4 Simple Rules for Natural Beauty.
At Green Salon, we believe in conscious beauty: the understanding that beauty is more than skin deep. We believe that taking care of your body, mind and soul enhances your inner vitality and glow and there is nothing more beautiful than that. So here are our 4 simple rules for natural beauty…
Keep it simple
Once upon a time, a beauty routine was at most 3-steps: cleanse, tone and moisturise. But in the last decade or so, it’s often become a 10-step ritual of essences, serums, masks, oils, mists and more. This is great news for the beauty industry, which in 2018 was worth £27 billion pounds in the UK.**
But how good is it for our skin - and the planet?
Dermatologists say the increasing use of active synthetic ingredients in products can strip our skin of its natural ability to self-regulate through producing its own oils, as well as cause skin irritation and flare ups.
Keeping it simple is about bringing our beauty routine back to the essentials and letting our skin breathe again. One easy way to cut the plastic is to swap bottles of make up remover for Veo’s reusable make up remover pads* & UpCircle’s Cleansing Face Balm with Vitamin E* to remove stubborn make-up, leaving your skin feeling soft & gentle.
Find natural and organic beauty products in our Wellbeing Directory
Buy organic and natural
So, is choosing organic and natural beauty products really such a big deal?
Increasingly, the evidence is yes. Most mainstream beauty products include synthetic chemicals, like parabens, phthalates and siloxanes, that we have known for years leach into aquatic wildlife, disrupting the balance of our eco-system. Now research is showing that these synthetic chemicals are also bio-accumulating in our bodies.
And in the same way that they disrupt the planet’s eco-system, these chemicals contain endocrine disruptors that can upset the balance of our endocrine system. This can affect the hormones that are secreted into our blood, and trick them into acting in ways they’re not naturally designed to behave. These changes can cause irregular periods, hormonal break-outs and are increasingly being linked to metabolic diseases, like diabetes, and even cancer.
While each individual product is well-regulated in this country and is not going to cause you harm on its own, it is the accumulated affect of these synthetic chemicals in so many of our modern products that is causing concern.
So what can we do?
It’s a forlorn task to rid our modern lives of synthetic chemicals as they are everywhere, so throwing out all our beauty products and starting again is no real solution. But simply being mindful of the ingredients in beauty products that we buy and minimising our exposure to them by choosing organic and natural beauty products is a good place to start.
And, while we’re at it, organic beauty products are kinder to the earth, and in farming them we create habitats for birds, bugs and bees to thrive.
Think circularity
Strictly speaking, this is more about the beauty of the planet than our skin.
But take a moment to think how many plastic bottles of beauty products you've absent-mindedly thrown away over the years. By some estimates over the average woman’s lifetime it could be over 50,000.
Around half, or more, are still somewhere in this world - in landfill, in the air and bobbing around in our rivers and oceans. And what goes around comes around because as plastics degrade they break up into microplastics and nanoplastics - minute specks of plastic often too small to see. These tiny plastic particles are ending up inside our bodies - through the air we breathe and the food we eat.
Research into what that means for our health is in its infancy but, if we are what we eat, we'd probably rather not be eating plastic.
At Green Salon, we champion circular beauty brands that prioritise refills of their beauty products, brands like UpCircle*, Evolve Beauty* and Star Seed* (use code GREENSTAR10 for 10% off your first order with Star Seed).
Taking care of yourself through using organic and natural beauy products also takes care of the planet
Nurture your body and mind
Hands up who doesn't want to look vibrantly healthy, with a spring in their step and gorgeous glowing skin?
Not many hands up then.
Let’s face it, we all want to feel and look healthy - but in our chaotically busy lives, making time for ourselves can feel like like a chore in itself. We end up rushing from A to B, don't get enough sleep, over do the caffeine, skip that meal and forget to go to yoga.
But of all the ingredients for natural beauty self-care is the most potent.
It can really help to find ways to weave it into your day-to-day routine. By eating a delicious, nutritious balance of organic foods, for instance, we feed our skin the vital nutrients it needs to help it stay soft, supple and blemish-free. Cycling around town, dancing, yoga, walking - following what your body enjoys - pumps oxygen around your veins, depositing nutrients to the skin, keeping it glowing and youthful.
And that meditation cushion does more than reset your mind: it’s your secret beauty routine. Deep relaxation guards against chronic stress which can cause dry skin, irritation, rashes and wrinkles.
The ultimate beauty of self-care is that at the same time as making you glow inside and out it pays dividends for the health of the planet too. Now that’s a beauty routine we can get behind.
Are you wondering how you can nourish yourself whilst nuturing the planet? Listen in to our pre-recorded workshop here.
Want to learn more? How our directory works is a great place to start!
We vet each brand for their commitment to sustainability but we are not a certification body, nor are we auditors, and we have taken the approach that we trust brands to tell the truth about their sustainability policies, practices and plans.
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**British Beauty Council, Value of Beauty Report 2019
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