Blue Beauty VS Green Beauty

Blue Beauty Is the Growing Movement You Should Be Watching
Spoiler alert:

Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with color trends.

At Jill Turnbull Beauty, we're not just about enhancing your natural allure; we're about revealing truths that the beauty industry often keeps under wraps. Today, we're delving into a topic that's as crucial as it is overlooked – the presence of plastics in everyday beauty products like lotions, hair sprays, and shampoos.

How did we get here?

Small acts can have big effects. Take, for example, the purchase of an innocuous tube of lipstick. It most likely arrives with two-day shipping, boxed in a whimsical package with glitter cellophane and packing peanuts—all of which are unrecyclable. You wear it a few times, decide it’s not your shade, and throw it away. Now imagine this being done on a global scale—this is what contributes to the trillion pieces of plastic impeding our oceans.

It’s no wonder that this product life cycle—from the moment an item is made to how it’s shipped, used, then eventually thrown away—is at the core of the latest movement to sweep the beauty industry. It’s called blue beauty, and it affects the health of our planet, as well as our personal health. Ahead, we unpack the lingo behind blue beauty, why it deserves your attention, and the pioneering brands incorporating blue beauty standards for a better and brighter future.

Clean and Sustainable Beauty

What Is Blue Beauty?

What initially began as “Project Blue Beauty” by Jeanie Jarnot, founder of Beauty Heroes, blue beauty is a sustainability movement that supports environmental and ocean conservation by using reef-safe ingredients with a goal toward zero-waste packaging. In other words, “It’s all about protecting our oceans,” says Anna Brightman, co-founder of UpCircle Beauty. Essentially, it means safe, sustainably sourced, and ocean-safe ingredients in collaboration with reused, recyclable, or refillable packaging. Ingredients like oxybenzone (often found in chemical sunscreens), teflon (detected in pressed powder or mascara), and silicones (used in creams, shampoos, and conditioners) are just a few of the culprits lurking in our products that the movement aims to reduce—and ultimately eliminate—in the beauty industry.

Blue Beauty vs. Green Beauty

While both blue and green beauty exist under the same sustainability umbrella, they reside in slightly different subsets. Green beauty refers to beauty products that are produced using clean, sustainably sourced ingredients with the aim of being better for both our skin and the environment. Blue beauty, on the other hand, aims specifically to reduce the negative impact of products and packaging on our oceans and marine life. “It's about cleaning up our oceans by using reef- and ocean-safe ingredients, avoiding any chemicals that are harmful to our ocean life, adopting a zero-waste policy, avoiding the use of plastic packaging entirely, and offering refillable and reusable options,” says Jill Turnbull, founder of Jill Turnbull Beauty.

In other words, the green beauty and blue beauty movements are both championing the same cause: sustainability. “Both fight to reduce emissions, prevent pollution and waste, and reduce energy,” says Trunbull. “Ultimately, the planet needs both green and blue beauty. We cannot increase our carbon footprint much further without inducing severe climate change, and we cannot contaminate our oceans through our rivers with industrial and consumer waste,” she adds.

Sadly, however, there’s still a fair amount of confusion around brands claiming to be eco-friendly. Because terms like "green" and "blue” are subjective and not regulated, some companies are able to define themselves as such by implementing only one of these sustainable solutions (like reusable packaging, organic ingredients, or eco-friendly manufacturing). Bonnie Schiffman founder and CEO of This Stuff Goes Bad, says, “Using clean, organic ingredients, yet packaging in plastic, would not make my list of green beauty or blue beauty brands, yet there are companies who categorize themselves as such.”

To be truly blue, brands must consider every aspect of their products’ lifecycles, such as ingredient sourcing, production, packaging, shipping, usage, and disposal. But why does this matter? Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Why Does Blue Beauty Matter?

“Well, for one, the world has a serious problem with plastic,” shares Brightman. “The beauty industry—glamorous as it may be—is a major contributor.” According to Zero Waste Week, the beauty industry contributes a whopping 120 billion units of packaging a year (8.3 billion of it being plastic), and the shipping industry (an integral part of the process) contributes more than one billion tons of CO2 a year.

