For a long time, it was nearly impossible to find beauty products that weren’t made with potentially toxic chemical ingredients. When you did find them, they didn’t work. (Like, deodorants that made you smell worse and sunscreens that didn’t rub in at all.)
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Thankfully, that’s all in the past, and we are now living in a golden age of natural beauty products made with healthy, nourishing ingredients. And across that landscape, there are brands taking super interesting approaches to making skin-care more sustainable, via packaging innovations, better sourcing, and more.
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Here are three that recently caught our eye that you should totally know about.
(Featured Photo: By Humankind)
3 Innovative Sustainable Beauty Brands
By Humankind
This super new personal care products company has a very clear mission: to reduce single-use plastic. Its three products—deodorant, shampoo, and mouthwash—are designed to do just that, via an online refill system. Basically, you order the plastic vessel that holds the deodorant and mouthwash (which is in tablet form…woah!) once, and then monthly refills come packaged in recyclable cardboard. And the shampoo is in bar form, so it requires zero plastic to begin with. The company says if you use its products for a year, you’ll save about five pounds of single-use plastic waste from being trashed.
(Photo: By Humankind)
Seed Phytonutrients
Seed Phytonutrients is a “green incubator brand” from L’Oreal that’s about a year old, and its coolest innovation is making shower-safe shampoo and conditioner bottles that are made mostly of paper (with 70 less plastic than a traditional bottle). It even uses cardboard waste from L’Oreal distribution centers to make them, and in doing so, the brand says it has diverted 11.1 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans and landfills and reused 15 tons of cardboard so far. It also sources ingredients from organic farmers in the US and invests in seed diversity (which is super important). Bonus points: The company is so transparent it lists the ingredients in its “fragrance,” which is almost unheard of in the industry.
We’ve been using the anti-frizz shampoo and conditioner, and it delivers smooth, shiny locks—as opposed to other natural brands that leave hair dry and brittle—and the fresh, botanical scent provides an added shower upgrade.
(Photo: Facebook/Seed Phytonutrients)
FarmHouse Fresh
FarmHouse Fresh is based on a ranch in Texas, and it’s all about using its own plants and those from other local farms to get ingredients from harvest to product as quickly as possible, to ensure the maximum amount of vitamins and antioxidants are preserved. The ranch is also a rescue sanctuary for forgotten and abused animals, and a portion of the company revenue goes to taking care of them. (Umm..when can we visit?) The brand even minimizes waste by feeding leftover rinds from production to the animals at the sanctuary and the farmer’s chickens.
Finally, their masks and scrubs are amazing. Just sayin’.
(Photo: Facebook/FarmHouse Fresh)