For beauty and wellness gifts that transport you from a lockdown shower to a spa or a meadow of flowers, here are a few options that come close—at least for a few fleeting moments. In addition, many of these brands are cutting down on plastic waste, giving back to communities in need, and redefining what beauty really is all about—all good things to pass on as a gift. California beauty company All Good came out with a zero-plastic beauty kit that has all the essentials. In addition, they debuted this fall, a new line up lip and cheek tints in recyclable glass pots. The botanically derived ingredients are combined with clean mineral pigments and SPF 15 non-nano zinc–that is reef friendly–for a perfect blend of beauty and sustainability. A 100% plant-based formula and in recyclable cartons, these shampoo bars actually work. If you’ve tried washing your hair with a bar of soap, it can lead to mixed results. But a new lineup of companies such as Each & Every are producing a modern era of shampoo bars that are effective and eco-friendly. Made with no sulfates, parabens, phthalates, silicones, synthetic dyes or synthetic fragrance, each bar is sizable and will last longer than the average shampoo bottle (which is primarily water). Too many options overwhelm you at the drugstore? Are other brands too pricey? This new skincare company wants to marry vegan, clean beauty with affordability. All products are priced under $30. Founder Matthias Hug put them to the test, seeing how this simplified beauty regime would deal with adult acne. It worked — just as well as pricier options on the market. Made with vegan botanicals and free of potentially irritating ingredients like parabens, sulfates, and artificial fragrances, Fluer & Bee products are manufactured in a lab that runs on 100% wind energy and the company aims to be carbon neutral by 2021. In addition, they donate 1% of all sales to Days for Girls, a nonprofit women's empowerment organization that distributes menstrual hygiene products to girls in need who would otherwise miss school. A clean beauty brand for the makeup and skincare lover. The Sunset Kit has some of the Ilia’s best offerings in a curated selection — and ready for travel (in a post COVID world). Set includes two full-sized clean favorites and two minis; an idea way to dip into the world of clean beauty. Ilia already uses recycled aluminum, glass, and responsibly-sourced paper, and is pushing for better packaging materials for the beauty industry. As one of the early adopters of clean beauty, founder Sasha Plavsic has been on a decade-long journey, passionate about fusing skincare with modern-day cosmetics in an eco-friendly manner. For dry cold windy days, shea butter is a thick, emollient cream with an endless list of uses and cherished in West Africa where it stems from. This one, by Ten Thousand Villages, celebrates the shea butter’s native roots in Ghana where its hand-harvested from shea trees and thoughtfully packaged in a ceramic container, decorated with recycled glass beads made by local artisans. Tea tree and lemon-scented, this versatile cream can be applied to dry, flaky problems or rubbed into your legs and arms after a shower for smooth limbs all winter long. Kylie Antolini, proprietor and founder of Wildwood Candle Co., is an avid trail runner, Portland resident, and candle-obsessed connoisseur. She brings all three together with Wildwood Candle Co., named after the trails in Forest Park, a municipal park with over 70 miles of single track trails to explore, in Portland, Oregon. It is her goal to be able to give back by donating at least 5% of profits to the Forest Park Conservancy. The Forest Park Conservancy plays the most important role in maintaining the ecological health and soft surface trails of the park. Each scent represents the names of trails that connect to Wildwood, or are an attraction within the Forest Park acreage. If you cannot get outside this holiday season, you can at least take in the scents of the Pacific Northwest with its crisp winter air, and the smell of freshly fallen fir needles. If you have a friend that is a scent-lover and fragrance nut, send her this sampler kit by Zents featuring their entire range (and maybe a gift card so she can get a full-size bottle of her favorite?). Inspired by the his travels to India after a car accident that left him in pain and injured, Cord Coen learned ancient healing practices, which included the power of fragrance. Given Coen’s experience in India, Zents mixes beauty with service and is committed to paying it forward. The company curates seva (selfless service in Hindi) to support a host of organizations: to increase access to healthcare through Project C.U.R.E; to teach mindfulness through the David Lynch Foundation; to care for the environment through IDE; to support the arts through Playing for Change; to protect the animals through Animal Welfare Institute; and lastly, to integrate eastern healing techniques with western medicine, The Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) Program by Urban Zen Foundation Instagram favorite brand Saie (pronounced as “say”) has brought together beauty industry executives to create a clean beauty brand that’s affordable. If you’re looking for stocking stuffers, their moisturizing balm is a favorite, leaving you with a universal pink tint that can polish off any natural look. Their packaging is made with recycled plastic, and is recyclable — yes, we know the challenges with recycling. So Saie has partnered with TerraCycle to get back empty tubes at their end of life: when you’re finished with the product, send them an email. They’ll mail you a shipping label to recycle the materials properly. And the company is working on improving this process further. Created by co-founder and CEO of Bluemercury Marla Beck, who looks after the growing network of Bluemercury stores around the country, which specialize in clean beauty and wellness, Lune+Aster is their in-house brand. With vitamin-infused, paraben-free formulas, the brand describes its collection as “minimal effort, maximum impact makeup.” The Golden Hour palette brings everyday nudes, pinks, and peachy tones together for a versatile set that will suit a variety of skin colors. Classic, long-lasting, and an elegant palette that any lady would love to add to her collection. It’s almost been a decade since founders Alexander Kummerow and Julia Wills started concocting natural skincare solutions in their Seattle kitchen and posting them on Etsy as a small business. As the years have progressed, their formulations have improved resulting in a crowd-favorite, the Pink Cloud Cleanser, which removes makeup, cleanses the skin, but is also low-foaming, non-stripping, and has a heavenly scent. It’s 30 seconds of luxury to start or end your day. Packed in a glass bottle, it’s a beautiful addition to your bathroom countertop as well. If you’re looking to clean up your nail care routine, Cote nail polishes are made without the five major nail polish toxins. They come in nuanced shades of nudes, pinks, corals, and reds. Until manicures at the local salon become a regular treat, these little nail polishes will keep you feeling feminine and refined. Pair with base and top coat to give them longer staying power. Cote also recycles all its used polish bottles, and 0ffers customers 10 percent off your next Cote polish purchase by bringing any used bottle of polish into the shop. Working in conjunction with an environmental services company that provides recycling management services specific to nail polish, Cote repurposes the polishes used in their retail locations. Thought a bit more on the pricey side, Organic Pharmacy is one of the UK’s most well-known clean beauty brands, started 18 years ago. This Hero Skin Care kit brings together all their best-selling products into a luxurious gift. This holiday season they’re also partnering with the Prince’s Trust, which has an initiative titled Women Supporting Women, in an effort to create a stronger community and better resources for vulnerable women in the UK. In 2020 and 2021, 10% of profits will go to this initiative. These artfully-designed clay stones will make you feel like you’re at a spa. Made to help with exfoliation and circulate blood flow, they’re a meditative way to spend a few extra minutes in the shower each week. If COVID has left you missing the occasional indulgence of a spa, these beautiful creations will transport you and leave you feeling smooth and refreshed. The skin-smoothing stones are artisan-made in the South of France and come in two sizes for face and body.

