20 pledges for 2020: Five tips to keep your beauty routine sustainable

Truly ethical and sustainable beauty brands aren't easy to find. Can Jessica Jones go a whole year without using anything else?

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As we’re somehow dragging ourselves into the final month of the year, I have taken some time to reflect on my pledge to only use sustainable beauty products for a year.

When I started out on my pledge I was excited and optimistic about the challenge. In hindsight, I hugely underestimated it. It started off positively enough in January when I began to make swaps  that would make my day-to-day routine more sustainable, for example switching cotton pads for reusable bamboo ones and leaving behind my beloved micellar water in exchange for a more natural face scrub. By February, I had begun to realise the scale of the task ahead of me.

Throughout the first lockdown, I tried saving money by experimenting with making my own face masks, lip balms, hair masks and coffee scrubs to varying degrees of success - I’ll admit that some attempts completely flopped when I tried to substitute niche ingredients with things I already had. Over summer, I faced challenges like finding sustainable sun creams and moisturisers.

Whenever I tell people about my pledge I can almost guarantee that one question they will ask will be ‘have you cheated yet?’ 

To which I honestly reply, yes, many times. Most of them unintentional, when the odd moment of forgetfulness caused me to revive old habits and grab my go-to item, or when I returned to trusted alternatives because I had no time to research environmentally sustainable alternatives.

Despite the odd slip up, I believe that I have succeeded in many ways. I am undoubtedly more conscious of my individual actions and I have learned a lot, both about the world of sustainability and about the beauty industry. Having developed into a self-proclaimed sustainable beauty guru, you will find very few unsustainable products in my beauty drawer now.  I have even accomplished what I can only call beauty evangelism, preaching to whoever will listen about the importance of sustainable beauty - and the personal benefits too. 

It was a proud day for me when I discovered my younger sister was using jojoba oil as a moisturiser and had bought reusable cotton buds even before I did.

Looking back, I realise just how much my perspective has shifted; before this year I barely gave a second thought to what I was buying and its potential environmental impact. Eleven months into my pledge and I now have a five point checklist which I use to determine if a product is sustainable enough to purchase:

1. It cannot be single-use.
2. It has to have recyclable packaging.
3. It should try to avoid using any plastic - although in some cases this is a necessary evil.
4. It has to be cruelty free, something I stood by before my pledge anyway.
5. It doesn’t have to be vegan but it should have sustainably sourced ingredientss it 

I am aware that this is not a finite list and I’m sure there are many other variables which could be factored in, but that’s not the point. The point is, I no longer blindly buy products without considering how they have been made and what ingredients they use.

It's not been a normal year by any stretch but it hasn’t been all bad. Whilst I’m not yet certain what next year is going to look like (but who is), I do know that I will not be reverting to the harmful chemicals, damaging manufacturing processes and plastic-packaging ways of 2019. I have become hyper-aware of the environmental problems that are hidden underneath the glamorous exterior of the beauty industry to return to buying non-sustainable products. 

When I agreed to the pledge, a year sounded like an alarmingly long time but during this period it has become second nature to me to question the origins and hidden costs of everything I buy, a habit which I will continue long after the new year rolls around. 

The products we buy are subsidised by the destruction of our climate, a cost which in the current climate crisis is too high to pay, so I will continue looking for new ways to make beauty sustainable. Reading other people’s pledges has also inspired me to change other areas of my life and I will no doubt choose something else to focus on next year.