Sustainability

So Plastic Free July is in full force and we want to celebrate all the amazing sustainable steps and swaps you are all taking to join our #ReuseRevolution Living a plastic free life isn’t just for July though, so we challenge you to keep this up to save the planet from the estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste that's destined for our environment by 2040! We’ve rounded up our favourite household plastic free swaps. Remember, small changes make a BIG impact. Just ask @ambertheevegan who shouted about her plastic free swaps too last year! Tea bags Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world, after water and while most tea is consumed in leaf form globally, 96% of us in the UK are used to tea bags. However, non-biodegradable plastic can account for roughly 25% of the bags! Composting tea bags is great, but if these single use, plastic filled bags are being collected as organic waste, a large amount of polypropylene could be released into the environment. The solution…there are some great plastic free tea bags out there already from the likes of our B Corp friends at Brew Tea and Pukka Herbs. Or simply use and reuse tea leaves! Facewipes Face wipes are the queen of convenience, right? However, the UK alone goes through 11 billion wipes in just one year, causing 93% of blockages in UK sewers. There has been a 400% increase in the number of wipes found on beaches in the UK too! Biodegradable or not, they are still single use. The solution…a Konjac Sponge paired with your favourite cleanser! This little tool is 100% compostable (from the sponge, to the packaging it arrives in) & lasts a good 2-3 months compared to a single wipe which could take up to 100 years to breakdown… Cleaning Products An average UK household goes through roughly 40-60 single use plastic cleaning bottles in a year. These products often hide up to 300 different chemicals. In fact, indoor air can be up to 4 times more polluted than street air because of these toxic chemicals... The solution…switch to multipurpose natural cleaning products such as bicarbonate of soda mixed with vinegar (great for stubborn grime & to deodorise fabric). Or look to refillable cleaning products (like We Are Spruce) that are free of toxic chemicals & single use plastic. Nappies Babies are cute...nappies, not so much. We go through 3 billion single use nappies in the UK a year, the vast majority of them not being recyclable and containing elements of plastic. That's not going into detail about their huge water footprint and chemical contents too. The solution…reusable nappies! We know what you're thinking...gross, expensive, not convenient right? Reusable nappies are incredibly hygienic, breathable, gentle, and the 'cost per wear' goes down each time you use one. Take it from our Founder Jo who loves using these on her little one!  Look out for fellow B Corp gDiapers who make some colourful options. Plastic Wrap One way to go plastic free in the kitchen is to stop using cling film. 1.2 billion metres of the stuff is used in the UK in a single year...shockingly, that's enough to wrap around the earth 30 times over. We are literally drowning our planet in plastic! The solution…look to reusable options such as containers you already own or keeping food fresh with Beeswax Wrap (or Soy Wax if you’d like a vegan alternative). Check out our DIY blog on how to make your own! Hand Sanitiser It’s estimated that 1 billion hand sanitiser gel bottles will be used in the UK this year alone (understandably of course), but most filled to the brim with microplastics. Each year, 8 million tons of plastics enter our oceans...most of it less than 5 millimeters in size. Over 500 microplastic ingredients are still being used in the cosmetic industry today. The solution…a refillable hand sanitiser! Our refillable Organic Vegan Hand Sanitiser spray is 100% microplastic free and a part of our Return · Refill · Repeat programme - meaning you can choose to stay hygienic AND sustainable at the same time while on-the-go. Your Plastic Free July We’ve had so many of you submit your own sustainable swaps to us this month for our #ReuseRevolution challenge. Here are some of our top picks! @gnome.at.five - Creating and reusing effective face masks from spare fabric @coolcatzz – Swapping cotton pads for hand knitted reusable face cloths! @jojoscoble – Using mouldable glue to fix and reuse items (or mod our hand san into a key chain!) @vegan.lb – Reusable food containers, reusable bag & reusable hand sanitiser @panningwithlou – Switching from face wipes for reusable pads, cloths & konjac sponges @s.e.l.89_2 – Showcasing some on-the-go sustainable essentials @vegan.tally – Turning this smoothie into a sustainable one with a reusable straw @bear.and.dot – Fixing some spare corks with sustainable glue to make biodegradable soap dishes! So many amazing ideas and a huge thank you for getting involved! For more info on Plastic Pollution, we highly recommend reading our ‘The Truth About Plastic’ blog. Feel free to keep tagging us in your sustainable swaps!

The stats surrounding plastics in the beauty industry are not pretty, but we must educate ourselves and change our ways to begin opting for alternatives that we can choose over single use plastics.As our Founder Jo says, we ultimately need to "become a part of the solution to plastic pollution!" What’s So Bad About Plastic? Plastic revolutionised every industry from beauty, electric, food and so on by providing a cheap material that would last infinitely. That radical element of plastic however is now its own downfall! To put it into context, every piece of plastic ever made still exists. Recycling is a great solution, yet the infrastructure isn’t quite right to fully dispose of plastics properly. It’s a system governed by market demand, price determinations and local regulations. More than 600 million tons of plastic will be produced on Earth by 2025 (that’s only 4 years away!) and recycling systems are unable to collect that amount. In reality, only 9% of plastic is recycled globally, 40% is dumped in a controlled manner, 14% is burnt in a controlled manner and 32% ends up in the environment. It’s What’s Inside that Counts TooAlmost all major beauty brands still add microscopic plastic particles or even liquid plastics to their cosmetic products - often used as cheap fillers. It's estimated that the cosmetics industry uses 8,700 tonnes of microplastics in a year through formulations. Through our showers, baths and sinks, microplastics in our everyday products (laundry detergent, skincare and so much more) flow into sewage systems, slip through the filters in water treatment plants and reach our rivers and oceans. Once there, they become a part of the plastic soup. The plastic breaks down further and further. Marine animals mistake these microplastics for food. These particles end up on our plates because we are part of the food chain…it’s a vicious cycle. If we continue to use and produce plastic at the same rate that we do now, there will be more plastic in the ocean tonne for tonne than fish by 2050. On land, the soil on which crops grow is 4 to 23 times more polluted with microplastics than the ocean… So, What's the Answer? It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom; we just need to alter our approach with packaging and ingredients and put more emphasis on the Reduce and Reuse part of the equation! It’s why we created our Return•Refill•Repeat programme, where we wash and reuse our packaging and in turn, create less packaging waste. We also campaign with Plastic Soup Foundation to discourage the use of microplastic ingredients within the industry. Our products are of course 100% microplastic free and Zero Plastic Inside certified! Education is Key! It’s not always easy to work out whether your products contain microplastics. Some products that appear to be ‘clean’ do not contain sustainable ingredients. There’s now a free to download app ‘Beat the Microbead’ by the Plastic Soup Foundation that can do all the hard work for you. See more in our last blog here but essentially, this digital tool uses machine learning software to detect more than 500 different microplastics from a products ingredient list. You can also support sustainable businesses by looking out for the ‘Zero Plastic Inside’ logo to see which products are 100% microplastic free (like ours!). “When it comes to plastic free and sustainable beauty, we need to think about the product in its entirety. This means that the environmental impact of a products ingredients as well as its packaging must be considered. It’s not enough to stick a ‘recyclable’ logo onto a product but not consider the thousands of microplastics inside that are just as damaging to the environment.” - Jo Chidley, Founder of Beauty Kitchen. It's time to start a new plastic free #ReuseRevolution - we would love to hear about the steps you are taking towards a more sustainable lifestyle!