Becoming more environmentally friendly starts with reducing waste, but is it possible to recycle plastic beauty product packaging? Rose Inc. investigates.

Reducing one's carbon footprint requires a multipronged approach that inevitably impacts every corner of our lifestyle choices, from travel to diet to personal care. When it comes to beauty products, a focus on sustainable ingredients, transparent supply chains, and a reduction of potentially-hazardous chemicals are all vital to consider when going green, but there’s one issue that causes a disproportionate amount of confusion: recycling.   The best way to discard plastic beauty product packaging, like empty face cream jars and lipstick bullets, is as confusing as it is discouraging. As many of us strive to improve our impact, we’re left wondering about the end of life for our everyday consumer goods. How can we prevent the products we buy from building up in landfills or polluting our oceans? Rose Inc. investigates the world of plastic recycling.       Plastic: The Origin Story   Since the 1950s, when plastic as we know it was introduced into society as a durable, cheap alternative to glass and metal, it has been grossly overproduced. Decades later, we’re at an impasse: We simply have too much plastic on planet earth, yet we continue to create it at a staggering rate. It’s estimated that 91% of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics that we’ve produced has not been recycled, the vast majority of which is piling up in landfills or polluting the oceans.   The irony of this issue is that the very thing that makes plastic so revolutionary—it’s strong and won’t shatter—is the very thing that’s left our planet in peril. It takes over 400 years for something like a plastic bottle to decompose, and during that lengthy process, it turns to microplastics that leach into the water and soil. Since many types of plastic are made from petrochemicals—like crude oil—the long-term effects of its microplastics are just now being studied.    

