This is a sponsored feature. All opinions are 100% from Her Campus.
What is your daily beauty routine? Take a second to think about what products you use for your hair and skin. What brands? Is the packaging recycleable? What are the ingredients? Something we rarely consider are the ingredients that make up our beauty products. Which is ironic, because that ultimately determines if the product works or not. Some household name brands are made up of harmful chemicals that do the opposite of their intention. Over time, these cosmetics can actually cause damage to our skin and hair. It’s a good thing that there are green alternatives to these products conveniently available to us. All we have to do is become conscious of our purchases and what we incorporate into our daily beauty routines!
Green beauty describes products that are made of all-natural/naturally derived ingredients and are from brands that take environmental concerns into consideration. These products use real ingredients like argan oil, honey, almonds, avocado, and more. Green beauty brands also make an effort to package their products in either recyclable (cardboard/some plastics) or sustainable (glass) containers.
Garnier is a green beauty brand that was founded in 1904 when Alfred Amour Garnier patented the first-ever hair lotion made from natural plant ingredients. This set the stage for the years to come and all products from there forward have been inspired by nature. Garnier is dedicated to making a conscious effort to craft hair and skin products that their customers can be confident in and feel good about purchasing. This is rooted in their committment to bring natural beauty products into every home and support nation-wide recycling efforts. But, they can’t do it alone — it takes a society to make seemingly small lifestyle changes, like focusing on what cosmetics you use, that add up to make a big impact! Practicing sustainability and buying natural beauty products not only benefit us, but the environment as a whole. Garnier’s Beauty Responsibly ™ campaign encourages us to spread the word on the importance of making conscious decisions as consumers of beauty products … especially around back-to-school season since that is when a lot of students stock up.
What individuals do at the end of a product’s lifecycle really makes a difference. Most people toss their empty beauty products into the trash without a second thought. All of those discarded containers add up fast in landfills. Garnier noted that only 1/2 of Americans recycle their old beauty products, so they have teamed up with Terracycle and DoSomething.org to build upon their sustainability commitment and prevent beauty empties from entering landfills. Togehter, they created the Rinse, Recyle, Repeat campaign: a national recycling program for personal-care products that stresses the importance to be cautious of your impact on the environment. This is the first-ever beauty recycling program! It facilitates the collection and recycling of empties that otherwise cannot be recycled for free. In 2017 alone, this program recycled 10 million empties! The product of the recycling was transformed into elements like benches, trash receptacles, and planters that helped build community gardens. Pretty awesome, huh?
If this sounds like something you’d support, individual can actually sign-up online to participate! Visit dosomething.org/rinse or text RINSE to 38383.
Our Her Campus chapter was lucky enough to have a partnership with Garnier to promote green beauty on our campus and educate about the importance of having a healthy beauty regimen. We teamed up with them to give SVC students a chance to take the first step to a green back to school routine! Garnier was kind enough to send us samples of hair masks (avocado / coconut), micellular water (regular / waterproof), and a rose water facial spray to distribute.
We hosted a table in the Carey Center on Wednesday September 26 to hand out these samples and share a few fun-facts. We created a short quiz with questions about green beauty ingredients, the Garnier brand, and sustainability. These intended to get students thinking about the impact the cosmetics they buy have on their skin and the environment. As a reward for answering our questions and learning a bit about green beauty, those who visited us received each of the four products to try it out for themselves.
For some students, this was their first time trying out Garnier’s products, but others, like Taylor Berardi (C’21), have been Garnier fans for years. Taylor has used the coconut hair mask before, but was excited to sample the avocado version from our activity! She says “I think I might have a new favorite! The avocado formula smelled so good and left my hair feeling soft and smooth all day long! I will definitely be purchasing some more ASAP!” Kayla Scher (C’19) agrees about the hair masks, saying that “the hair mask was lovely and made my hair so soft!” Kelsey Myers (C’22) was excited to see Garnier on campus because she too uses their products and especially loves the micellular water! “I have used the the micellar cleansing water since it was released. I have gone through multiple bottles and it is good at taking off all my makeup, including my waterproof mascara. My eyes and skin do not feel irritated after I use it,” says Kelsey. She also admires how Garnier supports the environment and healthy skin-care, noting “I think it’s important to use all-natural products and know what you are putting on your skin.”
Thank you Garnier for the amazing samples — we loved them and are glad to have started the conversation about green beauty on our campus! SVC Ladies, if you didn’t get a chance to stop by our table last week, no worries! We have Garnier products left over for an Instagram giveaway. Be on the lookout for that post sometime next week before we head home for fall break!
HCXO and #BeautyResponsibly,
Ash