the formula is made from upcycled ingredients. Thankfully, the industry is catching up, but it’s taken a lot of pushing and patience.

Our supply chain is twice as complex as a typical brand’s. There are more steps, more partners, and more points where things can go a bit haywire. But we’ve come out the other side of everything the last nine years have thrown at us — a global pandemic, a supply chain crisis, inflation, a cost of living crisis, the list goes on. We’re proud to have proven that a circular brand can survive, and in fact scale up, even in the most challenging times. It’s also how we know we’re genuinely doing something different.

Then there’s our packaging. We knew 70% of beauty industry waste comes from packaging, so we wanted to change that too. Enter our refill scheme. Launched in 2020, it allowed customers to send back their empties for sterilisation and refilling — their own jars, not just anyone’s containers. We covered return postage and gave 20% off every refill. The scheme grew fast — 18% month on month — and was offered on 95% of our range.

But behind the scenes? Chaos. We had jars arriving without names, covered in duct tape, with hairs on them, or smashed en route. And as we’ve scaled up, the model has proven too complex to maintain. So, we’ve just had to announce that we’re evolving it — but not stopping it. We’re working on a new global, at-home refill system using a biodegradable, plastic-free sachet. Easier, cleaner, more scalable. Watch this space.

Today, we’re a team of 30, average age 27, mostly women, selling in over 55 countries. We’ve had almost no external investment, yet an UpCircle product sells every 90 seconds. We’re B Corp-certified, vegan, cruelty-free, plastic-negative, handmade in the UK — the works. But what makes me proudest isn’t a badge or a number, it’s knowing that we’re proof: proof that the beauty industry can do better, that circular economy principles do work, that a brand built on by-products can become a global disruptor.

UpCircle exists to inspire change — through small steps, positive messaging, and products that feel good to use and feel good to support. Because yes, the realities of running a circular beauty brand are messy and often verrrrry complicated, but they’re also pretty magical.