How Sustainable is the Lash Industry, Really?
It’s What’s Outside That Counts | How Changing Our Packaging was One of Many Steps to Make London Lash More Sustainable
At London Lash, we’re well aware of the beauty industry’s impact on the environment, and as such, sustainability has become a huge part of our ethos.
According to a 2019 article published on Commercial Waste, the beauty industry is accountable for 146 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. In an effort to combat that, we have made a few changes to our packaging and to the way that we send parcels to our customers.
Cruelty Free and Vegan Friendly
The eyelash extensions industry as we know it really came to be in the early 2010s. It was common back then to have extensions made from mink fur, or from silk. These days, eyelash extensions are made from a synthetic fibre called PBT, which is typically used in wiring due to its hardy nature. Where wiring is concerned, it means less risk of fires, for us, it means that lashes maintain their curls between lash sets.
We might still see eyelash extensions referred to as ‘mink’, ‘silk’, or ‘cashmere’, but this is to differentiate one collection from another, and is not a reference to the material they’re crafted from. We’re really proud to have never had eyelash extensions made from anything that wasn’t 100% vegan friendly and cruelty free.
Plenty of other products though, such as under eye pads, might have ingredients like collagen which were derived from animals. This is something that we’ve changed simply by no longer stocking those products, or working with developers to alter ingredients so that customers can expect the same high quality results, while caring for both the flora and the fauna in the world around us.
Product Development & Packaging Changes
Our efforts to reduce our plastic consumption go back as far as 2018, when we swapped out our plastic eyelash extension trays for cardboard boxes. At the time, these were groundbreaking—no-one else in the industry was doing this! Since then, there has been a huge increase in the number of lash companies who provide their eyelash extensions in these same magnetised eyelash extensions trays.
Not long after launching those trailblazing lash trays, we found out that having a magnet inside, and the inclusion of UV spotting inside the trays meant that they weren’t actually recyclable everywhere, so we went back to the drawing board and came up with the matchbox style packaging that we have today, which is completely recyclable!
In addition to this, we’ve swapped out plastic bottles for glass where it’s possible to do so, which just so happens to be much more aesthetically pleasing for Lash Technicians to have on their trolley.
As well as these, we’ve introduced reusable brush handles for brushes that are used during Lash Prep, which are so easy to overlook! By making it so that the handles are made from reusable stainless steel and only the head of the brush is replaced, plastic waste generated during Lash Prep is reduced by around 80% compared to using completely plastic brushes.
Our eyelash extensions have always been wrapped in a plastic which protects the boxes on route to the customer. Obviously, this isn’t great when it comes to plastic waste. We knew we didn’t want to ditch this covering because it has an important role, but it did interfere with our efforts to ditch plastic as much as we possibly can! What we did was find a plastic alternative. Now, when you order a tray of lashes from us, that plastic packet is made from a plant-based material which is actually compostable!
Once it’s Developed, it’s Over to Procurement
Our Procurement Team works hard to ensure that we only have as much product as we actually need so that we don’t end up with a lot of waste. This is done in two ways, because sometimes a product line simply won’t sell in the way that we expect it to!
Before we go into what our Procurement Team does, we should explain why sustainability efforts can actually fall by the wayside once capitalism comes into play.
If you don’t know, ordering products in bulk becomes cheaper the more you buy, so if you buy 5,000 bottles of glue, they work out cheaper unit for unit compared to buying 1,000 bottles, for example. Lower cost means larger margins, so it’s common for companies to buy more than they need, and trash what doesn’t sell, because the larger profits outweigh the cost of spoiled stock.
In our minds, it’s better for us to absorb some of the additional cost of placing smaller orders, and very occasionally going out of stock of a lash glue, because it means that our customers are always getting the best, freshest, and therefore highest quality glue for their clients, and it means that we’re not sending a high quantity of (or really any) avoidable product to landfill.
By analysing our customer and order growth month on month and year on year, looking at how many of each product we sell, and the products’ relative shelf lives, we’re able to order only as much or each item as we need, which is great for us, great for our customers and their clients, and great for the planet.
Some products don’t have a shelf life in the way that eyelash extension glue or any of our liquids do, so we don’t have to put as much thought into how many we need at any given time. For things like tweezers or eyelash extensions, we add them to our outlet. This is so that beginner Lash Technicians, or even those looking for a bargain can pick them up for much lower prices, and we aren’t sending a bunch of stuff to landfill where it will take decades to break down, releasing toxins as it does so.
It Doesn’t Stop There!
As well as our Product Development and Procurement teams, our Operations Team are doing great work to reduce our carbon footprint.
All parcels are packed inside cardboard boxes, paper envelopes, and biodegradable mailer bags. We also swapped bubble wrap for a paper alternative, and our packing peanuts are actually made from starch, and dissolve in water.
By opening distribution centres (warehouses, to you and me) in the EU and mainland USA, we’re also able to send parcels to customers from closer to them, meaning less reliance on sending parcels by air without packages taking forever to arrive.
In 2022, we invested in a Shopify App which calculates the amount of CO2 produced by each parcel, and takes a monthly donation from us which funds the removal of CO2 from the air to be used in future projects to further global sustainability efforts. The fact that all of our shipping is carbon neutral is something that we’re really proud of!
What Next?
In the world we live in today, sustainability efforts never really reach a solid conclusion. There is always more to be done and better swaps that we can make and/or encourage, as well as new research being done to improve upon things that we have, until now, thought to be unchangeable. We’re lucky to have a team committed to finding those changes and making constant improvements to the way that we do things, and to have a customer base who are open to change.
