Much like the fashion industry reviewed last week, the beauty cosmetic industry is a rapidly evolving outlet in society that has to constantly stay up-to-date with trends to be relevant.

Unlike the fashion world, where it is much more difficult to realize the harmful consumption of plastics and waste, the makeup industry is easily identifiable as one that contributes to the dangerous, unhealthy world we are living in. It has been noted that the makeup world produces more than 100 billion units of plastic within all of the products created, yet less than 9% of the plastic produced is recycled thus creating an abundance of unnecessary waste.

While the obvious negative impacts to climate change, pollution, and waste are evident in the beauty world, in the recent years, there has been a multitude of initiatives to fight the stereotype and make a change.

Now more than ever, there are vegan beauty brands, no waste companies, completely compostable makeup, and so much more. But like many things in society, as the fight continues to expand the sustainability of beauty brands, there is always a double edged sword.

While seven out of ten beauty shoppers believe that companies should be more transparent about their efforts, there is a low percentage of people that will put forth the effort as consumers to support sustainable makeup products whether it is because of price or the extra energy needed to recycle a finished product over throwing it in the landfill.

One specific approach to mitigating the problems that arise with wanting to be more sustainable but having consumer “errors” get in the way is the upbringing of “naked” products. In other words, these “naked” products means that there is no packaging.

Now this approach while it solves serval issues, is not applicable to all beauty products. On the positive side, naked products have no packaging which means they are ultimately less expensive and more money efficient being that the consumer can get every last drop of material with zero waste being created. As a con, like mentioned above, not all beauty/makeup products can be maintained in this method. For example, the products that have the ability to go “naked” are those that are compatible and most times put into a bar-like form. Some common package-less products include shampoo, conditioner, and cream eye shadow/pigment compacts.

In most cases, multi-brand beauty stores will not highlight these products because more times than not they target a specific audience that wants to make a difference in sustainability efforts. A lot of the “naked” products are sold by individual brands such as Lush, The Earthling Company, Well Earth Goods, and so many more. Based on what I saw in my little time searching for various products, there are a lot of individual beauty creators and sellers on platforms like Etsy. Most of these brands also focus on healthy being, making their products not only naked but also cruelty free, toxin free, and all natural products.

On a similar note, there is a wide misconception about complete sustainability in the beauty.industry. Some believe that sustainable makeup is one that does not cause harm to the human body through toxic waste and products. While this is a measure that we want to actively be taking because no one wants to consume chemicals through the pores of our skin, sustainable beauty is more than the human body, but also being considerate of our planet’s body.

The trick to determining between the two is looking further into the packaging and production of the products. While using vegan and all natural makeup products is a habit that is a beneficial choice, the reality of saving our planet and slowing down the effects of global warming/climate change is only going to be changed by a difference in production means.

Altogether, there are a plethora of cosmetic brands working to change their impact on our planet through their production methods. There are also brands working to limit individual product waste to as little as possible or even none. While efforts are growing in this sense, similar to fast fashion companies that have no compare to other brands, some of the typical “must have” beauty products have too much popularity to limit production matters creating a gap in sustainability efforts.

As for last time, I mentioned a recommendation for how to help fight the efforts of more sustainable products. When it comes to the beauty industry, more times than not the brands that are working to change sustainable efforts also are brands that have all natural products. This being said, the cost to support these brands may be higher, but ultimately nothing can compare to the cost of our planet. Overall, the reality of the makeup/beauty industry and many others is that we all have our guilty pleasures of products we want. That is completely fine. The point is that we all just need to start doing better as a whole. It is okay to buy a product you want, but maybe spend some extra time looking into how to properly dispose of the product so that it causes less harm, whether that be in a landfill, recycled, broken-up in a certain way, and so on. The more steps to small progress that we take, the better we will all get at unconsciously taking the proper steps to a better and healthy planet.

Sources:

https://www.thisismatrix.com/sustainability-in-the-beauty-industry-2019-update/

https://www.voguebusiness.com/beauty/to-be-more-sustainable-beautys-biggest-companies-are-teaming-up

https://www.sustainablejungle.com/best-of-sustainable-beauty/zero-waste-make-up/

https://lmi.edu/how-the-beauty-industry-is-promoting-sustainability/