Posts tagged "make up"

How can I reduce my use of make-up sponges etc?

We’ve had an email from Charley:

I’ve read your pages about reducing toilet paper and sanitary towels. I’m not sure I want to go that far yet but I do want to find an alternative for makeup sponges like for applying liquid foundation. Do you know if there are any recycled sponges on the market or what else can I use?

I’m hoping we’ve got some make-up experts in the Recycle This community — I’ve only worn foundation twice in my entire life so I don’t know much about that sort of thing. It’s an evasive answer but that is one way to reduce using synthetic sponges/foam pads – and other make-up consumables such as packaging: wear less make-up and less regularly. I realise it’s not an answer for everyone but it is something to consider. I think I used to wear make-up out of habit but once I got over the shock of going cosmetically nude, I quickly normalised to not wearing make-up.

Now to Charley’s actual question: with Google, I can find sponge scourers make from recycled but not finer make-up sponges. Anyone got better Google skills or with more cosmetics knowledge, know where/what to look for? You can get natural sponges for applying make-up (which could be composted at the end of the life) but they usually have their own environmental impact. Anyone got any advice on those?

Alternatives: again, possibly not for everyone but switch to a powder foundation that can be applied with a brush – a good quality brush washed regularly will last a long, long time. (On a similar point, I can’t believe I stuck with sponge eye shadow applicators for so long — trained into them by the “free” ones with some shadows I guess — when a shaped brush does a far better job and lasts a lot longer too.)

I know a lot of people make their own make-up removal pads to use instead of cotton wool but has anyone made their own reusable application pads?

Any other suggestions or ideas for Charley to try?

How can I reuse or recycle cosmetic compacts?

Eyeshadow compact caseWe featured make-up itself a while ago and have also looked at mascara wands and nail varnish, but Annie G has come up with a clever idea for old pressed powder compacts:

As I was coming to the end of my blusher I wondered what I could do with the plastic container afterwards and had a great idea. I travel by train regularly and found the empty blusher container makes a compact and secure travel case for flattish earrings.

That is a great idea – I always need a little baggie or something to keep my earrings in when we’re going away, but that’s a better idea because it’s solid and I’d be less likely to squash them by mistake.

Any other clever ideas for them though?

(Photo by esrasu”)

How can I reuse or recycle … old cosmetics?

Make-upAfter the post on nail varnish last week – and after going through my old make-up collection to find supplies to accompany a friend’s (absolutely terrifying) Halloween costume for a party next week, I realised I’ve got quite a lot of make-up left over from back in the day when I wore it regularly and extensively.

Despite knowing that you should throw eye make-up away after a few months to prevent contamination, I didn’t ever actually do it so now have a number of old, but mostly full, tubes of mascara; a heap of pots of powder eye-shadow (singles and multiples); a pick-up-sticks worthy amount of eye and lip liner pencils; lipsticks of every hue (except the bright red we needed for the aforementioned Halloween costume); some bronzer balls from when I thought, incorrectly, I should rock the “bronze look”; and, some random cream things that I think were supposed to be used as eye make-up or blusher, or possibly both (an impulse buy for sure).

So any suggestions on what I can do with this stash? They’ve all been used in part so couldn’t go to a charity shop or the like – so any ideas for new uses?

(Original photo by val-j)