How you can enjoy eco-friendly beauty regime
Greening your grooming and beauty routine doesn’t mean giving up high performance products.
With so many brands considering their environmental impact, the number of effective green skincare and beauty products are growing all the time. Here are some pointers. One of the worst things about beauty and skincare products is their plastic packaging.
Most of it goes in the bin and then landfill.
When it comes to shampoos, conditioners, shower gels and liquid hand soap, you can take old containers to one of the increasingly common refill shops.
To find your nearest one,
Refill your containers
download the free app from www.refill.org.uk/ site.
On the high street The Body Shop is also rolling out a refill scheme, through which you buy the brand’s aluminium bottles and refill them in-store.
This helps resources to last longer and increase sustainability.
This way, we can reduce the amount of waste produced.
Another way to avoid plastic is to embrace the trend for naked products, which have no packaging at all.
You can swap plastic bottles of shower gel or shampoo for a bar of soap or a shampoo bar.
Lush has an amazing selection of such products, including
Go naked!
skincare treats, like an aloe bamboo cleanser (£10) and an argan facial oil bar (£10).
Online Pure Nuff Stuff sells cocoa and shea butter solid moisturiser bars from £5.50, all handmade in Cornwall.
Global brands are getting in on the act too, with Nivea launching a plastic-free almond and blueberry facial cleansing bar (£5.99).
Also, Garnier is now offering an oat-based shampoo bar (£7.99).
Most makeup bags are filled with single-use plastic, but some brands are at the forefront of plastic-free innovation.
Ethique makes a range of lovely lipsticks in cardboard tubes that you can buy online.
Luxury brands to look out for include Inika, which is the first makeup brand to go plastic neu
Makeup
tral, meaning for every kilogram of plastic it uses, it collects and recycles another kilogram.
Zao offers a range of organic, vegan and refillable makeup products.
You can mix and match its beautiful eye shadows in a refillable bamboo case (from £5.95 for each shade).
One easy thing you can do is stop using any kind of disposable cleansing or make-up remover wipes.
Most wipes contain plastic and can take a century to break down. Last year, a reef made from discarded wipes formed on the River Thames.
Use washable cotton pads instead.