Beauty in a Thriving Environment

Mammoth Cave National Park, October 2021

The term “sustainable” has been used more in marketing, media, and businesses to describe what their goal is to portray to the public. At this point, it’s for describing easily that an organization cares about the environment. Personally, I know I'm guilty of doing this for the sake of providing a straight to the point answer in my social bios; but, what does sustainable actually mean?

Sustainability: the ability to continue at a particular level for a period of time.

It makes sense that the word is thrown around at this point because most companies and individuals have been consuming beyond their means for quite some time now. Each year we measure how much of our earth’s resources we use and we compare it to what we should be using in order to keep our earth balanced. But every year, we overshoot it. At this point in time, it seems like sustainable action is needed to get to a point where as a collective we use less resources.

That is all good and dandy, but there are other terms we need to discuss that are just as important as we move forward in figuring out how to balance our lifestyle with the world around us.

As our climate is changing at a rapid pace, we need to do more than just stabilize it, we need to regenerate and restore it. 

Regenerative: relating to the improvement of a place or system, especially by making it more active or successful.

Restoration: the act or process of returning something to its earlier good condition or position.

A 1.5°C change in temperature doesn’t seem like much. But globally, it is enough to change regions everywhere; from the way ecosystems flow, extreme weather changes, and as soil health deteriorates every year. In order to “be sustainable”, we also need to restore the areas that have been losing the value it once had. Regenerating it to where it used to thrive, but making it stronger than before.

So how does this specifically impact the beauty industry?

We see news articles every season about ingredients in cosmetics that are linked to negative effects on our health. Clean beauty isn’t a new idea, but now it is apparent more than ever that we need to change the perception of what is acceptable in our beauty products. We have commercialized growing crops for food so we know we can grow crops for beauty products - if we do it correctly. L’Occitane is a great example of this practice as well as buying ingredients from women through a Fair Trade exchange.

However, we have a lot of work to do for this possibility to expand for all cosmetic companies and manufacturers. We need to sustain our resource use, restore regions to where it was, and then regenerate it. Without flourishing ecosystems, consistent weather, and healthier soil - we cannot grow quality crops or even depend on them to grow. A healthier environment means a healthier life for all types of life forms.

To live better, we need to ask ourselves what needs to improve. 

How do we cut back to sustain our livelihood?

How can we restore our surroundings?

And how will we regenerate to the fullest life?

Think about it.