Beauty Brands That Have Kept Their Sustainability Promise

When it comes to doing your part to contribute to sustainability, considering every purchase is key as you want to ensure that you are feeding or promoting brands that do not use unethical and unsustainable practices.

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Sustainability comes in multiple forms, and with an e-commerce business such as the beauty industry, there are a lot more considerations to ensure that you are running an environmentally friendly business, especially when creating hundreds of thousands of products, if not millions.

Sustainability Practices Beauty Brands Should Adhere To

Packaging

One of the most important parts of creating a mass-consumed product is therefore you want to ensure that every product is as sustainable as possible. Therefore, minimising plastic packaging is the number one priority. Cardboard packaging for both the item and distribution is the way forward. Considering biodegradable materials like fruit pulp papers or mineral-based labels that decompose

Not to mention finding opportunities to encourage customers to refill their products, which is pretty popular with fragrance brands. Offering an incentive to save money is the key strategy to encourage customers not to buy new but to refill instead.

As most of the beauty industry uses plastic, you want to avoid a company that uses black plastic, as this is hard to recycle. That being said, you want to ensure they use a single material so the packaging itself can be recycled.

Ethical Ingredients & Formulation

You want to ensure that you are choosing brands that source their ingredients, whether it be locally sourced, as well as organic, biodegradable and derived from renewable sources. A good example of a sustainable formulation is water-free products, as this will significantly reduce the amount of clean water consumption.

Cruelty free is also a huge part of sustainable products; you should ensure that when choosing a brand, they are approved by either PETA or Leaping Bunny. These are the most qualified sources to approve a brand's validity in their ethical practices.

Consider lab-grown ingredients; while organic and ethically sourced is amazing, you don’t want them to contribute to overly harvest ingredients; therefore, ethically lab-grown ingredients can be a viable solution.

Supply Chain

So you are happy with the product's packaging, formulation and ethical practices, such as vegan and cruelty-free, but do they adhere to the transport and manufacturing guidelines to be a 100% suitable product from start to finish?

Brands That Have Adhered To These Practices

REFY Beauty

A relatively newer cosmetic brand compared to the long-standing pillars, but the way they have dominated the market is through their commitment to creating small, sustainable, and effective products while adhering to and promoting their commitment to sustainability. For example, Refy Beauty is Leaping Bunny approved (cruelty-free), paraben-free, and fragrance-free, and they ensure that their suppliers are independently audited to ensure that they continue to follow the practices they wish for their customers.

Lush

A very well-known international brand that has been a huge advocate for sustainable practices and cruelty-free products, from bath essentials to skin care. They encourage customers to return their packaging for discounted refills, natural and cruelty-free ingredients that are ethically sourced, and several other practices.

UpCircle

A hair and skincare brand that advocates for using upcycled ingredients that are completely natural but ethically sourced, which have led them to be Leaping Bunny approved, ocean-friendly and a zero-waste brand. They have one of the strongest commitments to being a sustainable brand that also doesn’t include harsh chemicals, and what makes them really special is that they are a family-owned and led business.

They are committed to helping the environment in more ways than just their products, and conduct regular beach cleans with volunteers and help out at food banks.

Honeypie Minerals

Honeypie minerals are dedicated to creating natural and pure mineral makeup. They promote themselves as cruelty-free, vegan-friendly and are created in small batches to prevent overusing specific products and natural ingredients, which are sourced ethically.

They also go as far as to use eco-friendly packaging and are committed to being 100% transparent with their customers. They are also committed to being a zero-waste company, which is extremely positive.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to buying and shopping ethically, there are a few ways you can help support these sustainable brands and prevent creating more wasteful purchases that all in all aren’t that good for your skin. These sustainable brands are committed beyond sustainability, but use friendly, natural ingredients that are gentle and good for our skin. Therefore, it’s not just the choice of buying products that are sustainable but that are effective in their creation.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind spending a little extra on products that are extremely friendly to the skin, but also are an ethical purchase.

Overall, just avoiding the large pillars of beauty brands such as Clinique and MAC as these brands don’t adhere to such practices and have such a huge impact on our environment.

Article Generously provided by Darcy Fowler

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