National Geographic points out that the largest market for plastics is packaging materials, the vast majority of which never gets recycled or incinerated. In fact, there are over five trillion pieces of plastic currently in the ocean. “Plastic poses a major threat to the animals that depend on the oceans for food,” says Dr. Barbara Paldus, CEO and founder of Codex Beauty Labs. “To a sea turtle, a floating plastic bag looks like a jellyfish and, when ingested, it creates a blockage in the stomach that ends up starving the turtle to death. Similarly, plastic pellets float on the ocean’s surface and look like fish eggs to seabirds—with an equally deadly effect—resulting in them being found in the stomachs of 63 of approximately 250 species of seabirds worldwide,” she adds. Things as mundane as flimsy bits of cellophane, single-use face wipes, glitter in your favorite eyeshadow, or microbeads in your body scrub all add up in a big way. And as our dependence on plastic increases, so too does the danger to marine life.

It’s not just plastic, either.

“When we shower, the products we use are washed down the drain,” explains Turnbull. “However, water waste treatment plants cannot break down all of these ingredients, which is how some make their way to marine environments.” Environmental engineer turned skincare creator Bonnie Schiffman also points out that while we may use preservatives, which can be harmless in small doses, billions of uses a day go down our shower drains, resulting in large quantities in our oceans. And because they can’t break down, they end up harming marine life and the delicate ecosystem balance. In fact, scientists have detected parabens—a common cosmetic preservative that studies suggest may disrupt hormones in the body and increase the risk of cancer—in marine mammals from coastal areas of the U.S. This phenomenon is problematic not only because parabens (and other toxic ingredients) are harmful when ingested by marine life, but also because they eventually travel up the food chain to us and make their way into our bodies.

Even if you purchase green and blue products, the fact remains that plastic is everywhere. A study by the World Health Organization found that we’ve unknowingly ingested microplastics (plastic fragments that are generally smaller than 1,000 nanometers) for decades.

Why Does Blue Beauty Matter?

It’s easy to get caught up in all the stats and become overwhelmed with hopelessness, but it’s not all doom and gloom. The fact that the blue beauty movement is gaining traction is a sign that we are heading in the right direction. There are some small actions you can take, like using your products completely before buying others, using products and packaging that can be recycled, and being mindful of what and how much you are consuming. That said, recycling can only do so much. The onus shouldn’t fall on the consumer but rather the beauty industry as a whole. Brands must commit to restructuring a product’s lifecycle—from the moment it is made, shipped, used, and then thrown away. An excellent illustration of this is presented in the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, written by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart. The authors explain that everything is a resource for something else. “In nature, the “waste” of one system becomes food for another. Everything can be designed to be disassembled and safely returned to the soil as biological nutrients, or re-utilized as high-quality materials for new products as technical nutrients without contamination,” the authors point out.

Some good news: There are a growing number of brands that are working to help limit our impact on the planet. Below, we highlight nine innovative blue beauty brands that are mindful of their products’ lifecycle, while also incorporating clean and sustainable ingredients.

Brands That Are Making a Difference

Jill Turnbull Beauty

Founder Jill Turnbull grew up in eco-conscious Australia, where the government issues egg timers to households to limit their water usage. “Because of this experience, I made it my mission to minimize water waste through product innovation,” Turnbull tells us. For example, the brand’s hair care line absorbs quickly into hair without the build-up of product, making for a faster rinse time. Jill Turnbull Beauty also works closely with farms and labs to ensure that sustainability is at the forefront of everything it does—from the products' production to the disposal of the empty packaging. All products are formulated with reef-safe ingredients with complete transparency and are 100 percent biodegradable, cruelty-free, and endorsed by The Humane Society of the United States. The brand’s packaging is also designed to reduce waste by using "sqround" cylindrical-shaped bottles that are more efficient to pack during the manufacturing process. Additionally, all of the packaging is made with BPA-free, recyclable, and reusable materials and are free of cardboard boxes and airless pumps. Another bonus: Each purchase funds a direct contribution to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

To Learn About Other Brands Making a Difference
check them out here:

Written by Jill Turnbull

Jill Turnbull Beauty Authentic Sustainability was founded by Australian Jill Turnbull. With a 48-year legacy in hairstyling and makeup artistry, her brand stands for genuine, ocean-safe beauty solutions.

Posted on October 12, 2022

Jill Turnbull

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Blue Beauty VS Green Beauty

Blue Beauty Is the Growing Movement You *Should* Be WatchingSpoiler alert:

Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with color trends.

How did we get here?

Clean and Sustainable Beauty

What Is Blue Beauty?

Blue Beauty vs. Green Beauty

Why Does Blue Beauty Matter?

Why Does Blue Beauty Matter?

Brands That Are Making a Difference

Jill Turnbull Beauty

Written by Jill Turnbull

Blue Beauty Is the Growing Movement You Should Be Watching
Spoiler alert: