EARTH CONSCIOUS BRANDS AT SEPHORA

Personally, I am obsessed with everything makeup and skincare – so as soon as I started becoming earth conscious, I was afraid to look inside my beauty bag. It is no surprise that the beauty industry has a long way to go in terms of creating sustainable products. Happy Planet Society wants to encourage big name brands to create sustainable packaging and easily recyclable product units. When I was hunting for sustainable beauty products, naturally the first place I went to research is Sephora. Sephora is one of the largest beauty retailers worldwide. Although many brands at Sephora are not cruelty free or sustainable, here is a list of brands who are ethical and earth conscious.

Youth to the People is a skincare brand that is 100% vegan and cruelty free. All of their formulas are biodegradable, so you don’t need to worry about harming the ocean when you’re washing their products off your face. They use glass jars and bottles for all of their products which is a great way to reduce plastic waste. They also make a point to use recyclable paper and attain their paper from responsible sources. Their product range includes moisturizers, serums, and masks.

ILIA Beauty is vegan and supports a circular economy. ILIA balances the use of natural and synthetic ingredients – they make a note that not every natural ingredient is good for your skin and not every synthetic ingredient is bad. One of my favourite things about ILIA is that their products are versatile and multi-purpose which is a great way to save resources. For U.S. customers, they offer a program where you can mail them up to 5 empty products a month so that they can be recycled properly. I would love to see more brands follow ILIA’s example and offer recycling programs for their products.

Biossance is a vegan skincare brand that offers ethically and sustainably sourced ingredients in all of their products. All of their product units and packaging are 100% recyclable, using cartons made from sugarcane paper without any dyes or ink that could affect recyclability. For every order they ship, Biossance plants trees and funds reforestation efforts which saves 22 tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere every year. They are well known for their squalane products. For many years sharks have been hunted for their squalene – this is an oil that is produced in their livers and is used in many skincare products. Scientists at Biossance have created a sugar-cane derived version which they’ve called squalane, and this has helped save about 2 million sharks every year.

bareMinerals is a cruelty-free makeup brand that has made efforts to make their products more sustainable over the years. Not all of their products are vegan, but the products that are have clear indications of being vegan on the packaging. Their sustainability efforts include a Give Back, Get Back program that allows members of their loyalty program to bring back their empty product units in exchange for points which they can use on their next purchase. In 2020, bareMinerals released a line of recyclable palettes – they replaced plastic for FSC-certified paper and have used post-consumer recycled plastic in their packaging. bareMinerals products are paraben-free, phthalate-free, formaldehyde-free, chemical sunscreen-free, triclosan-free, triclocarbon-free, propylene glycol-free, mineral oil-free, coal tar-free, and microbead-free.

Herbivore is a vegan, cruelty-free skincare brand that prides themselves on using natural ingredients and try to create their products as biocompatible as possible. Their products are packaged in glass and paper, and they only use recycled & recyclable plastic when absolutely necessary. They make a point to create their products to look very aesthetically pleasing in hopes of encouraging their consumers to upcycle their packaging. Examples of upcycling their packaging include using their bottles as vases, using their mask pots as candle holders, and repurposing their lip product pots as supplement cases.

Comment below what your favourite ethical brands from Sephora are!