Make Your Beauty and Grooming Routines More Eco-Friendly with These Simple Tips

If you’re anything like us, quarantine life has motivated you to reevaluate your living space, whether that means Marie Kondo-ing your entire wardrobe, buying some festive and air-filtering houseplants, or finally organizing your bookshelf by categories in A-to-Z perfection.

Or, if you’re really like us, you’ve been spending some serious time rethinking your beauty routine. With nowhere to go but Zoom calls, for many, that’s meant paring down your makeup collection. For some, it’s been spoiling yourself to an extra homemade sugar face scrub or two in an effort to nourish your skin and find a bit of zen amidst these depressing times. For some, DIY manicures have become a weekly bright spot.

It’s also been a moment to pause and reflect on how our beauty routines impact the environment and think about how we can improve our beauty MO for ourselves, our environment, and animals. That's why we were thrilled when we came across this piece from Shammara Lawrence, 5 Easy Ways to Give Your Beauty Routine an Eco-Friendly Makeover on WomenHealthMag.com. Here are three takeaways we’ll be implementing ASAP:

Women’s Health praises Burt’s Bees Charcoal and Whitening with Fluoride Toothpaste, a product that contains responsibly sourced charcoal and naturally-derived hydrated silica, from a company which does not test on animals. The article also notes to look for a seal from organizations like the Rainforest Alliance.

Take it a step further and seek out brands that don’t use plastic packaging (zero-waste shampoo bars from EcoRoots, anyone?) and have a cruelty-free stamp. If you’re doing an eco-audit of your bathroom cabinets, you may also want to consider tossing any products that have PEG, parabens, and DEA, which are bad for both your health and also the environment.

Or better yet, multiple uses. Doing so will help you reduce clutter in your bathroom vanity and cabinets, and also help reduce waste since by buying fewer products you reduce your packaging footprint because most of the packaging used for beauty products wind up in a landfill.

As an added bonus, using products that have more than one use like a foundation and sunscreen, face-and-body moisturizer, and a blush-and-cheek color palate helps speed up your beauty regime, giving you back precious minutes of your day.

Do you squeeze that sunscreen or concealer tube to no avail, only to throw it out knowing precious product remains? We hear you. Say goodbye to that bad habit by buying a flexible, mini beauty spatula that helps you get the last drop out of cosmetics. Editorial makeup artist Nicole Walmsey recommends The Spatty in the Women’s Health article, which costs less than $5 and can be used for cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, nail polish, and more. You may even find yourself using it in the kitchen in food condiment jars to make sure that every last bit of vegan basil pistou lands on your pasta with artichokes and not in the trash.