If you attended the live session or watched the recording of Khandiz‘s: How To Develop A Sustainable Beauty Practice Masterclass, you will have learned how a plan of action can vastly improve your chances of succeeding at achieving your goals and further developing your conscious beauty practice.
This week’s post goes on to support you in step two of the ‘Plan of Action’ by providing you with an online, editable way to audit your makeup kit (nail and hair kit audit coming soon!) for a detailed breakdown of everything in your professional kit or personal beauty regime.
Naturally, the founding members CBU, along with our ever growing community of professional and beauty lovers alike, preference natural, organic and clean brands for our personal practices, however, Conscious Beauty Union is here to support anyone in developing a deep, robust conscious practice that minimises waste and prioritises brands the truly consider their social and environmental impacts.
Our very first rule is: Finish what you have (regardless of the brand) and replace with better (ie: brands and products that align to your personal values and sustainability plan). If you would like to know how to develop a truly sustainable beauty practice, you can still purchase a recording of our Masterclass on the subject.
When our stuff is out of sight, it’s also usually out of mind – which means not only do we land up buying more of what we don’t need and wasting precious resources, we are also wasting money.
Sustainability is not simply about the environment, but also how well we run and maintain our business. As you will know from our Personal Branding Webinar, we are all businesses and we mustn’t forget that!
Another philosophy we are very passionate about is how to align your practice to your values – and what compromises you need to make in order to do so authentically and transparently.
By knowing what products you have in your kit, you are better set to ensure you have a kit that fully aligns with your personal ethics.
While there has been growing interest around packaging waste (and rightly so), product waste is still often overlooked. Our makeup and skin products – regardless of how natural, clean and organic they are – take an enormous amount of energy and resources to make.
If you’re passionate about zero-waste, reducing carbon emissions, social impact and even animal welfare – one of the easiest and most impactful things you can do is finish your products (and correctly dispose of the packaging).
By knowing what products you have, you can plan out what needs to be finished before you spend money buying replacements – especially of items or products that you don’t use very often and have a high propensity to be wasted.
Doing an audit of your products will allow you to make sure you don’t have any out of date products that could cause you or your clients to have a potential skin reaction.
Of course, this means getting rid of old product (ie: product waste) but doing a deep dive using our form will allow you to identify what needs to be replaced first and help you avoid waste and potential insurance claims in the future.
Whether you believe in the power of attraction or simply know that being prepared maximises your ability to perform your job well, and by that I mean having an organised kit, bathroom cabinet or dressing table means less faffing before a job, Zoom meeting or hot date.
On a personal note, I have always maintained that whenever work has been quiet and I spend time cleaning and organising my kit, work has appeared very soon after.
So, should you be chomping at the bit to get back to work post the worst of lock-down (or if you’re in a local lockdown) don’t underestimate the benefit of a kit audit and use the time to really deep cleanse and organise so you’re ready when the phone starts ringing again (because it will).
We start our kit audits by taking inspiration from the edit queen – Marie Kondo.
First, commit yourself to sorting through your entire kit; that might require you to set time aside in your calendar. Don’t underestimate how long this process can take either, so consider that this might be an entire day or even weekend job for some of you, and may even require you to call in reinforcements (if you’re a big procrastinator like me).
NB: Don’t forget that packaging needs to be properly cleaned out and taken apart before it can be recycled and product waste needs to be disposed of in regular trash so it goes to landfill (as it cannot go down the drain or in the compost).
If you want to know more about how to do this, be sure to read Lou’s article on How To Better Recycle Your Beauty Routine and keep your eyes and ears out for dates on our Recycling Masterclass!
The audit form has been designed to give you a general overview of your personal or professional kit, by using the check boxes to identify product types in each category – while also providing you the option to specify how regularly you really use that item or product.
Under each category overview, there is additional space to itemise your all your products. I strongly recommend itemising each item and providing as much detail as possible to help you make informed decisions going forward.
Don’t worry though, the form is set up so you can come back to it and add, amend and reference things – but the more you can do as you’re going through your kit, the better.
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hello@consciousbeautyunion.com