The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Beauty brains Lisa Armstrong
Sometimes it’s what’s on the outside that counts
In the same week that Greta Thunberg gave her last speech of 2019, I received a Greta-friendly glass jar of Wildsmith Skin’s Active Repair Copper Peptide Cream and a glass bottle of its Copper Peptide Serum. Both were wrapped in card made from compostable mushrooms and agricultural waste.
I’ve been using the serum and cream for several weeks. They smell delicious, hydrate skin and leave a glow. However, it’s that mushroom packaging that caught my eye. Why do so many brands still use pots that are three times as large as they need to be, especially when the section containing the potion is a fraction of the total size?
If you think that’s bad, you should see the huge boxes and layers of Styrofoam, the pink balloons and miniature plastic fridges
(can’t even rememproduct ber the this came with, but evidently one that needed to be kept cold), the laminated press releases and other gaudy gimmicks that are sent out with beauty products for journalists to trial.
Sustainable packaging doesn’t have to be hair-shirty. Wildsmith’s compostable cardboard, with its gold embossed trees, is lovely – and is now buried in my garden.
Wildsmith isn’t cheap – £150 for the duo – but its ingredients are high-grade and potent. For a more pocket-friendly peptide serum, Garden of Wisdom’s Anti-aging Multipeptide Serum, £20 for 30ml in recyclable plastic, is hard to beat (victoriahealth.com).
Beauty is increasingly not just about what’s inside the bottle, but the bottle itself. If a small label can be innovative about cutting down waste, isn’t it time the big conglomnote? erates took Here are five more brands to watch
out for…