Sustainable Beauty: It Goes Beyond Skin Deep

What is the biggest organ in your body?  You might be surprised to find out it’s the skin, which you might not think of as an organ. No matter how you think of it,
flawless skin is a thing of beauty. We coddle it, we nourish it, we try to improve it.

 With growing eco awareness today is increased scrutiny in products we apply to our skin.  As a professional consultant introducing sustainability concepts to living a sustainable lifestyle, it makes sense to look for new ways to integrate eco awareness into ones life.  The most impactful areas of our lives are those that we do by habit.  In this case, it’s evaluating the products we choose to put on our skin on a daily basis. 

 When you think about it, our daily personal habits add up: from lotions, deodorant, face care, shaving, makeup, cleansers, shampoos, conditioners, and the list goes on.  Each product used in a daily personal care routine offers the opportunity to use products embracing eco awareness and made by sustainable businesses.  These products are not only better for you, but they are easier on the environment.

 Our eco friendly training directs questions pertaining to safe ingredients in skin care to Skin Deep.  Skin Deep is a safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products brought to you by researchers at the Environmental Working Group.

 Additional resources that we offer in our eco friendly consulting include the following brands. We encourage clients to read labels and evaluate products based on their personal sustainability plans: however, most of the following brands are at least 80% certified organic ingredients and 100% of all ingredients are natural.  Moreover, these brands take into account sustainable business practices by reducing waste, providing recyclable packaging, and reducing the manufacturing foot print.
 

• Phyt’s
• Origins Organics
• Jurlique  
• Stem Organics
• John Masters Organics

The purchasing and continual use of environmentally friendly personal care products exercises your vote in expanding the organic consciousness into the mainstream.  It also encourages companies to incorporate the environmental principals that these companies demonstrate.

How Small Business Wins with the Sustainable Best Practices of Larger Organizations

We’ve all heard about “going green” and the corporate sustainability plans that many larger organizations are undertaking.  However, one of the biggest misconceptions around this topic is that sustainable business strategies are exclusive to larger organizations.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  

 In fact, within our professional consulting with smaller businesses, we guide clients to use the best practices of larger organizations to sustainable business strategies they can use in their business that deliver bottom line and environmental results.

As an example, HP is known as a consumer and vendor of paper.   Internally, HP executed six guiding principles including efficient use of raw materials, sustainable forestry practices, responsible and low-carbon production, and waste minimization.   The results?  HP diverted   91.3 percent of its waste in 2008 and the company’s non-hazardous waste reduction program helped the company avoid sending 83,866 tons of waste to landfill, which was primarily paper waste.   Technology Business Research  says this strategy saved the company nearly $7.7 million from reusing items and avoiding landfill costs, and generated $2 million in revenue by selling material to recyclers.

 How can a small business implement similar sustainability concepts in the business and generate similar results of cost savings, environmental impact reduction, and increased efficiency?

 One approach taken in our business sustainability programs is to identify all the activities in a business that utilizes paper.  The obvious comes to mind like printers, copiers, mail, and collateral.  Areas to explore include:

 •    How much paper do you use for events, trade shows, invoicing, literature, packaging, shipping materials?
•    What about the kitchen areas and bathrooms?  Remember, it’s not just paper but paper products. 
•    Consult with people in other departments and get a clear picture of the paper they are using, where it is coming from, when they are using it, and how they are using it.
•    You might want to talk to your purchasing department and learn more about how much you are spending on your paper products.

 As a next step, take eco action and employ the sustainability concept of the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. 
•    Reduce your paper consumption by working with your purchasing department to reduce the amount of paper purchased and switch to buying  recycled paper (100% post consumable is best). 
•    Reuse paper by placing bins next to the copiers and printers for easy reuse of single sided scraped paper. 
•    Recycle paper that has been used.

 Simultaneous with these efforts, we suggest the use of online document management systems for your documents.  Content management systems give you more than the environmental benefits of going paperless.  They offer the ability to manage different types of data: emails, contracts, logos, reports, forms, drawings, web pages, and blogs which contributes to improved efficiency, further cost reductions, and environmental gains.

 Sustainable business strategies used by larger organizations are examples of best practices that can be utilized in small business to generate cost savings, reduced environmental impacts, and brand differentiation by going green.  

The Truth About Millennials

In our soon to be released Eco Pulse study, we see that Millennials (those aged 18-24) are just starting to put their money where their mouths are. In fact, they do a lot of talking — and they exhibit some aspirational thinking — but they’re really only just starting to buy green products and change their behaviors.

http://amplify.com/u/2ebk

Posted via web from 3BL Media, CSR News, and Emily

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