To help prevent such materials ending up in landfill, a Kyneton business is participating in a recycling program that also helps a local school at the same time.

Alter Your Health is collecting beauty and cosmetics packaging from the public and sending it to recycling company TerraCycle, which converts it into raw materials that can be used to make park benches, playgrounds and garden beds.

For each piece of packaging Alter Your Health collects, 2 cents will be donated to Kyneton Primary School.

Cosmetics, hair care and skin care packaging, many items of which cannot be recycled by council facilities, is accepted.

Alter Your Health owner Melanie Ryan said she and staff wanted to make a place where the community could dispose of waste, and having a shop that sold a lot of beauty products, it was a natural fit.

Mrs Ryan said it was also a good chance to help the school, while teaching students about recycling.

She is confident the community will support the initiative.

“I think it’s going to be great… Kyneton is very environmentally aware anyway, so once they know about it, they’ll love it,” she said.