When considering your skin and haircare regimes, it may be what's inside a product that counts, but in 2018, the packaging that your favourite beauty formulas are housed in is also worthy of your attention.
As consumers and beauty fanatics, it's both impossible and irresponsible to ignore the industry's carbon footprint. While it's fantastic progress that microbeads were banned last year, and that we're buying more vegan and natural products than ever, it's not just what's in your product that needs addressing, but the container, too. Accounting for just over 40% of total plastic usage, but with only 14% of it being recycled, packaging has a huge impact on the environment.
The solution? Alongside reducing our water waste with shorter showers, cutting open bottles to make the most of the product inside, and buying dual-use products that work harder, we can buy from brands that are committed to placing sustainability front and centre.
From cleverly designed no-waste bottles to recycled and recyclable cardboard boxes, we've found the brands that are working hard to reduce their impact on the environment. Click through to shop the beauty brands we're lining our bathroom shelves with in a bid to help the planet.
Thanks to its farm-grown ingredients, Farmacy has fast become a staple of editors' bathroom shelves since it began garnering attention just last year. With all products free from animal testing, parabens, formaldehyde and artificial colouring, it's already a winner for the natural and green beauty fans among us.
But the brand is about more than what's inside its jars. Printing ingredients and product information with soy ink onto FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)-certified paper harvested from well-managed forests, Farmacy has put sustainability behind its designs. Products are housed in recycled and recyclable glass, too.
Perhaps the coolest (and award-winning) aspect of the brand's thoughtful packaging is the fact that the cardboard boxes holding the products fold out, origami-style, into info sheets, with the story of the ingredients, brand and product printed inside – eliminating the need for extra paper. Genius.
Alongside its vegan formulas – meaning bold, bright hair colour and playful makeup with a conscience – Bleach London ensures its packaging is sustainably focused, too. Cofounders Alex Brownsell and Sam Campbell made certain that all of last year's relaunched packaging was made from recycled and eco-friendly materials, with all cardboard used 100% recycled.
This waste-not attitude led to the brand's customisation palette, which allows you to buy individual eyeshadow colours and collect them in a magnetic box (a larger size to keep at home, and a smaller one for nights out and on-the-go). Solving the problem of only ever using two shades in an eyeshadow palette, you can curate your own kit and refill when you run out – meaning less wasted product, and no unnecessary packaging.
While Lush has been a leader in the ethical, fresh, and vegan beauty arenas for some time, this winter it made real waves with its launch of a packaging-free product range. "Packaging is rubbish that's why Lush is going naked this winter," the brand's site reads.
Offering 80% of seasonal products without any packaging, products typically needing some kind of container were made solid to avoid such waste. From shower gels and lip scrubs to body conditioners, products are formulated with little to no water, meaning they stay solid at room temperature and are self-preserving. Plus, by replacing water with ingredients like cocoa butter (Fair Trade, of course), bathside bacteria is kept at bay, keeping your product clean.
Lush also operates a return-for-rewards system on the products that do need packaging. Once you've used up five of its signature black pots, clean them out, bring into a store and you'll get a free face mask of your choosing. Those pots are then recycled into new ones at the brand's Green Hub in Dorset.
As well as collaborating with Al Gore's climate change programme, The Climate Reality Project, industry favourite Kevin Murphy is partnered with Green Circle Salons, an initiative that helps salons become more carbon-neutral via waste management. All salons linked with the organisation reduce waste by sending offcuts like foils, plastic tubes and applicators to GCS for innovative recycling.
The square packaging that Kevin Murphy products are housed in was also a conscious decision. Because they can be packed up and shipped more efficiently, sort of like a game of Tetris, less transportation – and therefore less fuel – is needed when delivering the products globally. The square bottles also use 40% less resin than traditional packaging – win!
As if we needed more reasons to love Tata Harper, sustainability is high on the brand's agenda. Already a cult hit, thanks to its 100% natural ingredients, Tata's eponymous brand is EcoCert certified, meaning everything production-wise – from the imports to the distribution – has been evaluated green from start to finish.
The majority of Tata Harper's luxurious products come in glass bottles. Being composed of natural materials, glass is more efficiently recycled and reused. "For every 10% increase in recycled glass," a spokesperson from the brand explains, "CO2 emissions go down 5% – so recycling our (and all!) glass packaging is very important for the environment.”
What isn't glass is as sustainable as possible, with plastic resin derived from corn (a renewable alternative to petroleum), and the brand is another that uses soy-based ink to print (in part due to its low petrochemical content).
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