Sustainable beauty products are making an impact on the future of the planet. “The global beauty and personal care industry is expected to grow by nearly 6% annually through 2026,” according to a report by THG Ingenuity. With more beauty and personal care brands shifting toward sustainable production, they will help in reducing the usage of chemicals and harm to the environment while fostering high-quality, natural, and raw-ingredient products.

Recycling conserves energy, reduces air and water pollution, limits greenhouse gasses, and decreases the number of products taken to landfills. And the great thing about recycling: You can throw your plastics in blue bins and continue with your day. Even though recycling seems easy and efficient, how come so many plastic products end up in a landfill instead?

Beauty brands have started shifting their focus on sustainability by creating marketing campaigns focused on refillable and recyclable packaging, “clean” formulating, microplastics, carbon footprints, energy efficiency, and more. Companies that increase efforts to make their brands more sustainable lead the way in showing responsibility for their environmental impact, but much more can be done. Biodiversity is one of the least-discussed efforts that are just as important as sustainable packaging and products.

Humans need plants for survival, but we also need them for their basis in the long-term health and sustainability of our environmental systems. Plants improve the environment in many ways, like releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, absorbing carbon dioxide, providing nutrients to animals, and regulating the water cycle — all things we need to sustain life on Earth.

A world without bees would not be as sweet. Honey, wax, propolis, royal jelly, pollen, and even bee venom would not exist in the place we call home. Today, on World Bee Day, we celebrate and honor the tiny, but mighty workers who help to improve our environment and acknowledge how important it is to ensure they stay alive.

If you’ve gone for takeout recently and received your food in cardboard-like takeout boxes, then you may have met “bagasse” in real life. Many eco-friendly restaurants and companies are prioritizing sustainability within their single-use containers, choosing packaging that is made from environmentally-friendly materials. While bamboo is well-known for eco-friendly packages, bagasse is a lesser-known material.

Sustainability starts at home. With more and more of us working from home, now is as good an opportunity as ever to improve sustainability habits. 

Smarter Lighting

Harsh artificial lighting is one of the worst parts of working in an office — so why reproduce that at home? Save energy by positioning your desk near a sunny window and turning down the lights around your house. This study found that natural sunlight improves employee mood and productivity — aka energy-saving efforts plus an added boost to productivity. 

Amongst the mountains and the deep green forests of central Africa lives the stoic mountain gorilla. Standing between 4 and 6 feet tall, weighing between 300 and 500 pounds, and covered in hair from head to toe, these gentle mammals form bands or troops for community living. Each troop covers an area of .75 to 16 square miles, and an adult gorilla can eat up to 39-44 pounds of vegetation in a day. These gentle giants spend most of their day eating while occasionally playing with their babies.

As climate change increasingly becomes a problem, the world’s greatest minds are seeking creative solutions to clean our earth’s air. Some environmental scientists, architects, and designers are analyzing buildings to determine how to effectively use them for passively cleaning smoggy urban air.

Climate change has brought a magnifying glass to the global problem of air pollution. As we build, create, and manufacture, our machines release toxic chemicals into the air that cause smog and other forms of pollution.

Air Pollution

Fossil fuels emit harmful chemicals that can cause serious problems for the environment and people’s health. Greenhouse gas emissions come from the use of fuels such as natural gas, coal, wood, and petroleum.