Planet-friendly beauty!

Here’s how to turn your new season regime green

1 THE SWEET SMELL OF SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s aerosol or roll-on, traditional deodorants can be tricky to recycle effectively – spray cans, if left partially full, are hazardous waste.

A greener approach is to get more hands-on. A cream formula applied with your fingertips will melt into skin and leave no residue behind, just a fresh scent. Look for a glass jar that can easily be recycled afterwards. The Natural Deodorant Co Clean Deodorant Balm, £12.50, in five scents (we love the grapefruit & mint), and its coconut oil formula softens the delicate underarm skin often left sensitive from shaving.

2 GET YOUR (RE)FILL

If you’re on the move, miniature products are certainly useful – but splashing out on travel-sized products, only to throw away the empties, is not the most environmentally conscious approach. Your best bet is to invest in a set of empty containers to fill with your usual shampoo, moisturiser and so on, to reduce the amount of packaging full stop. Better yet, try out silicone packaging for a mess-free, plastic-free approach to reusables.

Try out Boots Travel Squeezy set of three, £4.

3 FEELING BALMY

Almost 200 million plastic lip balm tubes end up in oceans or landfill every year. What’s the alternative? Ethique, a beauty brand who specialises in zero-waste products, has created lip balms using plastic-free packaging that can be placed in your home compost bin once empty. £6.50 each and packed with natural oils to soothe chapped skin, Pepped Up is a refreshing peppermint blast.

4 THE MANE PRODUCTS

Being eco-friendly and guaranteeing a good hair day don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Beauty Kitchen offers plastic-free shampoo and conditioner in bottles that can be sent back for refills, cutting down all waste (from £10), while L’Occitane has introduced solid shampoo bars, £10 each, packaged in recycled paper and lasting up to 20 washes. We love the Purifying Freshness variant, a grapefruit, lavender and mint scent that helps mop up grease around your roots. Wet the bar, then work up a lather before massaging into hair for the best results.

5 A RAZOR-SHARP APPROACH

Big brands in the hair removal industry have come on in leaps and bounds with their approach to using plastic. Gillette Venus (we love the Comfort Glide in Sugarberry, £12) has got rid of the plastic outer packaging (notoriously tricky to get into!) and replaced it with cardboard boxes and trays made from 40 per cent recycled material, and has teamed up with Terracycle to help dispose of razors and bars safely, while Wilkinson Sword Xtreme 3 Beauty Eco Green, £11.99, has a recyclable handle made from 95 per cent recycled plastic, with packaging made from paper.

6 SPF

The most topical issue facing our sun protection at the moment is the removal of ingredients like oxybenzone and octinoxate, which are said to be potentially harmful to aquatic life. That doesn’t solve the issue of packaging, though. While many brands such as Hawaiian Tropic use partly recycled plastic in their packaging, you can go one step further and try Sol de Ibiza Face & Body Plastic Free Tin SPF30, £22, with a formula suited to sensitive complexions, too.