‘Blue Beauty’ is a project that was launched in 1996 by a spa director and healthy beauty expert Jeannie Jarnot. After discovering the extensiveness of hidden toxins rooted within the cosmetics that were being used every day, Jeannie became passionate and dedicated to spreading the message of clean beauty. That is, beauty products which not only aim to optimise human health, but the health of the planet too.

Hence, ‘Project Blue Beauty’ was launched; to spotlight the sustainable brands which are actively consolidating ocean-friendly practises throughout their supply chain, without compromising on the quality of the beauty products themselves. An addition to prescribing clean beauty products, naturally free from artificial chemicals and synthetics, that are best for our health. The ‘blue beauty’ movement has since gained extensive consumer grip; encouraging the beauty industry leaders to make the switch to becoming green beauty, and now also blue beauty.

Over the past few years, researchers have come down with the stats of ocean pollution. Here are some of them:

1. Over 200 million tons of plastic are produced each year, half of which are used for single-use items such as face mask sheets, refill packets and so on.
2. Scarcely 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled, and about 12% has been incinerated, while the remaining 80% has been collected as landfills, dumps, or the natural environment.
3. At least 98 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans every year. To interpret, it could be rounded up to a group of 3 million humpback whales, which would still weigh less than all the plastic in the ocean in a single year.
4. 80 percent of all ocean remains comes from plastic waste that’s found everywhere from surface waters to deep-sea deposits.
5. Plastics in the ocean will eventually outweigh fish pound for pound by 2050.

These stats are frightening, and it cannot be denied that the beauty industry has played a major role in creating them. Every year, the beauty industry makes over 100 billion cosmetic packages like compacts, jars, bottles, etc.,and about 22 billion single-use sachets as well. The extensive majority of these are made of virgin plastic which are not recyclable.

As a matter of fact, even the apparent safe, eco-friendly cardboard packaging often contains hidden plastic in the form of laminations and adhesives, as product formulas themselves do contain small levels of plastic that ultimately make their way to the ocean. The beauty industry is responsible for the huge amounts of micro plastics found in formulations that run down the drains and into the waterways

It’s not all doom and gloom through. Fortunately, the silver lining to this plastic crisis is ‘Blue Beauty’. The growing movement focuses on the relationship between the beauty industry, plastic waste , and the health of our planet’s streams, rivers, bays, and, of course, oceans. Calling something ‘blue’ is meant to signal that a cosmetic product is not toxic to the waterways and/or is inspired by the ocean. It can be considered as a subsection of the green beauty movement with a hyper focus on water and marine life.

It is important to educate ourselves, and others to choose beauty products that will not contribute to the problem.

Currently, the most plentiful form of marine litter is floating plastic waste. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a problem in urban waterways. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, plastic waste has been detected on shorelines of all the continents. Everyone is aware of the extent of water pollution, there is more to it than just pollution. As all of these plastic and micro plastic waste not only accelerates the negative effect of climate change but it is also deadly to the animals and marine life and the possibility of contaminating our food and drinking water supply.

As an initiative to solve this problem, blue beauty brands are using plastic that have been collected during ocean clean-ups to reuse as their product packaging. Ocean-bound plastic, also known as ‘OBP’ is generally defined as plastic that’s found within 30 miles of a coastline, and ocean-waste plastic (OWP) is plastic that’s already made its way to sea. Using OBP and OWP is a great way to clean up the existing mess we’ve created, while preventing a future mess as well.

Blue Beauty is also a way of sustaining our environment. As the 2022 Beauty Market trends have stated that the beauty industry is to change its course towards a sustainable future, blue beauty is also a subsection of the other initiatives taken up by the industry to not only provide their consumers with top notch quality at affordable price ranges, but also a chance to develop the health of the planet.