Mindless consuming is out. These days our purchases have real power. Whether we choose to support brands with values that are meaningful to us, or decide to opt for eco-friendly sustainable products, what we buy matters. Carissa Casey suggests how we can incorporate a conscience into our beauty and makeup routine.

Consumers across the world have been flexing their muscles in recent years. Tone-deaf brands have found themselves boycotted, while those that espouse values in tune with their customers (diversity, sustainability, recycling) go from strength to strength.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the beauty world where women are learning to reject unrealistic standards of beauty foisted on them by marketeers. When we pamper, we want to embrace our natural selves and not destroy the natural world.

Take the plastics issue. Waste plastic now accounts for 80 percent of all marine debris. Switch to soap in the shower and that’s about 24 less plastic containers of shower gel clogging up our seas. Recycling you say? It’s estimated only about 60 percent of plastics from toiletry products actually get recycled. So add in all the plastic containers of shampoo, conditioner, hair styling products, mouth wash, deodorant and tubes of toothpaste, you and your family get through in year and it’s clear that many forms of marine life will be in peril if we don’t change our behaviour soon.

Ever hear of fatbergs? These are rock like masses of waste product in sewers which cause havoc with water supply. The plastics in cosmetic wipes are a key ingredient.

Now let’s talk about beauty, or rather what we’re told beauty should look like. The My World Survey 2 of young Irish people showed that 24 percent of adolescents are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their bodies. As they get older and hit their 20s that number actually increases to 44 percent. How have we created a world where nearly half of us don’t like our physical selves? At the risk of stating the obvious, we’re not all skinny, perfect-skinned babes.

Then there’s the issue of chemicals in beauty products. A study in the US estimated that the average woman uses 12 products a day containing 200 different chemicals. There isn’t a huge amount of regulation of personal care products. Does it matter? Well, certain types of cancer are on the rise, as are issues around infertility and allergies in children. The problem is that there’s no way of knowing what all these different chemicals are doing to us, which is why more and more women are opting for natural alternatives.

It’s worth taking the time to check out a brand, its values and ethos, its approach to recycling, its commitment to earth-friendly production, before we hand over our hard-earned cash.

Our beauty routines shouldn’t come at the expense of clogged oceans, fatbergs, racist and misogynist ideas of ‘perfection’ and a cesspool of chemicals we know nothing about.