A Guide to Gratitude

You may be familiar with the green beauty movement that was pioneered by small, independent brands as it steadily emerged over the past three decades. Green beauty is generally defined as beauty and personal-care products that are plant-based, organicfocused, and ethically sourced. The products also eliminate processes and ingredients that are generally accepted as harmful to the environment and our health. A few of the green beauty brands you might recognize are May Lindstrom, Kahina Giving Beauty, and Laurel Skin, which have grown in awareness, and have stayed true to their green beauty roots, turning out small batch, artisan green beauty treasures. Over the past few years, green beauty has gone more mainstream and become mass produced with the rise of brands you are more likely to recognize. But have you heard of Blue Beauty?

The Blue Beauty concept came to me just over three years ago. I was at an industry conference where the keynote speaker was a leading trend analyst across all industries. One of the trends he shared was that businesses were going to have to “go blue,” which meant that they were going to be held accountable by consumers to surpass being green and sustainable and forge new ways to use their businesses to make a positive impact on the environment, not just minimize their impact on it. He went so far as to say that if you hadn’t already become a green company, regardless of what industry you were in, you had missed the boat.

As I sat in the audience, my mind was thinking about the many brands I work with at Beauty Heroes, which had already been “going blue.” Many had initiatives to give back to environmental causes as a part of their business model or had an educational component of their company that instructed customers on how to live lighter on the planet or were working on projects that would go beyond just sustaining their own supply chain but also invest in it, leaving it better off for the environment. My mind also went to a specific initiative I was working on at the time with Honua Skincare, a blue beauty brand from Hawaii that works to repopulate indigenous species of plants on the islands. At the time, we were working on a community beach cleanup in partnership with Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii to educate our customers on the need to adopt reef-safe sunscreen and decrease their plastic consumption. I also thought about brands like Kahina Giving Beauty, whose entire mission is to empower women through organic farming in Morocco; and Laurel Skin, who sources 90 percent of its ingredients within 100 miles of its Northern California studio from small farmers stewarding land responsibly and conserving it from industrial farming; or Osmia, a Colorado-based brand that plants a tree with every order. These brands are what I call “Blue Beauty” brands from the get-go; their entire origin is blue.

This revelation inspired me to start Project Blue Beauty, a platform within Beauty Heroes that celebrates the ways beauty and personal-care brands are making a positive impact on the environment through innovation, activism, and education. Over the past three years, I’ve evolved the movement to involve consumers. Anybody and everybody who uses beauty and personal-care products can support this movement. In fact, for the movement to grow, consumers must be a part of the conversation, as we are the ones that drive innovation and adoption. We make the impact by choosing who to support.

Here are some specific ways you can take small actions that will support Blue Beauty brands.

• Support companies that give a portion of sales back to environmental causes. • Be an early adopter of products that help you live lighter, such as zero- waste or less-waste-creating products. • Seek out biodegradable, compostable, or upcycled packaging. • Get a Terracycle box for your beauty products at home so all components can be fully recycled. • Tell your friends about your favorite Blue Beauty brands so they can support them, too. • Use fewer products, but make sure those you use are of better quality. • Seek out companies that are certified plastic negative or certified carbon neutral.

These are just a few of the ways that you can be a part of the Blue Beauty Movement and make an impact with your everyday choices, remembering that our path to a better planet is the sum of our collective efforts. We’re all in this together, and we’ve got a long way to go.

About Jeannie Jarnot Jeannie, a longtime spa director and beauty expert, is on a mission to deliver beauty you can trust, one hero product at a time. After uncovering the prevalence of toxic ingredients in the spa industry— and how they might have contributed to her own infertility—Jeannie began her quest to make healthy beauty the rule rather than the exception. The complexity of navigating cosmetic ingredients only fueled her passion to make it simple to discover safe, effective, and luxurious skincare. Today, as the founder of Beauty Heroes, Jeannie brings a lifetime of beauty, wellness, and ritual to her company and her customers, delivering healthy beauty through the thrill of discovery. Feeling called to have a deeper conversation about beauty and wellness for people and the planet, Jeannie pioneered Project Blue Beauty, a platform to connect conscious consumers with beauty brands that are going from green to blue, shining a spotlight on brands that are not just minimizing their environmental footprint, but also actually leaving the planet better than they found it.