While the industry is making strides towards reducing its environmental impact, the power of change also lies in your hands as a conscious consumer. By shifting from passive purchasing to intentional action, you help enact real change when it comes to improving circularity, rethinking the materials used in packaging, and demanding transparency across the supply chain to limit the environmental impact.

Below is an easy guide to help you navigate this journey, ensuring your interaction with the beauty industry is truly planet positive. Your Planet Positive Beauty Checklist:

Reduce your impact

Transitioning to a greener routine doesn’t have to happen overnight. Start with this easy checklist of swaps and suggestions for more conscious consumerism:

• Replace single-use cotton pads with washable bamboo rounds
• Swap single-use face wipes for washable face clothes
• Opt for larger size beauty items that use less packaging and last longer
• Seek out brands and products that offer refillable systems, allowing you to keep your primary packaging and simply replenish the contents via pouches or glass inserts. This circular approach drastically lowers the carbon footprint of your favorite products and reduces the demand for virgin plastic
• Explore waterless beauty products which are lighter to ship and help to preserve one of our most precious natural resources
• Send unwanted products and gifts to a food bank or charities such as Beauty Banks, Toiletries Amnesty or The Hygiene Bank

Take Back Your Empties

Many beauty components—like pumps, palettes, and small tubes—cannot be processed by standard kerbside recycling. Don’t let them end up in a landfill. Use the British Beauty Council Recycling Map to find your nearest take-back point and support businesses that are taking steps to reduce our waste footprint.

As well as in-store recycling drop off points, many hair, beauty and wellness brands provide a return-by-post service. To find out if any of the brands you purchase from offer a return-by-post service, head to their website.

Planet Positive Guide

Dive into the definitive industry resources provided by the Sustainable Beauty Coalition and download The Planet Positive Beauty Guide to help you decode ingredient jargon and verify eco-claims. Knowledge is your best defense against greenwashing.

Join the Movement

Collective action is where the real power lies. At the Council, we’re all about sharing challenges in order to overcome them. Find out more about British Beauty Council campaigns such as the Great British Beauty Clean Up.

The Great British Beauty Clean Up is a campaign to rethink beauty waste, led by the British Beauty Council and the Sustainable Beauty Coalition (SBC). It runs every March and helps brands, retailers, salons and beauty lovers build towards a more circular future. Mobilising industry and consumers, the initiative focuses on Zero-Landfill Recycling, Reuse and Refill, and Product Rescue.

Want to keep up to date with key issues? Sign up to become a free member of the British Beauty Council to receive our Sustainable Beauty Coalition newsletter.

The Sustainable Beauty Coalition was formed in 2021 to accelerate environmental and social change within the beauty industry.

Industry Reading

To read more on sustainability and why it matters, we recommend the following reports:

Courage to change: this landmark British Beauty Council report offers an in-depth look at the beauty industry’s environmental impact and provides a roadmap for a sustainable future.

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025: this annually-published UN report makes the case for urgent international action to meet the 2030 goals on climate change, conflict, inequality and other global issues.

Progress in reducing emissions – 2025 report to Parliament: this annually-published report by the Climate Change Committee tracks the UK’s progress in reducing its emissions, breaking impacts down by sector and policy.