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Perfect Picture or Perfect Planet

​by ?

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​Why should you buy sustainable make up?
 
It’s an often-asked questions whether as a society we can buy sustainable make up and still have it look as flawless as always. Yes we can and everyone should, but why?
With global warming having more and more effects in the world, owning sustainable products is at the forefront of many consumer’s minds. The beauty industry produces over 200 billion units of waste every year and over 120 billion (most of which is not biodegradable) of that comes down to packaging and that makes the beauty industry the biggest offender of plastic production across the globe. Every single product comes dressed head to toe in packaging: the box, the tube, the applicator and even the delicately drawn designs across the bottle. All waste. Whether it’s made of glass, metal or plastic. It still ends up in landfill and we both know that landfill isn’t very pretty. Ironic right? One of the worst offenders? Make up wipes. Hidden innocently behind sweet ideology of cleaning your face. But they themselves are not very clean. The have non-biodegradable plastics woven into the wipe and the packaging ,also plastic. Yet every day men, women and children across the globe continue to clean their faces with these polluting monsters. So if we know all of this why is it still widely acceptable?

​Landfill in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

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Different types of product from many cosmetic companies around the globe

Horrifying, right? Yet it continues to get worse. Micro beads. Tiny pieces of plastics hidden in our makeup, our body scrubs and even our toothpaste. Used to scrape plaque and dead cells of your skin and teeth. It gives you a young, alive and clean look every time. But the environment? Old, dead and dirty. When we spit our toothpaste, do we ever think where it goes? When we wash away our body scrub, do we ever think what it affects? Plastic is well known to not be biodegradable so where does it go once we’ve flushed it down the drain? The sea. The lakes. The rivers. Marine life makes up 65% of total life on earth. It feeds on plankton, which are really microbeads in disguise. It lives in the oceans, lakes and rivers, that are really just dumping grounds for human’s drainage waste. There are thousands of studies showing that almost 100million marine animals die from ocean pollution each year. So if we know all of this why is it still socially acceptable?

​Everything produces carbon emissions and I mean everything. From boiling your kettle to flying halfway across the world. From turning on a light to mass plastic production. And the beauty industry is no different. From the making of the product, packaging and advertisements, to the transport costs the industry churns out more carbon emissions than most other sectors. This is mainly due to the transportation element of the production line. Over 70% of beauty companies’ factories are stationed in a different country to where the companies are owned and around 60% of those are stationed in low-income countries. This means that once the products have been manufactured, they then need to be transported back to the countries where they are on the market- ready to be sold. And I know we are all sat here thinking that is probably awful for the environment, and sadly we would be right. Air pollution is the biggest contributor to global warming and travel makes up almost 40% of air pollution. 

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​In conclusion, our generation know we need to change to prevent the irreversible disaster of climate change. We need to make the effort to lean about sustainable products and who and where we can buy them from. Today I’ve written about the beauty industry, but this applies to clothes, food, technology and so much more. I understand that it’s not always easy to buy sustainably due to price hikes and confusion about our direct part in this massive movement . But what is the point of saving our money if there is no planet left to spend it on. I urge you to think differently, maybe spend more buy less, maybe try and become a more informed consumer but please do something. Our generation is the key to preventing irreversible disaster. Every minor change counts.