Wait, we got here… what’s beyond Green Beauty?
Is there more for skin care than taking product photos with leaves and random plants?
Well, yeah! Don’t you feel that too?
Large skin care producers have (finally!) stopped offering us products with toxic preservatives, irritants and carcinogens; fake fragrances and foul phthalates.
They’ve agreed to make products with more natural and even organic ingredients, although the certification is still a WIP. And so, I suppose we should be grateful, but isn’t it 2020?
Is that all we’re asking for?
Well, no. We want more from companies for skin care users. (Useful links on Green & Clean Beauty)
Pandemic Skin Care
There’s a larger global shift going on.
Our voices have been calling for years warning of global warming and criticizing the unequal treatment for people of colour. Presently, voices are also asking for equal recognition and rights for transgendered folk and for appropriate wages in an age of employment scarcity and economic imbalance.
Flexible working hours are possible: one positive to come out of the year is that companies and people have figured out how to make their hours and employment more flexible to our current needs.
Following suit, we at Maeterna are offering flexible work at a living wage to Immigrant Womxn who have been requiring more flexible employment for years.
I’m just one person though, what can anyone do?
We’ve asked this of ourselves! For a long time!
The structure of modern life can make it feel very disempowering to do anything.
We’re given not-so-democractic elections and a soap box to talk about our opinions via social media, but there’s got to be more no? If not from our green and clean beauty products then where?
We were asking ourselves these questions when we decided to offer Maeterna publicly.
How can we make something which realizes our ecological needs, Green Beauty or Clean Beauty, but goes beyond and addresses other systemic changes we want to see in the world?
One way is: making it yourself and finding like minded people to join you! Offering people ways to mindfully consume is one of the best ways to ensure you have a say in how things are created around you, because it helps make a better world for all of us!
Thinking globally but in a small package. What values are important in 2020?
Here was our short-list 😀
- Make sure the ingredients are all-natural, from certified sources and even certified organic.
- Make sure the ingredients are gathered in a sustainable way.
- Do no harmful testing to the environment or animals in the process of creation, use only our own skin and the skin of our family and friends to find what works.
- Create packaging which does as little harm as possible to the environment. Zero-waste!
- Be transparent in the process and accountable to people who buy from you.
- Make your employment practices clear and even provide employment to those who most need it.
- Inclusivity matters! Radically rethink how ‘beauty’ is presented as traditionally cis-gendered, white and able-bodied.