July Eco-challenge – beauty products ooh la la

Okay, so it’s official – I’m seriously running out of ideas for my monthly eco-challenges. 

I have been wracking my brains (quite literally – I spent an hour or two shaking my head and gently knocking it against my desk to see if I could loosen any good ideas), thinking of new eco-challenges for me to try, and I am really struggling now. I know that I still have half a year to go eeeeek so if anyone has any ideas, please share them with me!! 

Anywho, I finally struck something clever and thought I would tackle beauty products as that’s always an interesting one to look at. Eco-friendly beauty products is always an interesting one to look at because there is one school of thought that homemade is always best because it’s more eco-friendly, there aren’t problematic microbeads or plastic packaging, and you aren’t supporting a possibly evil corporation that isn’t earth-friendly. However, the other side of the argument says that homemade products will never give you the same quality as scientifically tested products that provide much better results on your body and skin. 

With that in mind, what side of the fence do you choose? Soooo this month, I’ve decided to take a long hard look at all of the products that I use and do a bit of an audit, as well as try to make some more eco-friendly swaps and try my hand at a homemade product or two. 

Product audit 

In order to fix a problem, you must first know what that problem is. For instance, you’ll never know how eco-friendly or not your beauty products are if you don’t check and think about them. So I discovered a really cool app called ‘Beat the Microbead’, which allows you to scan your products to check if they have environmentally harmful plastic ingredients. I’m going to use this app to go through my face-cleaning products, body washes, body lotions, and hair products. I’ll share the results here at the end of the month, so I can show you just how eco-friendly my bathroom really is (fingers crossed it isn’t too bad)

Eco-friendly swaps

After my audit is complete, I will try and change at least one product that isn’t as eco-friendly for a better one. The scary thing about trying to do an eco-friendly swap is figuring out which companies and brands are as earth-friendly as they claim to be. For instance, Lush is big on the fact that they don’t do animal testing (which is awesome) and most of their ingredients are natural, but unfortunately, some components are not eco-friendly, so where do you draw the line? Therefore, I’ll also be doing some research into some eco-friendly swaps I can do because I want to make sure that I’m not swapping out a product I usually use for one that claims to be eco-friendly in some ways but isn’t actually that much more eco-friendly than buying in bulk the products I typically use. 

Homemade beauty products 

Last but not least, what’s an eco-friendly beauty challenge without at least attempting to make one or two of my own? I’ve always been a bit hesitant to do homemade skin products because I am hyper-allergenic and have very sensitive skin, but for the sake of being eco-friendly, I’m definitely going to give it a shot. Now I haven’t found any recipes that I like yet, but I will definitely share them when I figure them out – but for this month, I’m going to try either a homemade soap/body bar or possibly a homemade deodorant (and I have to use eco-friendly base ingredients for this – that’s the key!!) 

So what do you all think of this eco-friendly challenge? Any suggestions you have for me to add, perhaps, or tips you can give me in advance? Also, does anyone have any ideas for my next challenge?! I’d love to chat with you about it all in the comments section! 

Lastly, please don’t forget the Summer Fun Blogging Competition submissions close in a week!! I haven’t received any entries so far, but I hope that’s just because everyone is still procrastinating or brewing up beautiful posts and will submit them during this next week. If you need a refresher of the details, you can check them out here, but please think about entering because if not enough people enter, then I’ll have to scrap the competition, which will be just heartbreaking … So please don’t break my heart 😦 See you soon! 

Lots of Love

Blondey on a Mission xxx