Welcome! If you’ve found yourself on this page and reading this article, it’s because you take your health, your beauty, and the Earth seriously. Eco-friendly Health & Beauty is a rapidly growing industry, with millions of people globally opting for activities and products that are more sustainable, less harmful, and give you a sense of reward for doing good.
In this article, we are going to look at two things:
- Activities that don’t hurt the Earth (as much)
- Beauty products that don’t heart the Earth (as much)
Almost everything has a footprint, but some are much, much smaller than others, and those are the things that we are interested in.
Activities that don’t hurt the Earth
Eco-friendly hobbies like walking, hiking, and cycling, are becoming increasingly popular as people look to do things which are fun, good exercise, cheap, and help you to get outside and breathe fresh air.
In the home, there are a lot of activities you can do that are good for your health, and the health of the planet. Reducing, reusing, and recycling are a good start, as these materials can support your local economy and reduce the pressure on both landfills and manufacturers. Feeling creative? Upcycling your waste is all the rage right now, with people turning jam jars into candles, pallets into bed frames and wine bottles into candlestick holders…
Ready to put your money where your eco-friendly health is? Invest in an electric car, install solar panels, and buy local or organic produce. These things are not cheap, but they offer long-term rewards that their regular counterparts simply cannot. Electric cars will pay themselves off over time, as will solar panels, and as they say ‘All the money in the world can’t buy you back good health’.
For good eco-friendly health & beauty, your diet is a great place to start. Try a vegetarian, vegan, or paleo diet to help the planet a little. Vegan avoids the huge carbon footprint of meat and dairy, vegetarian avoids all of the environmental harm of meat, and paleo, if you haven’t heard of it before, is the diet where you only eat things that were available to cavemen, meaning no processed foods. If you want to go one step further, grow your own food in your garden, and if you do decide to go for a more plant-based diet, shop locally, and remember to start composting your green waste.
Try taking showers instead of baths, as they use far less water, and start buying recycled products; just check the packaging labels and you’ll know if it is or isn’t.
Remember, everything in moderation. There are enough resources on Earth for everyone to make eco-friendly health & beauty a priority, but not if we continue the way we are now.
Beauty products that don’t hurt the Earth
When it comes to beauty products, you must be careful of greenwashing (companies using fancy keywords to appear more eco-friendly than they are). To know what is good, what is bad, and what is nonsense, here’s an explanation of each keyword you may see:
Vegan
Vegan beauty products and cosmetics do not contain any animal products, animal by-products, or animal derivatives. Just be conscious, as neither does water, so this label is only useful if you’d expect the product to actually contain those things.
Also remember that synthetic chemicals are often used to replace animal products, and are sometimes more damaging than the original. Sometimes, like Vitamin C, the synthetic stuff is much better for us!
Fairtrade
Fair trade is a social movement whose stated goal is to help producers in developing countries achieve better trading conditions.
Cruelty-free
Cruelty-free means that the products did not harm animals or were not tested on animals at any stage of production.
Organic
Organic products are more or less the same as all natural, as an organic product simply means it’s made from carbon, and not from chemicals.
Raw
Simply, there has been no heat treatment of any kind on the products contained within. For many ingredients, nutrients are lost when heat is applied.
Cold-pressed
Cold-pressed juice refers to fruit and vegetable juice that has been extracted by a hydraulic press. These juices often make great beauty ingredients.
100% Natural
Natural foods are often assumed to be foods that are minimally processed and do not contain any hormones, antibiotics or artificial flavors.
Plant-derived
Well, this one is self explanatory. But if you buy carrot soup and it says ‘plant-derived’, you’d think ‘well, obviously’. However, for things like anti-ageing cream, it’s very popular as a selling mechanism to make your cream entirely from plant products.
Halal
Halal refers to what is permissible or lawful in traditional Islamic law (muslim faith). It is frequently applied to permissible food and drinks, but also to beauty products.
Toxin-free
Some natural ingredients contain natural poisons, which we call toxins. Beauty product manufacturers know what is good for us, and what is bad, so if you see ‘toxin-free’ on the packaging, it means they’ve been very careful.
Three quick beauty switches
To finish off this article, we’ve put together three great Eco-friendly health & beauty ideas that you can apply very easily.
- Stop purchasing disposable plastic razors, and invest in a reusable steel razor.
- Buy a shampoo bar, which will involve less plastic and packaging, and will often be made with more eco-friendly ingredients.
- Reusable wipes are much better for the environment than cotton balls and wet wipes, give them a try!
Thank you for reading.