“Sustainability.”
This word seems to be all the buzz these days, doesn’t it? Now, what does it actually stand for in terms of beauty, wellness and skincare? To clear the confusion, sustainable brands are those which cause minimal or almost no harm to you as well as to the planet. While ensuring that you achieve your beauty goals, these products also make sure that Earth doesn’t reap any drawbacks of their usage.
Knowing where to start and how to make a switch from your ordinary beauty regime to a clean beauty one is the trickiest part, and we are here to help you with that. By making these basic changes to your wellness and skincare routine, you can be assured that your journey towards sustainability will be made much easier.
1. Refill, recycle and reuse
An increasing number of brands are focusing on the ability of reusing or recycling their product containers to reach a more ecological end goal. Certain brands have even resorted to acquiring empty containers of used products from their customers and offering a discount on their next order for the said gesture. This gives customers an impetus to be more conscious of their contribution to the environment. Choosing such a brand instead of the traditional ones could be a stepping stone in your clean beauty journey. Once you start the habit of refilling your products in used containers, there’s no going back to using multiple plastic bottles and adding to the pollution that ails our planet. Bare Necessities is one such brand which employs this tactic to play their part in the clean beauty domain. So, the next time you are looking to purchase a makeup remover, consider buying the Rosy Cheeks Makeup Remover & Facial Cleanser.
2. Opt for minimalistic composition
A new goal for clean beauty brands is to include as few ingredients as possible in their products, while ensuring their full efficacy. Smaller number of chemicals means that a lesser number of external agents enter our bodies and make it into the environment, while also not causing a big hole in our pockets. Sticking with this would not only aid you in your clean beauty journey, but it is also beneficial for your physical health, making it a win-win situation for both you and the planet.
3. Try vegan and cruelty-free products
A primary goal that most beauty brands aim to achieve in the current day is to incorporate only vegan ingredients in their product, and warrant a cruelty-free product. The mantra of vegan beauty is that if an ingredient is good enough to be ingested, then it can ideally be used in a product. Even if you are not vegan when it comes to consumption, switching to a vegan beauty routine is enough to play a part towards sustainability. Using products like the Faith In Nature Body Wash over contemporary, non-vegan products could be a major step towards being eco-friendly.
4. Say no to plastic packaging
The easy availability of metal, glass and paper-based containers has facilitated an enormous shift in the packaging of the cosmetics industry. This has been a significant game-changer for the reduction of single-use plastics in daily life and has created awareness among a large base of users about the demerits and dangers of plastic usage, which they would not have comprehended so clearly otherwise. A large proportion of waste generated in India on a monthly basis consists of plastic skincare and makeup containers, which end up remaining in landfills and contribute to the creation of a hazardous environment. Switch to a brand like Juicy Chemistry, India’s first organic beauty brand, that uses cardboard and glass containers for their products. They have an enormous range of products, starting from Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, Argan & Ylang Ylang Shampoo to Tamanu, Kakadu Plum & Frankincense Organic Face Wash to cater to all your beauty needs.
5. Eco-friendly sanitary napkins and tampons
Most producers of intimate products still continue to do animal testing, which is detrimental to the environment. They are also majorly composed of plastic and bleached with chlorine. This contributes to a significant amount of waste generation, filling landfills extensively. Several home-grown, eco-friendly brands produce pads from bamboo fibre, cornstarch and organic cotton. Newly emerging Indian brands like Carmesi, Vivanion, Anandi are among the plethora of environment-friendly alternatives to the mainstream brands flooding the Indian market.
6. Incorporate vegan supplements to your diet
When following Veganuary, the protein intake needs to be kept in check. Especially for newbies who heavily rely on non-vegetarian foods to fulfil their protein needs, it can become challenging to incorporate sufficient protein in their diets. You should therefore include vegan protein supplements, such as the Cosmix No-Nonsense Plant Protein and SwisseMe Plant Protein. These products are laden with natural plant extracts and nutrients, making them an excellent choice to be included in your diet and part of your beauty routine. They also come with a non-dairy vegan milk powder blend.
7. Shop mindfully
Finally, before indulging on any products, you need to focus on minimalism, i.e. to buy only what you need, and not what you want. It is quite tempting to order the newest skincare products in the market, thinking that they will radically enhance your beauty, but that is not the case most of the time. Using only one of each product pertaining to each step of a skincare routine is more than enough.
The idea of sustainability has been on the rise in recent years, especially among Gen Zs and millennials. As a result, they are more inclined towards trying out more environmentally friendly and natural products as opposed to traditional products that are known to cause harm to the environment as well as torture and exploit animals and human labour. At first, getting rid of your routine that you might have been following for years might seem painful, especially when it comes to parting with brands, but with time, you will realise that it is only for the best. However, do not fret if you aren’t able to make a radical shift; it is the effort that counts and your small steps make up the global progress towards sustainability.
FAQs
1. What are vegan products?
Vegan products refer to those products which are entirely composed of plant-based products and do not contain any animal-based products.
2. Is it necessary to change all products, even those which show promising results for me?
Sustainability is not a compulsion, and you should always build a sustainable routine via baby steps. Even if you are able to replace one product from your skincare routine that is abundant in heavy chemicals and uses plastic packaging, that would be a leap towards sustainability.
3. Is following a vegan and clean beauty regime expensive?
It is not that expensive a switch if you are using products within your budget, and you can easily find several options under different price categories.
- Srishti Chakraborty
