The makeup industry is plagued by waste, but some climate conscious brands are fighting back. Here are our top picks for zero-waste, refillable beauty products.
The beauty industry is rampant with waste, which is no surprise when you consider the recommendations to replace mascara and other make-up every few months. Almost all that waste ends up in landfills, with plastic packaging the norm across the board. Thankfully, consumer demand for refillable beauty products has grown and brands are scrambling to meet that need.
Here are our top picks for eco-friendly, non-toxic refillable cosmetics.
Our top picks
Below are some of the best refillable beauty products from companies looking to support a zero-waste lifestyle. These products use predominantly organic, plant-based ingredients, are free from potentially toxic chemicals and are better for people and the planet as a whole.
Elate Beauty
Highlights: Canadian B Corporation offering a wide range of 100% vegan, non-toxic, refillable, eco-friendly cosmetics.
- Offers reusable, refillable, bamboo palettes and compacts
- Wide range of cosmetics
- 100% vegan and cruelty-free, certified by Leaping Bunny and Beauty Without Bunnies
- Free from nano-sized ingredients
- Verified non-toxic through the Think Dirty App
- Refills shipped using seed paper that can grow wildflowers!
- B Corporation that uses FSC bamboo, PEFC wood and non-GMO corn packaging
- Fair trade, responsibly sourced mica
- Green Business Association and Surfrider Foundation member
- Not 100% plastic-free
- Made in China
Elate Beauty is a Canadian company and B Corporation that offers refillable bamboo palettes, tubes, and compacts for foundation, blush, eye shadow, mascara, lipsticks, and more.
More than 75% of Elate Beauty packaging is reusable, recyclable or plantable and the company is striving to find ways to address the remaining 25%. All of the packaging is returnable to Elate Beauty for refills or recycling.
Elate Beauty offers a recycling service in-store and via mail. Use any mailer or box to send back a minimum of three used and cleaned cosmetics and pay just $5 for shipping. Elate Beauty then gives you a $5 voucher to use on your next order to help incentivize customers to close the loop on hard-to-recycle beauty packaging.
Elate Beauty sources the bamboo for its signature tubes and palettes from a fair trade manufacturer in China. The bamboo is water processed and not chemically treated and the supplier has Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.
About 90% of Elate Beauty’s ingredients are organic and it uses fair trade mica through the Responsible Mica Initiative. Even the wood in Elate Beauty pencils comes from sustainably managed forests. This is Californian cedar wood certified PEFC (Program for Endorsement of Forest Certification).
Check out the Elate Beauty Essential Mascara, one of our top choices for eco-friendly, non-toxic mascara.
Zao Makeup
Highlights: Certified organic make-up made with 100% natural ingredients provided in sustainable and refillable packaging.
- Stylish, durable, sustainable packaging made from bamboo
- Low carbon footprint company
- Refills available for almost the entire range
- Everything is cruelty-free and PETA certified vegan
- 100% gluten-free and ECOCERT or organic certified
- Top rating from the Think Dirty App
- Recognized by the Slow Cosmetics Association for eco-friendliness
- Eco-box drop-off in stores for recycling
- Products made in Italy, France, and the Czech Republic
- Made in Europe
- Some packaging is made with BPA-free recyclable plastic
Everything sold by Zao is cruelty-free and vegan (no cochineal, carmine, or beeswax), gluten-free, and ECOCERT or organic certified. The company sources as many ingredients as possible from organic suppliers and the formulas are free from troublesome toxic chemicals. They don’t use petrochemical derivatives or synthetic preservatives, though their brushes are synthetic (and vegan). Zao only uses natural vanilla extract to perfume products.
Zao sources its bamboo in China, with local craftspeople making the bamboo packaging on-site to minimize carbon footprints and support the local economy. The techniques and tools used to make the boxes was developed by Zao as the company was determined to only package natural beauty products in natural packaging and because bamboo is an excellent carbon capture ‘technology’.
Zao products have been given a top rating from the Think Dirty App for having zero ingredients with a documented potential negative health impact.
The brand has also been recognized by the Slow Cosmetics Association for its commitment to eco-friendliness, which takes into account product composition, packaging, and advertising.
Zerra & Co. The Mascara
Highlights: Low-waste or zero-waste makeup brand offering a wide range of non-toxic, vegan-friendly cosmetics.
Zerra & Co. is a smaller cosmetics company on a mission to reduce plastic waste and provide non-toxic makeup. Every Zerra & Co. product is made by hand in Baltimore, MD, and is free of:
- Parabens
- Silicones
- Synthetic fragrances
- Coal-tar pigments
- Other common chemicals that can harm people and planet.
You won’t find gimmicky ingredients in Zerra & Co. products. Instead, the company sticks to simple formulas that work and don’t cost the earth.
The company also understands that zero-waste can be tricky, so it offers both zero-waste mascara and a low-waste, refillable mascara to keep things convenient and eco-friendly.
Why refillable beauty products matter
In the early 1990s, The Body Shop introduced refills in their stores. Sadly, the roll-out was ahead of its time and didn’t grab public attention like the zero-waste movement has in recent years. The original program was discontinued after a few years but is now back in a big way.
The Body Shop, Lush, and other high street brands are great options for refills of some products.
On the sustainability hierarchy, reduce and reuse are much more preferable to recycle. This is because a lot of energy goes into creating product packaging and into recycling that packaging at end of life. Using refills means the original lipstick holder, cosmetics pan, or liner pencil only needs to be created once, significantly reducing energy output.
- According to research from The LCA Centre, buying a refillable product can save:
- 70% in greenhouse gas emissions
- 65% in energy
- 45% in water use.
Going totally zero-waste is hard to do, but every bit helps. Switching your mascara, lipstick, blush, or foundation to a refillable product that’s just as good as your old favorite, if not better, is a great start.
Of course, the onus shouldn’t just be on us as consumers to change our behavior. Corporations need to be incentivized to offer better, more sustainable products. This is the aim of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, reintroduced in Congress in March 2021. This bill puts the focus squarely back on producers to take responsibility for switching to refillable, returnable containers in order to reduce plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Refillable products are often more cost effective and better quality than one-off, disposable purchases.
With refillables, you’re not paying time and again for the housing for the product, with all its associated manufacturing and environmental costs. And because refillable cosmetics are designed to be long-lasting, the housing is often much nicer and far more robust than the cheap disposable plastic surrounding many cosmetics.
Refillable products also offer another advantage: interchangeable refills so you can try different shades without needing a huge budget.
And refills are arguably healthier too, given that many companies offer subscription programs that deliver a refill every three months and encourage you to return your old product inserts or pans for cleaning and reuse. No more five-year-old mascara lurking in your purse, harboring all manner of bacteria bad for eye health.
Give your eyes, your budget, and the planet a break and start switching your beauty staples for refillable products today.
Further Reading
If you’re not the biggest fan of the refillable products mentioned, but you’re still looking to switch to an eco-friendlier makeup alternative, we’ve got you covered with the following posts! The brands within are all taking steps to be better than the standard the industry’s set in the way they treat their employees, initiatives taken as companies, and the ingredients they’re using in their products: