The normalization of emptying beauty products.
By Katya Pacheco and Adi Sharoni, Mar. 24, 2026.
Project Pan has been around for a decade on reddit but within the last year has gotten more popular due to its trending on Tiktok. This trend encourages people to use a product to its bottom (“hit pan”) while posting their progress on social media to hold themselves accountable and stay motivated.
The idea began in 2015 where the Reddit channel r/ProjectPan was created for people to update their progress before making its way over to YouTube, and later TikTok.
“I saw other people online, but I was looking at what I had, and considering that I don’t use as much as people who are beauty influencers, I was like, you know this is a lot for an average person like myself,” said Dalia Tatta, a student at Vanier College, who started doing Project Pan at the beginning of the year.
Even with the price of beauty products continuing to rise, the $450 billion global industry continues to grow. Research from McKinsey & Company said that from the years of 2022 to 2024, the industry grew seven per cent annually. They expect it to gradually grow with an expectation of five per cent annually until 2030.
According to research by Circana, from Nov. 2023, the amount of sales of beauty products in Canada grew by 18 per cent.
“I was just accumulating so many things that I didn’t even realize I had, so it definitely is saving me money by just using what I already have,” said Tatta when discussing the economic benefits to Project Pan.
“I saw someone else’s Project Pan video and it made me curious to see all of my stuff laid out in one spot and how much stuff I had. […] I saw it all and I was like, oh, I’m actually worse,” said Kelsey Hall, a lifestyle content creator, on a YouTube video.
Brands encourage overconsumerism by looking into current trends to get an understanding of what their consumers are looking for, as well as targeting consumers’ fear of missing out.
“Sometimes, these companies may offer very deep discounts. For example, around late November, early December, this leads to lots of impulse buying around that time of the year,” said Sunghwan Yi, a professor in consumer behavior at the University of Guelph.
On TikTok, the Project Pan hashtag has accumulated over 140,400 posts with content creators like Anna Elizabeth, Hannah Payne, and Susie Fan who have accumulated over millions of views on their Project Pan videos.
“I do have people watching what I’m doing, which is certainly a motivator, but mostly, I really like how intentional it’s made me with my products,” said Hall, who has been uploading videos of her Project Pan journey for the last eight months.