The environmental impacts of beauty industry.

Have a look around your vanity, is there any product's packaging made from environmentally friendly materials? Most are all made of plastic. Unlike fashion, we often forget the beauty industry participation in environmental problems. Most of us don’t know the fact that it takes nearly 1000 years to decompose your moisturizer jar.

Figure 1: Beauty industry usually “escapes" from the criticism of wastefulness.

Source: Food Tank

Before the explosion of plastic in the mid 20th century, shampoo and compacts are mostly made of glass, and usually refillable. But then plastic become the main material in the packaging world, brands follow the movement by using plastic for their product packaging, and other unnecessary materials like paper, glitter, and stickers for wrapping and displaying in order to stand out from the market. According to Zero Waste Europe, global cosmetics industry is accused of producing 120 billion units of packaging that eventually will be discharged to the environment. Therefore, when you get rid of those containers or lipstick tubes, you're literally contributing more un-recyclable plastics to landfills.

Apart from plastic packaging, the ingredients inside your makeup can also cause problematic issues to the environment. A majority of beauty brands nowadays are using chemical components in their products. The challenge with these harmful chemicals is that they don't break down and instead they become a part of our eco-system. After the cosmetics are dumped, they are sent to landfills or released into lakes, rivers or public water system, which then ultimately causes serious damage to wildlife and flora and fauna. According to Fro and Cesta, chemicals related to cosmetics have been found in agricultural soil and household dust particles. Therefore, it is important for consumers to empty out any excess products, put it in a sealed jar before sending it off to landfills.

Figure 2: Chemicals from excess products can cause extreme damage to our ecosystem.

Source: Refinery 29

It is important for cosmetics brands to adapt consumer's needs for sustainable and ethical beauty products. Brands gradually start making efforts in reducing plastic footprints and creating refillable and eco-friendly packaging, such as MAC Cosmetics, Kiehl's, LUSH now have recycling initiatives to increase eco-conscious consumers by offering free makeup in exchange for used plastic packaging. Large corporations like L'Oréal or Unilever have signed on to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s “New Plastics Economy” goals, targeting to make 100% of their packaging reusable, refillable, or compostable by 2025.

Indeed, it takes a village to tackle the plastic problem. For consumers, being more mindful when making purchase decision for your beauty products is considered to be the first step of your environmentally friendly movement. look for products with recyclable/ refillable packaging. We must also become a recyclers and re-users of packaging. Remember that fancy packaging is unnecessary, it's all about marketing strategy with the purpose of making us feel luxurious and elite, and our environment has nothing to do with that. Be conscious!