Did I fail the sustainability movement, or did sustainable beauty brands fail me?
Over the Holidays I finished both my NYX brow pencil and my essence tinted brow gel, which have been my go-to for a quick brow for quite some time. I was quite excited, actually, because I finally got to shop for replacements at a sustainable brand. It turned out it wasn’t exactly easy to find sustainable eye brow products.
Reduce, re-use, recycle?!
I fully plan to replace beauty products I use up (especially when it comes to makeup items) with sustainable ones. There’re the three r’s of living sustainably (reduce, re-use, recycle) that I want to extend to ‘replace responsibly’ (I wrote about that here), especially as a beauty junkie straddling that precarious line of loving, living and writing about beauty and still trying to live sustainably. Nevertheless, I was quite astonished how difficult my simple plan (replace a brow product) was.
My brow requirements
Lengthy posts have been written about the importance of brows, from that ubiquitous line ‘brows frame the face’ to excesses like instagram brows. I personally like my brow pomade (in purple, to match my hair) for ‘heavier’ looks, while I love the ease of pencils and gels for casual, easy looks. I want that step in my routine, because – yeah, 90s plucking left its marks, y’know?!
When I set out on research, I wasn’t overly fussy (I thought). I wanted a pencil or gel in an ashy, medium dark brown. I was open for everything else: texture, spoolie size, price, whatever. And still, I couldn’t find a product for me.
Sustainable eye brow products?!
What I found was dismal. All brands (look here and here, for example) I checked had mostly two or three shades: blonde, brown and ‘dark’. Mostly I couldn’t find mentions of undertones. Most sustainable brands are only available online to me, so testing a shade was out of question.
Look, I don’t expect a level of Anastasia Beverly Hills shade range from small and indie brands. But offering only two shades when most drugstore brands (famously unconcerned about shade ranges) manage up to eight (Maybelline)?
Sustainable brands need to urgently step up in their offerings, otherwise that perception of ‘giving up’/’loosing quality’ when going sustainable will be set in most people’s brains.
What I did
I reduced and re-used and opted out of buying a new product. I’ll use my MAC Brun eyeshadow as a replacement now, although it’s not really what I wanted.
It should feel like a triumph (not buying is the best option when you want to live sustainably, after all), but still: it feels like defeat.
Which says maybe more about how ingrained consimerism is than what it says about the sustainable beauty landscape. (BUT: go and release more shades, sustainable brands!)
Please note that this post is not sponsored in any way. We buy products ourselves, with our own money, and don’t accept exchanging goods or money for reviews. We are completely independent, and our reviews reflect that.
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