Eco-Friendly Personal Care: How to Take Care of Yourself and Produce Less Waste?

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You keep hearing that people produce too much waste. You know you should do something but have no idea where to start. We say: start with personal care. Lots of daily-care items can be replaced with eco-friendly solutions.

Big change starts with small steps. Every individual can make the world a better place to live in – without the tons of waste. This is the idea of the eco-friendly beauty routine. It has nothing to do with fashion. Our actions can really make a difference. There’s a lot that needs changing!

How much waste do we produce during a personal-care routine?

Shockingly, an average woman uses around 12 packs of cotton pads per year, one per month. Each pack contains from 100 to 140 pads, which gives even 1.5 thousand cotton pad waste per year. From one woman. It’s easy to figure that thousands of women using them every day give hundreds of thousands of single-use cotton pads on the garbage dump! The pads that cannot be recycled and reused.

The situation doesn’t look better when we consider personal hygiene items used by women during their period. Let’s confront the brutal facts: a woman uses around 150 sanitary pads or tampons per year. Considering women use them for more or less 40 years, it turns out one woman throws away a few thousands of used menstrual products in her lifetime!

When we add one-off razors, empty cosmetics packages and accessories like make-up sponges (replaced from time to time), we unravel the uncomfortable truth. The truth that each of us unconsciously produces tons of waste that will probably never be recycled. Can we do anything to remedy the situation?

Eco-friendly personal-care solutions

Each of us needs to make changes but we need to do it slowly. It’s not a good idea to incorporate eco-friendly personal-care solutions all at once because this may be discouraging and we will easily go back to old habits while the goal is different.

● Reusable cotton rounds

Because we produce lots of waste every year while removing make-up, it’s a good idea to start with replacing the cotton pads with the reusable rounds: they are made from soft, absorbent, durable material. You just need to wash them after use with soap or together with your laundry (which you need to do regularly anyway). They are suitable for multiple use so you minimize the waste. Reusable rounds are in no way worse than single-use pads. They are actually better because they aren’t bleached like the one-off rounds. In other words, we go eco-friendly and care for our skin at the same time.

● Eco-friendly razors

The old-time razors with replaceable blades prove extremely environmentally friendly. You can find some retro items online but beauty brands are putting such razors in their offer too. One razor serves you for long years and you just need to replace the blades. Shaving without plastic and unnecessary waste. The only downside of this solution is it may be more tricky to use at first (you may get hurt easily) but once you get the hang of the right technique, the problem will be gone.

● Cosmetics without packaging, for example in form of bars

While trying to go eco-friendly, we can’t forget that empty containers from face cream, shampoos, oil, soaps, conditioners, lotions, etc., make up a huge part of waste. We can list such products endlessly but thankfully there are two steps that will help minimize the waste:

buying less beauty products.
buying products without packaging.

Beauty minimalism is trending and it’s great and very eco-friendly. More and more people choose products from brands that make eco-friendly cosmetics, e.g. without packaging (like shampoo bars) or put them in reusable glass or recyclable paper. There are plenty of options. We just need to take a look around!

● Menstrual cup

Finally, a treat for all women who hate the amount of waste they produce during their period. A menstrual cup is made from medical, safe and very flexible silicone so it perfectly matches the body, better than tampons do. What’s most important: you can reuse them. One-off purchase equals several years of use. You just need to rinse it after each use and clean it once a month.