Beautiful Impact: The Role of Beauty In Climate Action

Since 2007, millions have participated in Earth Hour — a prompt to switch off lights in support of climate action. However, well over a decade later, the climate crisis continues to be a solid threat; the planet is losing ecosystems and wildlife at an alarming rate, thanks to heavy industrial activity, carbon emissions, and tonnes of plastic waste. And symbolically turning off the power for an hour isn’t doing enough to reduce our carbon footprint.

We can’t keep this up.

The Philippines is the third worst offender in the world when it comes to plastic pollution, and the beauty industry is one of the biggest culprits.

Plastic is the most common packaging material for beauty and personal care products, being cheap, convenient, durable, and easy to mass-produce. However, the emissions and waste from plastic production are too heavy to ignore; in 2015 alone, global emissions from plastics were equivalent to nearly 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2. Emissions from the production of ethylene (a building block for the most common type of plastic) are projected to expand by 34% between 2015 and 2030.

Plastic outlasts people. For places without a proper recycling system, disposal options are limited to landfilling or incineration, both of which have a negative environmental impact. And most of the plastic waste that doesn’t get incinerated gets leaked into the environment and inevitably ends up in the ocean, disrupting entire ecosystems and harming marine life.

We need to take action.

For Earth Hour 2020, let’s collectively move beyond switching the lights off, to making a conscious switch to sustainability.

We make conscious choices every day. We choose to give ourselves the care we need; we choose to look and feel however we want; we choose to elevate the lives of others through positivity and empowerment.

We make these choices because we believe in beauty, in radiance, in the power of good actions.

We can commit to doing more by creating less waste.

At Ellana, we are committed to decreasing plastic waste by exploring more effective and sustainable packaging options. Our refillable magnetic palettes are designed for minimum waste; they’re made with paper, much more expensive to produce than a plastic palette but similarly durable, and compostable once it reaches the end of its lifespan. Instead of plastic spray containers, our face mists now come in glass bottles, which can be rinsed and safely repurposed for a long time. The foil spout pouches that house our primers and BB foundie uses 90% less plastic than conventional plastic tubes. Our loose foundations, concealers, and powders come in a paper sachet and can be stored in our refillable mirror jars or your preferred container.

For those wondering why we change our packaging so often: It’s because we’re constantly looking for innovative ways to reduce our carbon footprint. We push for a change whenever we see a functional option that’s ethical and more sustainable than the last.

We believe beauty can do more, but it will take our collective effort to turn the tide against plastic waste and the climate crisis it directly influences.