Welcome to our zero waste world

What are your thoughts on zero waste beauty? Are you embracing it? Is it something you’re becoming increasingly conscious of? Or maybe you want to find out more about it?

For us, zero waste is an ethos and focus we’ve been embracing for a while now. It’s a new way of life that involves looking at and thinking about things from a whole new perspective and, more importantly, helping stamp out the amount of waste that goes to landfill and pollutes the planet.

The case for zero waste

Plastic has gone from being one of the best pioneering developments of the modern era to a major environmental threat. Each year, up to 13 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean, the equivalent of one garbage truck of waste every minute.¹ According to Mintel’s sub-zero waste report in 2019, customers are more aware of the potential impact of beauty products and their packaging waste. However, according to Euromonitor, the beauty industry still produces 120 billion units of packaging per year, most of which is thrown out and single use.²

What’s being done about it

Action is being taken worldwide to help reduce the amount of plastic, and wider waste products, that wind up in landfill and pollute the environment.³ For instance, we’ve all experienced the drive by supermarkets to cut out single-use plastic bags and encourage us to use our own reusable bags, which is all part of global legislation to regulate plastic bags.^4,5 And we’ve also read about the proposals to ban plastic drinking straws,⁶ as well as the move to ban the use of plastic microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products.⁷ Last year, Unilever announced that nine of its brands would trial new reusable packaging made from aluminium and glass, and Dove revealed it was testing a new refillable deodorant stick via TerraCycle’s Loop system. These announcements followed Unilever’s news, that was announced in 2017, that its plastic packaging would be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.⁸ Meanwhile, a UK Plastics Pact has been formed to specifically reduce the use of plastic packaging by 2025 by:⁹

• Making sure 100% plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable
• Eliminating ‘problematic or unnecessary’ single use packaging
• Ensuring 70% of plastic packaging is effectively recycled or composted
• Making sure there’s an average recycled content of 30% across all plastic packaging

Just a quick note before we move on – these examples are a tiny snapshot of the sheer scale of the waste and plastics pollution problems being experienced worldwide. There are, of course, many other examples out there of the current and future issues being faced country-to-country and the action that’s being taken and planned to help turn things around.

Introducing – our zero waste world

While it’s not possible for organisations to single-handedly solve the global waste issues, it is possible for them to contribute to helping change the bigger picture by implementing their own step changes.

Cue our zero waste beauty range, which is packed full of innovatively-packaged products that feature reusable products, such as cotton pads, cleansing cloths, exfoliating mitts, bamboo plasters, eco make up brushes, bamboo cotton swabs, as well as a dedicated zero waste feminine range or, as we like to call it, ‘plastic free period’ products. Whether you want to reuse or refill, our zero waste beauty range has been designed to enable you to do just that in so many different ways with minimum hassle.

The range contains revolutionary beauty brands, who are embracing the zero waste movement and enabling their customers to do the same. And there are lots of them. They include:

• Faith in Nature
• Beauty Kitchen
• Ethique
• UpCircle
• Ben & Anna
• The Humble Co
• Flux Undies
• Balade En Provence
• Grace & Green
• My White Secret
• OrganiCup
• Bloom & Nora
• Naked Necessities
• Patch It
• Skin Academy
• So Eco
• Earth Kind
• Live Coco
• Mooncup
• Salt of the Earth
• Shark
• The Eco Bath
• And, of course, our very own Holland & Barrett zero waste product

Shop Zero Waste Products

We hope you’ve found this introduction to our zero waste world useful and that it’s inspired you to either start or continue to incorporate more zero waste beauty products into your life. The war against waste is well and truly on, and if we all do our bit, simply by making just one or more product switch, we can all help stamp out unnecessary waste, once and for all.

Last updated: 15 June 2020