Clean Beauty: Our Favourite Eco Beauty Tips & Tricks
You don’t need a standing hot yoga appointment and a shelf full of powdered mushroom extracts to care about the ingredients in your beauty products. From parabens to artificial fragrances, these dirty beauty words are enough to make even the most apathetic beauty queen purge her entire bathroom cabinet. But what does clean beauty even mean, and do you really need to worry about switching?
Like most things in life, it comes down to personal preference. Of course, there are certain ingredients that are good to avoid as they may cause skin irritations or cause unnecessary environmental damage. For the most part, clean skincare, cosmetics, and hair care come down to your personal health goals. If you’re concerned about the health implications of using beauty products, then it truly is up to you to make that decision based on thorough research and reading to determine what is best for you and your family.
On the other hand, using products that are green and friendlier to the environment is a no-brainer. No one wants a beauty regime that will create ugly problems for the planet. The good news is that you don’t have to give up your lifestyle to be sustainable, it simply comes down to finding better alternatives. The key to making sustainable choices is understanding why your choices matter and how you can start with small changes to make a big difference in the end.
Here are our favourite eco-hacks and clean beauty tips you can adopt right now as you revamp your personal beauty routine to a greener lifestyle:
Change the way you shop
Buy ethically, buy locally and choose products which use fewer harmful chemicals, or products that are 100% earth-friendly.
We recommend: Earthsap’s pure natural range of beauty products are easy to use and easy on the pocket. Fragrant and natural, the range includes skincare, hair care, roll-on deodorant, toothpaste, foot powder and nature’s jelly. You’ll find no synthetic fragrances, irritants or allergens in Earthsap’ s body care products; they’re gentle, ethically produced and not tested on animals.
Luxurious and invigorating, the Earthsap Citrus & Ginger Body Wash is an easy way to make a switch to a cleaner beauty product. The product’s natural ingredients include coconut to hydrate your skin, grapefruit and ginger to stimulate circulation and get the blood flowing and a gentle cleanse to rejuvenate your skin.
Recycle reckoning
There is no point in switching to a more sustainable beauty regime if we are not recycling the product packaging correctly. While most of us are pretty good at recycling our kitchen waste, we tend to fall behind when it comes to our bathroom habits. Get a small recycling bin for your bathroom or dressing table and keep up the green work.
Top tip: Instead of using single-use face wipes and cotton pads to remove make-up, use a hot cloth or a make-up remover cloth, like the Makeup Eraser to remove your make-up.
Waste not, want not
This green tip will save you money too! Before recycling your near-empty beauty products, make sure you’ve used all the product in the dispenser, jar or tube. This can be difficult, especially when beauty packaging for creams, serums and dispensers have been designed to keep air getting to the product and reducing its potency.
Top tip: Keep a pair of pliers or strong scissors handy for when a product starts to run out, so you can cut open and separate the dispenser part from the body of the product and get the last drop out. A beauty spatula is another great tool to invest in to help you scrape out that last bit of product from a tube or jar.
Silicone savvy
Get silicone savvy and save the environment. Silicone is everywhere, but especially in hair conditioners, body lotions and face creams; it does not break down in the environment and may even be a hormone disruptor. It delivers a smooth, slidable texture, with a glossy sheen and fills in pores and fine lines, but it is literally a liquid plastic similar to the silicone you use to seal your shower stall. Using silicone on your skin can cause congestion and create a moisture barrier on your skin and hair. Using an organic product can deliver the same effect without the damage to the environment and your skin.
We recommend: Invest in silicone-free hair gloss and smoothing products or, make a homemade hair gloss! Mix one tablespoon of coconut oil with one tablespoon of honey, heat gently until liquid, and then apply and leave on for 20 minutes before rinsing.
Extend your reach
On your green journey, be open to discovering new, niche products that meet your expectations of a greener lifestyle and extend your care into the rest of your home. Once you’ve mastered your greener skincare and hair care routine, you can expand your scope and look for other places in your home where you can incorporate a more environmentally-friendly approach.
For example, using eco-friendly cleaning products is an extension of skincare, especially if you’re sensitive to many of the harmful ingredients used in many cleaning products. These ingredients can cause skin irritations and breathing issues for many people.
We recommend: The Earthsap cleaning range offers a safe, more natural alternative to conventional home cleaning products. Earthsap has been a manufacturer of earth-friendly toiletries and cleaning products for more than 20 years, with no dyes, chlorine bleach or harmful ingredients and no fumes or residues. The products are safe for your family, pets and the environment, and because they’re biodegradable, they won’t cause any harm to aquatic life or marine plant growth.
Formulated with the help of skilled microbiologists, Earthsap products are made using pure plant oils and other natural ingredients to help you reduce your carbon footprint and contribute to the local economy while saving the environment from pollution. Find the range of products at health shops, Wellness Warehouse, select Spar supermarkets and Faithful to Nature, because every contribution to a greener and healthier lifestyle will help you and our precious planet.