Recycling: Reading The Signs

  Recycling your empties is the best course of action for products you already own, so understanding the stamped symbol on the bottom of a plastic container is vital. Although it seems like the iconic, three-arrow shape denotes a product is recyclable, its only purpose is to identify the type of plastic.   “Some common misconceptions about the recyclability of plastic consumer goods and packaging, like beauty products, are that if there is a recycling symbol on it, is it recyclable,” says Marina McCoy, a recycling expert and the founder and CEO of Waste Free Earth, an organization that creates systems to help companies improve their environmental impact. The reality is that only products marked 1 (PETE), 2 (HDPE), and 5 (PP) are widely accepted in curbside bins. Some of these types of plastic commonly include clear and light-colored jars, bottles, and caps.   Tossing products with other numbers into recycling bins is actually harmful to the entire system. “This process is referred to as 'wishful' recycling,” McCoy says. “It leads to high contamination rates at recycling facilities, making it harder for them to separate the recyclable materials amongst all the contaminates.” It’s also important all products placed in curbside bins are squeaky clean, since excess makeup or cream disrupts the sorting process and often leads those products, even if they are accepted, to be thrown away along with anything they’ve dirtied.   Types of plastic that are not accepted in curbside bins often include mascara tubes, lipstick bullets, lip gloss, and anything that has dark or brightly-colored plastic or metal components, like pans and springs. There are, of course, exceptions to these rules and things are changing as more environmentally-friendly plastics increase in popularity, like bio-based plastics made from corn, which many experts believe is the future of consumer goods sustainability.        

Municipal vs Possible

  Another important aspect of plastic recyclability boils down to what programs are in effect where you live. That is, what’s possible to be recycled versus what’s actually accepted at your municipal facility, which may change from time to time based on its value. “Go to your waste facility’s website and search for its recycling guidelines,” McCoy suggests. “Occasionally you may need to email or call them if your product isn't listed.”   Sarah Teeter, global project manager for TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based private recycling business that specializes in hard-to-recyclable waste, notes that if a product was not specifically designed to have post-consumer value, it will probably end up being thrown away. "Up until this point, many brands that have been making common products have not really been considering what their end of life solution is,” Teeter says. "Fortunately, that is starting to change, which has a lot to do with consumer awareness and demand." While glass and aluminum are viable options—albeit they have their own downsides—one of the best solutions for 2020 and beyond is recycled plastic.        

Post-Consumer Plastic: A Better Choice

  Arguably the best current solution for the beauty industry is simply slowing the production of new plastic by using post-consumer materials. This prevents new plastic from being made and temporarily reduces the risk of waste ending up in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of trash three times the size of France currently floating in the sea. Some brands, like Kevin Murphy and REN, even use plastic reclaimed from the ocean for their packaging, while others, like Pipette Baby, have created metal-free pumps that allow its post-consumer plastic packaging to also be recyclable.  

Take-Back Programs:

  As consumer demand for more environmentally-friendly solutions grow, many beauty brands that sell plastic packaging have implemented ‘take-back programs’ that provide a better end of life solution. Some, like L'Occitane and M.A.C., have internal options for dropping products off at stores, while brands like Le Labo offer discounts for refilling bottles instead of purchasing new packaging. Others, like Boscia and Saie, have partnered with companies like TerraCycle to offer mail-in recycling at no charge to the consumer.   While the beauty industry is still on its path towards sustainability, taking time to identify the types of plastic you purchase, then properly recycle them, is the first step in creating a more beautiful future.

