Today is our last day in business, and we wanted to end the only way we know how: with honesty, gratitude, and our heads held high.
When we started JunkTheory, we weren’t trying to be the loudest brand in skincare—we were trying to be the most responsible. We believed (and very much still do) that clean formulas deserved clean packaging, and that “better beauty” could mean fewer toxins, less waste, and more integrity. Thanks to you, that belief became real.
Together, we proved that people do want skincare that performs and protects what matters. We shipped premium formulas in metal packaging and stood for the idea that sustainability shouldn’t be a side quest—it should be the standard. We attended events, sat on panels, did podcasts, made loads of new friends, and teamed up with amazing organizations and other like minded-brands, because real change takes more than a single company—it takes a community.
We won’t reduce this journey to a number. But we will say this: every time you chose JunkTheory, you chose a path that avoids the default—single-use plastic in a world where only a small fraction of plastic is actually recycled.
And in an industry that produces well over 100 billion pieces of plastic beauty packaging each year, your choices mattered more than most people realize.
Even as we close, we’re genuinely encouraged by what’s happening in the sustainability world:
- Seaweed-based packaging innovations are becoming more real—research and new ventures are exploring seaweed-derived coatings and materials that could replace plastic linings and become compostable alternatives.
- Enzyme-driven plastic recycling is taking meaningful steps forward, with research focused on breaking down hard-to-recycle PET into building blocks that can be reused—especially important for contaminated waste streams.
- Biology-based solutions (including fungi and bacteria) are rapidly expanding as a field—scientists are uncovering and engineering natural systems that can help degrade plastics or transform plastic waste into useful inputs.
- And yes—there is a visible shift toward more recyclable packaging choices (including metal) in consumer goods, pushed by customer demand and better education. It’s not perfect, but the direction is unmistakable.
Thank you for trusting us with your skin, your bathroom shelf, your dollars, your DMs, your reviews, and your belief. Thank you for caring—even when caring is inconvenient. And thank you for helping make JunkTheory bigger than a product. You made it a movement.
Our social channels will stay up as an archive of everything we built together—so the ideas can keep traveling, even if we’re no longer selling.
With so much love and respect,
Allie + Justin +
The JunkTheory Team
P.S. If you want to keep pushing the mission forward, we hope you’ll keep choosing lower-waste packaging, supporting brands doing the hard work, and asking the big companies the questions they don’t love being asked: Why plastic? Why harmful ingredients? Why not better?
