With the rise in skin care consumption, both for hygiene and luxury, plastic pollution has also gone up. While one of the best ways consumers can help is reducing unnecessary products, some skin care is going to be part of everyone’s health routine. Yet, we can’t take care of our skins with products that damage our water systems and soils. Because in the end, those damaged systems grow unhealthy food and thus end with us sick. Which is why World Environment Day isn’t just about animals and plants, it’s about healthy humans. In 2025, that means tackling unnecessary plastic waste whether that’s by reducing single-use plastic as much as possible, increasing reusable plastic, healthy recycling and upcycling of plastic, better waste management, or other innovative solutions. This especially applies to the skin care industry, not only because 10% of plastic waste lies in packaging which is necessary to preserve the product and increase its shelf-life to get the most out of the resources used to make the product. No, it’s also an important aspect since microbeads and other ingredients are made of plastic or derived from petroleum. While it’s not always bad to have petroleum in products, we can reduce unnecessary plastic and many Indian skin care brands have risen to the challenge.
Indian skin care brands with plastic reduction solutions that go beyond recycling
No Rubbish Self Care
While you’ve to check with your dermatologist whether this is good for your skin, look at the ingredients to ensure that the sunscreen has PA+++, as shared by IshitaMangal on YouTube, the brand is doing great at reducing plastic pollution with a simple solution. They take back empty containers for their products and sanitize them and then re-fill them for you. Yes, a take-back program. To ensure that the transport emissions are also managed, they wait until you’ve a few containers to do this. While Dot&Key also has a take back program, they do not have a refill program and instead send the products to an ambiguous recycling center.
Kamarkattu Ecostore
From increasing sustainable options for consumers to making products packaged in zero waste materials, this small skin care brand is doing wonders. While yes, glass in the bathroom can be risky, for vegan lip balms and other such products, this can be a go-to brand if you doctor green lights it!
Bare Necessities
An award-winning zero-waste brand, they do more than just skin care but are conveniently available on BlinkIt, because as they say convenience isn’t the problem, over consumption is. While some might call them pricey, they’re zero-waste, groundwater safe, and we know most sustainable brands are fair trade and source ethical resources. So if you can afford them, their products come in powder form in compostable packaging reducing transport emissions, water emissions, and plastic waste because you can reuse the bottles you’ve at home!
One thing to remember though, is that single use paper is usually more resource intensive than plastic but plastic causes microplastic pollution and harms animals. Which is why reduce and reuse must become part of our lifestyles as far as possible. Efforts also need to be directed to better upcycling, recycling, and management of necessary single use plastic, alongside paper composting, upcycling, and recycling. Whether that’s done by composting paper at home when possible, using seed paper that can turn into plants for single use packaging where financially viable, or having robust wet waste composting and paper recycling centers at the society level, helping local raddi valas and companies like Scrapuncle, or by finding other innovative solutions.
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To learn more about that and be informed on other news stay tuned to NB news and remember to Zoobop your skin care before you hit purchase! Happy world environment day 2025!
