Self-Care: Routine Clean Up

by Cameron Bruns Ewing

How Detoxifying Your Personal Care Products Can Also Be Good for the Environment

Wellness and self-care are trends that are here to stay. Being mindful of your health is a great way to show up as the best version of yourself at work, with your family, and in your social life. For many of us, this shift towards wellness is also a shift towards nature. We’re trying to spend more time outside and away from our phones, we’re opting for a more organic, plant-based diet, and we’re cycling and walking instead of driving whenever we can in order to get our bodies moving and reduce emissions at the same time.

This is all great. It’s a win-win for both people and the planet. But one aspect of self-care that’s easy to overlook is the environmental impact of your skincare routine. These products come in small packages and we only use them for a few seconds every day, so we can underestimate their true impact. The reality is that these small things add up. The average adult uses nine personal care products per day, often meaning hundreds of chemicals and lots of disposable plastic.

Here are some tips for understanding how your personal care routine affects the earth and how to make a difference.

Down the Drain

The products you use in the shower or over the sink all end up somewhere—whether absorbed into your skin or down the drain and towards our waterways. A 2002 study of 139 streams in the United States found that 80% had traces of manmade chemicals and hormones. So, not only can ingredients like phthalates and parabens be potentially harmful to your health, they can also negatively impact aquatic life. To prevent or at least reduce these impacts, there are a few things you can do:

First, use as little product as you need to get the job done. You’d be surprised how far a small amount of shampoo or lotion can go. Using less product will save you money in the long term too!

Secondly, look for brands that use ingredients that you recognize. Biodegradable and/or organic certifications can be helpful ways of finding a cleaner alternative, but nothing beats quickly scanning the full list of ingredients (when time allows!) and checking them out on the Environmental Working Group Skin Deep Database. The database gives a ranking of how hazardous a given ingredient or product is for human health and the environment.

Packaging

While you’re already looking at the ingredients list before a potential purchase, you should also take a closer look at the package itself. You know those items that are in so much plastic that you need to use scissors to get them open? Or, how about those lotions and luxury creams packaged in plastic that also have a waxed-box on the outside?... Why?

All of this plastic is polluting our waterways and affecting countless species of wildlife—not to mention the carbon emissions and raw resources needed to produce this packaging in the first place. Do your part by looking for paper-based recyclable packaging whenever possible. Glass, which can also be easily reused or recycled is also often a better option than plastic. Mainly, avoid non-recyclable plastic whenever possible.

The best choice, of course, is no packaging. Instead of giving your money to brands that manufacture excess packaging solely for marketing purposes, buy locally-made soap, shampoo bars, and lotion bars from your farmer’s market. Another option is to see if your nearest natural foods store offers bulk or refillable personal care.

There are so many things that we as individuals can do to be more conscious of the environment. Personal care is no exception. So next time you’re grabbing a shampoo off the shelf, take a quick second to consider how small purchases like this can help or hurt yourself and the wider world. These little actions, combined with the good things that our family members and friends are doing, can make a big difference!

About our guest blogger: Cameron Bruns Ewing is the managing editor of Just Us Gals. She works at Hubspot and is pursuing a graduate degree in environmental sustainability.