How To Create An Eco-Friendly Beauty Routine

5 simple, sustainable alternatives to make your beauty routine more eco-friendly: 

Switching products:
In beauty, sustainability means having recyclable packaging, reducing the need for single-use plastics, carefully selecting non-toxic ingredients, and decreasing the carbon footprint from manufacturing to delivery. It’s all about making sure everything from sourcing and selling is making the tiniest impact on the environment.  Around 80 billion plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles are thrown away globally each year contributing to the rise in environmental damage, this is why we need to encourage an eco-friendly beauty routine.

Increasingly, brands are turning to solid bars to reduce waste. Firstly, they reduce the use of packaging. Secondly, they reduce water consumption, making use of the water you’re already showering in to lather up. Some brands use natural and organic ingredients in the formulas they produce, to create environmentally friendly packaging. 

LSBM recommendation – look for products containing marine extracts and algae that work wonders for your skin. These ingredients turn carbon dioxide into oxygen as they grow. Making sustainable choices by looking at labels before we purchase a product. For example, The Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance logos indicate the ingredients are sustainably sourced. Making sustainable choices by searching for products that are 100% home recyclable or home compostable will help decrease pollution. Further, products produced from existing materials are a perfect example of a planet-friendly purchase.

Use a hot cloth instead of face wipes:
We all know face wipes are convenient, however, not an eco-friendly choice and harm the environment. Face wipes contribute to the ongoing littering of our coastline as people continue to flush them down the toilet polluting our oceans. Furthermore, makeup wipes only break down the makeup and don’t properly clean it,  the most effective, eco-friendly way to remove makeup is by using a hot washcloth. LSBM recommendation – Face Halo (£15.39 for 3). Using only water, Face Halo traps and removes makeup for a deep clean, and gentle exfoliation and doesn’t tug on your skin. They offer a deeper cleanse than wipes do cleaning into the pores. Likewise, Garnier’s Micellar Reusable Eco Pads (£4.49 for 3)  can be purchased with micellar water and is reusable up to 1,000 times.

Consider refillable options:
Choosing to reuse bottles will help prevent plastic pollution at the source. You can reduce plastic waste as many of us don’t reuse our empty bottles of body lotions or makeup products. Replacing plastic with alternatives goes a long way in reducing the amount of plastic pollution that ends up in oceans. Because plastic cannot break down, it will simply sit there for years to come. Refillable options are beneficial to the environment as they help reduce pollution, waste, and energy consumption. Opting for multi-purpose products will reduce the number of products we use, therefore, reducing the amount of packaging we waste. LSBM recommendation – OUI has created shampoo refills. This convenient idea for refill pouches is good since we tend to run out of our shampoo before our conditioner.

Use products in recycled, recyclable, and reusable packaging:
Unlike other packaging varieties, eco-friendly packaging is recyclable and sometimes even repurposed or composted if it is highly biodegradable. Products must be biodegradable to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and supply the earth with life-promoting nutrients. Whilst lots of brands currently are not using recycled plastics for their packaging, you can opt to seek out the brands that do, and play your part in reducing your carbon footprint.

LSBM recommendation – Brands like REN are already placing existing plastic to good use. Some brands are creating drop-off points for your beauty empties, with some exceptions such as aerosol cans, perfume bottles, and nail polish bottles.

LSBM Recommendation- Get a recycle bin for your bathroom.
The importance of recycling reduces the need to grow, harvest, or extract new raw materials from the earth. Moreover, saving the energy that would have been used in producing waste products again. Incorporating a recycling bin in your bathroom can help you increase your recycling. Many bathroom products are recyclable such as shampoo and conditioner bottles, shower gel, and bubble bath bottles. The packaging made from cardboard boxes used for toothpaste, soapboxes, toilet roll tubes, deodorants, and shaving foam bottles is all recyclable.