It is our duty as inhabitants of the Earth to do what we can to keep the planet healthy and to protect the environment we live in.The products we buy, the waste we produce, and the companies we support all have an impact – whether positive or negative. If you're considering switching to a more eco-friendly beauty routine, relish in the fact that you're taking ownership of your own health and contributing some much-needed positive environmental change!

Here are our favorite easy ways to make your beauty routine more green:

Reduce Wastefulness

Have you ever kept a product lying around for too long “just in case” until it goes bad? Or bought a product you didn’t wind up liking, just to wind up throwing it away? Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. If you notice you have products lying around that you probably won’t ever touch, consider donating them to a local shelter or giving them to friends. This way they will get used up and won’t create unnecessary waste!

Packaging + Recycling

Speaking of waste…are your beauty products packaged in functional, recyclable containers? Try to avoid anything with overly excessive packaging, as this just creates more waste, and transparent packaging (ie clear bottles/jars) tend to go bad faster because of the exposure to sunlight. Your best bet is to buy products that come in recyclable or biodegradable packaging, that way you aren’t creating any waste at all!

If the containers you have aren’t recyclable in your area, some beauty stores have programs to help you out! You can take back empties (any brand) to any Origins store for recycling, and Aveda stores will accept hard, plastic bottle caps (like the ones on toothpaste and soda bottles) where they’ll be used to make new caps.

What You Don’t See Can Hurt You!

Sometimes we forget that the chemicals in soaps and shampoos end up somewhere after they go down the train – these products don’t stop exerting effects on the world once we can’t see them anymore! Try to avoid body washes, shampoos, and other products that contain parabens, phthalates, synthetic dyes and fragrances, and sodium laurel sulfate – these end up being ingested by aquatic life and can take hundreds of years to biodegrade. You can instead by organic shampoos (with biodegradable packaging!), use bar soaps instead of liquid, and also cut down on the number of times you wash your hair per week. This will cut down the amount of water you use, as well as reducing the amount of chemicals that get washed down the drain!

Cruelty Free + Vegan

This is probably the most directly impactful thing you can do in an effort to be more conscientious with your skincare routine. Buying cruelty free and vegan products means passing up things that include any ingredients that come from animals (snail mucus, gelatin, etc.) as well as avoiding companies that test their products on animals. Choosing to support companies that do not exploit animals is a wonderful decision that directly benefits you and the animals that would have been hurt in the process of creating artificial products.