Beauty products that are good for you and green too!

If you want to really get back to nature without sacrificing much of your beauty and skin care routines, you’ll be happy to know there has been a surge in organic and natural products as well as eco-friendly company practices. “Organic,” “natural,” and “eco-friendly” can be more than just marketing buzz-words.
You don’t have to spend loads of cash on natural makeup. You can get it at the drugstore, the mall, or shop online. Many of the online options (and some of the stores) allow you to purchase samples for a fraction of the price so you can get a color match and make sure the product works for your skin without going through the hassle of returning a full-size product. In the case of powdered mineral products, they tend to have longer shelf lives than others, so your money stretches further without risking infections or acne.
At the drugstore: Physician’s Formula, Jane, and Almay have organic choices in so many colors, you’ll wonder why you ever opted for anything else. Check the return policy before buying in case a color or formula doesn’t work for you.
At the mall: LUSH’s skin care and Origins’ Organics line are free of chemical herbicides and pesticides. LUSH even skips the packaging on all the products they can. If you’re interested in something outside of Origins’ Organic line, don’t worry; their goal overall is to protect the planet.
Online: SpellCosmetics.com is one online company that offers natural makeup free of common irritants that are even found in some mineral makeup lines. Bonus: they are very well known for their excellent customer service and often run amazing sales. HeavenlyNaturalBeauty.com also offers a collection of natural mineral makeup. You can try shadow or blush samples at affordable prices with enough product to determine whether you really like it before you pay for a full jar. EverydayMinerals.com offers free sample kits—all you pay for is shipping.
Some makeup and skin care lines have recycling programs that help the environment and your pocketbook. LUSH is an incredibly eco-friendly line that sells soaps, lotions, fragrances, shampoos, facial masks, and more. They’re all made from fresh, organic ingredients, by hand, and include no wasteful packaging (they don’t test on animals, either!). The packaging they do use is recycled, and if you bring back five of their little black pots, you’ll get a free facial mask. The only potential negative is a use-by date that may be sooner than you’re used to. It’s still a positive in the long run, though, because preservatives used to keep products good longer aren’t good for the environment.
Another company that works to help the environment is MAC Cosmetics. For every six empty plastic packages (eyeshadows, lipsticks, lip gloss, etc) that you take back to the counter, you get a free lipstick of your choice, excluding the Viva Glam line. Take the empties back to a freestanding store and choose from a lipstick, gloss, or shadow.
So the next time you’re looking for an easy way to shrink your carbon footprint or just be better to your skin and the environment, consider going for products with little to no packaging, a recycling program, or a cosmetics line that doesn’t use preservatives, harsh chemicals, or other ingredients that aren’t good for you or the environment. Everything counts.