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Sustainable bathroom routine

Bathroom details clean white basin with herringbone marble mosaic shower tiling behind

Brianne West discusses what we can do to ensure our beauty regime doesn’t make the world ugly.

By 2050, it is predicted that there’ll be more plastic in the sea than fish. My lightbulb moment was realising that one small tweak to the products you buy can help change this.

As the founder of the world’s first zero-waste full beauty range, I’m seeing more and more people committed to being more environmentally conscious, and wanting to reduce their footprint on the world we live in.

When it comes to your bathroom, there are quite a few things you can do to lower your impact on the environment.

Reduce your plastic waste
More than 80 billion plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles are used globally every year. That’s 80 billion, just from two products that most people use almost every day. The one-in-five people who bother to recycle their personal care bottles are unfortunately wasting their time, as only nine per cent of plastic ever made has been recycled. Most of it is sent offshore to countries such as Indonesia, where they lack the infrastructure to deal with the incredible amount of plastic that countries like New Zealand, Australia and the USA produce. So, what happens to it? It is either stockpiled and left to rot (or not rot, of course), or worse, burnt. Both options cause harm to the environment and the people who live in it, so the only option is to reduce this plastic usage.

As most of us know by now, eight million tonnes of plastic hits the ocean every year (that’s about a full dump truck every minute) and the majority of this comes from those same countries that accept our plastic waste. Because their infrastructure can’t cope with our wasted plastic, it gets washed down their waterways into the ocean. So it is everyone’s responsibility to ‘turn the tap off’ and stop using plastic.

What you can do: Where possible avoid buying your personal care products in plastic bottles, jars or containers. Use products packaged in metal (which is easily recyclable), in cardboard or even those that come naked. Solid products, such as shampoo, conditioner and moisturisers in bar form, are a great option!

Support products with compostable packaging
For hygiene and ease of use, beauty products almost always use packaging – but some types of packaging are more harmful than others. The cosmetic industry is a huge source of waste as there are many different types of plastic used in each container – rendering it unrecyclable. The most environmentally safe products use compostable materials instead of soft plastic packaging.

What you can do: Check to see if your favourite beauty products use compostable or readily recyclable (like metal) containers. If not, switch to brands that do.

Don’t forget about water waste
Shampoo or bodywash can be made from up to 80 per cent water. Conditioner can be even higher, at up to 95 per cent water! Isn’t that crazy? It doesn’t make sense to pay for a product that’s largely water, and therefore has to be packaged in plastic bottles, when there is water in your shower already.

What you can do: Look at the first few ingredients in the products you buy. Is it water? Make the switch to a more concentrated product.

Avoid harmful and unsustainable ingredients
When it comes to beauty products, there are three questions you need to ask yourself: is this product safe to use; is it cruelty free; and is it sustainably produced?

There’s no reason why your daily moisturiser should use ingredients of dubious safety (which then, of course, end up in our waterways), cause harm to animals, or use ingredients that deplete the environment in which they are grown.

What you can do: use beauty products that contain no palm oil, and that use 100 per cent naturally derived and sustainable ingredients. Extra points for ingredients sourced from fair trade sources.

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