A Beginner’s Guide to Shopping For Beauty: The Eco-Friendly Way
In the past few decades, the beauty industry has been a huge contributor to several environmental issues like pollution and unethical practices. However, many beauty brands are slowly but surely making changes in their products, packaging, and practices to ensure both they and their consumers can have a more positive impact on the world we live in.
With so much that needs to be done, it can feel a little overwhelming— like wanting to start the series F.R.I.E.N.D.S and hesitating once you see that there are 10 seasons, with a total of 236 episodes (now 237 with the newest reunion episode) to go through. But, just like starting a commitment to a long series, all it takes is to simply start with Episode 1.
Picking Your First Episode: Where can I start?
We’ve compiled a list of “episodes” you can start with on this new beauty eco-journey! All you need to do is pick which one resonates with you the most and go on from there.
The One Where You Choose Vegan and Cruelty-Free
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How it helps Beauty products that are both vegan and cruelty-free leave animals out of production 100%. So aside from the fact that no animals are used and harmed in the process, they also get to live in their natural habitats— allowing them and their ecosystem to thrive. Plus, these terms also indicate that a product uses less to no toxic chemicals that can harm us and our environment. |
How to start For small, local brands, the best and easiest way to fact-check their statements is to simply ask them. Additionally, do a quick search to see if the brand you’re looking at sells in China, where animal-testing is mandatory by law for foreign cosmetics. |
The One Where You Choose Quality, Durability, and Reusability
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How it helps A key part of a beauty product being sustainable is how long you can use it -- its lifespan. Single-use products have been getting a lot of attention lately because of how much material is needed to produce them, and how much trash it produces. Quality and durability does not only lessen waste in landfill, it also means less microplastics and toxins in the earth. |
How to start Paying the slight extra for something with assured quality and reusability may be daunting but think about how much time and money you’ll actually save in 6 months or more! If you’re unsure of what reusable product to buy first, you can start by figuring out what gets thrown away or spent on continuously and look for sustainable, eco-friendly replacements for those! |
The One Where You Shop Sustainably, Locally
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How it helps Shopping locally does wonders for our environment. It gives our people opportunities to be financially supported and strengthens our country as a whole. Moreover, local brands that are also sustainable do their best to make sure that they are limiting their negative impact on our world in every step of a product’s life (from extraction of materials to when a consumer disposes of the product). Not only that, but shopping locally significantly lessens greenhouse gas emissions that would come from transporting and travelling! |
How to start Wonderfully enough, options for local brands that are also sustainable are on the rise, with possibly even more small family businesses on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. A great way to find these can be following the #ShopLocal hashtag or even joining a couple Facebook groups where communities give each other ideas! Sometimes, local brands that aim to be sustainable promote each other and partner up occasionally. So, by finding and following at least one, you are sure to find more. Following @heyluxxlash is a great start! |
The One Where You Recycle Packaging
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How it helps An article by Stanford University states that recycling reduces the future need to process more of our world’s natural materials. So there will be less cutting down trees for new paper or burning fossil fuels to make plastic. Recycling Centers create new paper or plastic, while Composting is a way to recycle organic waste (i.e. food, raw paper, cotton balls, etc.) from within your home! |
How to start The best way to start recycling your packaging is to first pinpoint products that tend to either pile up or get thrown away often. This could include bubble wrap, moisturizer bottles, or paper packaging. Then you can either do a quick search to find a recycling center near you. Or, you can look up a good composting method that you can do at home! To get you started, check out this page for a recycling center, and this page to compost paper and cardboard! |
Continuing the commitment: What happens next?
Starting off a really great series gets easier and easier to binge-watch over time the more you begin to fall in love with the story and characters. Cultivating eco-friendly shopping and usage in your beauty habits is the same way— it gets easier and easier to understand what you’re doing and fall in love with why you’re doing it. Best of all, the ways in which you enjoy cultivating this lifestyle can be contagious. Influencing both brands and those around you to do the same creates a community of change! That is to say, like becoming FRIENDS in the journey to becoming eco-FRIENDly.
Start your eco-friendly shopping with us! Shop our premium, reusable, cruelty-free, and vegan Luxx Magnetic Lashes or #LuxxLineAndLash Bundles over on our shop page today. Then, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on @heyluxxlash to stay inspired with content like this.