PLASTIC FREE BEAUTY

The booming $500 million skin and personal care industry relies heavily on plastic packaging due to it being cheap and versatile and easy to ship .Beauty industry boomed after second world war and america dominated the global market with its sturdy plastic packaging .Europe was still struggling with after effects of the war and people started importing the cheap plastic packaged body washes or face creams or shampoos from the USA.

And there started the global pandemic of single use plastic consumption.The amount of plastic packaging on USA products (not just personal care items) has increased by 120 times since 1960 with 70% of it ending up in landfills and the rest of the world is not far off in single use plastic consumption.

It takes a village ( whole world ) to solve the plastic problem .I still remember the days when coco cola used to come in glass bottles and the company used to collect 90% of the bottles back and refill it .I recently read a article about a new age entrepreneur called szaky who was a Princeton drop out  and founded a online delivery company called loop which uses reusable sturdy containers and the first product he introduced was ice cream in sturdy steel insulated tub which promises not to melt the ice cream and can be returned and refilled...what a brilliant idea.

I feel when refilling and reusing can be applied to the food industry why cant we beauty industry try to recreate the same i know some companies have already started doing it and industry leading players like L'Oreal already pledged to make its packaging completely recyclable by 2050 big players have definitely realised the urgency of tackling the plastic problem or else they will loose the social privilege of plastic packaging.

Its easy to loose sight on how easy the landscape of single use plastic has shifted not long ago people were debating whether single use plastic is even harmful to the environment , The debate actually ended in 2015 with a publication coming out quoting that 8.5 million tons of plastic gets washed into the oceans every year.

But there is good news over the horizon the words like plastic free ,plastic pollution and recycling has gained lot of momentum and people started thinking seriously about the impact on the waste we are creating on the Eco system .

China finally stopped buying the worlds waste and everyone is forced to invest in recycling their own waste rather than dumping it on china or any other country for the matter.But still we are producing loads of plastic every day as its cheap and effective and we are using more too..

So the age old problem is still there it has not vanished it just has taken a different form when we say terms like recyclable or bio degradable it has very less transparency as if the so called product is biodegradable in just soil and it ends up in a ocean it just takes the same form as any other  waste so basically pointless.

I would say the future is re using and refilling invest in brands who give you options of refill or reuse the packaging their products come in.

Thats where zero waste concept also comes in . Lets not make waste at all as recycling or biodegrading also puts lot of pressure on the environment.

As a beauty brand sintra strives hard to make its packaging re usable rather than recyclable we will be starting the jar returned and refilled option for our body butters once we are over this pandemic.

All our products are packaged in paper or glass or wood or tin and come with excellent re usable options.

Please support brands who are single use plastic free and take a small step towards the cleaner and green environment.

lets make plasticfreebeauty the new norm.

love

sintra