If you haven't heard of Saie, you will soon. Since launching last September, the clean beauty brand has rapidly attracted a feverish level of enthusiasm for its affordable, luxury-quality offerings that supply glowing skin, lustrous lips, and long, full lashes without any (and we mean any) toxic ingredients. What's more, with a just-announced new round of seed funding led by Unilever—also joined by goop founder and wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow—Saie is primed to become even more of a player in a market that’s expected to reach $22 billion by 2024.   Launching an accessible line with clean formulations, sustainability, and transparency as key pillars—and having it deliver by today's standards—is no small feat, but for Saie founder and CEO Laney Crowell, it was the "only way to create the brand she wanted to see herself." Having spent five years as an executive at Estée Lauder, and founding her own wellness website The Moment, Crowell was inspired to launch Saie when, after seeking to detox her lifestyle, she realized there was a dearth of clean makeup products that "performed, looked cool, and weren't too expensive." Crowell began by recruiting some of her former Estée Lauder team members, including Sarah Tallman to lead product development, who was already on a personal journey towards clean living after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and Tina Gu to oversee finance and business development. With Crowell also enlisting the help of her friend and wellness influencer Geri Hirsch as creative director, Saie's first collection of hero products—tinted lip balm, mascara, brow gel, and an eyelash curler—launched in the fall, free of 2,000 harmful and irritating ingredients commonly found in cosmetics.           Clean mascaras tend to leave much to be desired, so it's no surprise that Saie's Mascara 101, which harnesses beeswax, shea butter, and quickgrass extract in an inky formula that doesn't flake or smudge, has become an instant cult favorite. And rest assured, formulas that both perform and impart nourishing benefits is a common theme throughout the range. "I wanted Saie products to be the things people needed but couldn’t find clean alternatives for; things like mascara, lip gloss, and highlighter," explains Crowell. "And then we decided to take it a step further, and make products that aren’t just exciting in the clean world, but that disrupt all of beauty with highlighters that aren’t stroby, just simply cool; lipgloss that’s a treatment too; mascara that gives you that super chic look and is crazy nourishing." For the lips, there's the lightly tinted everyday Liquid Lip Balm, infused with squalene, beeswax, and coconut oil, or Really Great Gloss, loaded with juicy, plumping, and hydrating hyaluronic acid, coconut milk, sunflower butter, and grape-seed oil. For a sun-kissed skin effect, there's glossy sheen-imparting Dew Balm highlighter, laced with hydrating fatty acids and calming marshmallow root, and illuminating Glowy Super Gel, which utilizes plant-derived glycerin, brightening vitamin C, and antioxidant-rich rosehip seed oil. A new bronzed shade named Sunglow, meanwhile, came as a suggestion from their community.       Just as important as their consciously-crafted formulas are their sustainable, yet stylish and shelfie-inspiring packaging, which was designed in partnership with TerraCycle. "I wanted Saie to have chic, fashionable branding and packaging so you’d be excited to see it in your makeup bag," explains Crowell. "It was a lot to take into consideration, especially since we’re so focused on sustainability, and I drove my team nuts, but I was just tired of compromising in one place or another and I was hearing from so many others that they were, too." Moreover, Crowell hopes that the solutions they've innovated will have ripple effects within the industry. "My hope is that bringing big beauty expertise to the clean market, like performance and packaging, changes the way people think about clean beauty," she says. "I believe it’s the only way forward for ourselves and the planet."         So what's next for nine-month-old Saie with more funding, and Paltrow throwing even more weight behind the brand's mission after goop became its first exclusive retailer at launch? Product development, retail expansion, and marketing, says Crowell. As far as the latter is concerned, there will continue to be a major emphasis on community engagement, with an open dialogue to facilitate two-way feedback. And while inclusivity has been a focus from the beginning, from the brand's campaign stars to its collaborators and paid influencers, Crowell is continuously looking for new ways to ensure their customer base sees themselves in the brand. "We’re, of course, still working on ways where we can be better, but our community holds us accountable," she explains, adding that Saie is launching their first complexion category next month, and that a “complexion crew” of community members was established to help guide the shade creation. "We can’t claim to be a brand that’s both good for people and good for the planet without being a brand that supports and takes action for all races, genders, and sizes."