How To Become More Sustainable With Your Skincare In 2023

Julie Starr • February 28, 2023



As a skincare buff, you may be proactive enough to have your skincare routine already in place. If you’re one of those that started their skincare routine in their 20s, you’re already winning. Investing in your skincare is important, especially from a young age. 

After all, you want preventative measures for aging rather than trying to find products to fix what’s already happened. Sustainability is important, especially within the beauty and fashion industries in particular. There’s so much manufacturing, and equally a lot of waste being disposed of that’s harming the environment.

While the brands themselves can be active in their change for the better of the environment, you should be making a similar effort. How do you become more sustainable with your skincare in 2023? Here are a few tips to help you find sustainability in your skincare routine!

Recycle and reuse any empty skincare bottles or packaging 

A good way to help ensure you’re being environmentally conscious is by recycling and reusing any empty skincare bottles or packaging. Thankfully, many beauty businesses are rethinking their packaging to make it more sustainable and eco-friendly.

Try to opt for refillable skincare products and those that come in eco-friendly packaging. The type of packaging that’s biodegradable or could at least be reused for something else.

When you’re finished with any skincare products, ensure you’re disposing of them correctly. A lot of the packaging is likely going to be recyclable and in some cases, could be passed onto charities to make use of for those who may be able to refill them with other lotions or products.

Try to minimize the amount of waste you’re creating by reusing and recycling where possible. It makes all the difference.

Minimize your routine to just a few products

Try to keep things minimal when it comes to your routine. While the seven-step routine is embraced by many, you are likely to find that you can condense this down into just a few products at a time.

For example, you might not need to have a night cream and serum. There are creams out there that offer a mix of both without needing to buy two separate products. If you love a cleanser, why not buy a double cleanser so you can skip buying any makeup remover?

Not only does it help minimize the number of products you’re buying, but it also helps save you a lot of time during your skincare routine. Granted, it’s a blissful experience for many to do a skincare routine in the mirror every evening. 

However, for those who don’t have a lot of time, reducing the number of products you need for the day ahead or before heading off to the land of nod can be helpful.

Make use of small and independent businesses

Sustainability is often about buying from the right businesses. There are lots of big businesses out there; as a result, a lot of waste comes with these big corporations. However, smaller, more independent businesses will often buy less to sell so that they don’t end up with waste themselves.

Wasted products are a waste of money for a business, so as a customer and skincare user, it’s worth buying from those smaller brands. Brands like Medik8 specialize in skincare products that work.

Opt for the smaller brands when shopping for skincare products. This can also translate with anything you buy from any business in any industry. Looking for a new outfit? Try a sustainably conscious brand instead of one that mass-produces clothes at a worryingly low cost. It’s important to be part of the crowd making an active effort to be more sustainable.

Use reusable cloths and pads for removing makeup

To help reduce the amount of waste you’re creating daily, consider those cotton pads or cleansing wipes you use to take off your makeup. They go into the bin and end up in landfills, where they take a long time to break down properly.

While there are some now that are made out of biodegradable materials, it’s well worth using reusable cloths and pads when removing makeup. If you do a skin care routine daily and wear makeup daily, you’re likely getting through a lot of pads and makeup wipes.

Try investing in one or two reusable clothes and pads to see how you get on. 

Try making your homemade face masks

If you want to get creative with your skincare, why not make your own face masks? Homemade face masks can be done with a lot of stuff you might already have in your cupboards or fridge.

For example, a coffee scrub is great for those who want a natural exfoliant. You’ve got turmeric which is good for helping brighten the skin. There are plenty of opportunities to make quick face masks out of simple products found in your kitchen.

You can easily mix the food ingredients with a bit of shea butter or coconut oil to make a homemade mask or scrub that you can then keep in your fridge.

Look at ingredients carefully

When it comes to sustainability, it’s all about the products you shop for and what those products are made from. With skincare, there are some ingredients that will be sustainably sourced and others that might not be so kind to the environment.

It’s worth taking a good look at the back of your skincare products and the ingredients that each one has. Parabens, for example, are notable for not being great for the environment, and so it’s important to avoid products with these where possible.

Becoming more sustainable with your skincare is doable and is a great way to help the world that we live in. Therefore, if you’re looking to make a few changes to your skincare habits for the environment’s benefit, use the tips above.

How Student-Led ‘Energy Audits’ Are Cutting School Costs (and Lighting the Way Forward)

By Julie Starr • July 14, 2025
What happens when students stop waiting for adults to fix things and start conducting their own energy audits? Money gets saved. The lights get switched off. Data gets analyzed. And a quiet revolution in sustainability begins—inside schools that once overlooked their own inefficiencies. Across the globe, student-led energy audits are proving that change doesn't always need to come from a policy shift or a major capital budget. Sometimes, it begins with a clipboard, a spreadsheet, and a group of curious minds asking: Why are the hallway lights on at noon when sunlight floods the building? The Energy Detectives These audits aren’t science fair projects. They’re rigorous investigations, often done in collaboration with facilities staff, local environmental nonprofits, or even engineering mentors. Students go from classroom to classroom measuring electricity usage, checking for phantom loads , and identifying where heat is escaping in winter or air conditioning is leaking in summer. One high school in Ontario saved over $12,000 a year after its Grade 11 physics students ran an energy audit and suggested simple changes—LED upgrades, motion sensors in bathrooms, and smarter heating schedules. They didn’t just propose ideas. They pitched them with spreadsheets, thermal images, and payback timelines. It worked. Learning That Pays Off—Literally Unlike textbook learning, these audits blend real-world math, environmental science, economics, and persuasive communication. Students aren’t just learning about sustainability. They’re doing it. And the savings add up. From dimming overlit hallways to reprogramming HVAC systems that run all weekend for empty buildings, students are surfacing blind spots that administrators often overlook. In some districts, their findings are influencing energy policy. Elsewhere, the audits have inspired school boards to hire sustainability coordinators—often alumni of the student programs themselves. There’s something poetic about a school funding new books or laptops from money saved by students who found out the vending machines didn’t need to be plugged in 24/7. Why This Matters More Than Ever With education budgets tightening and utility costs rising, every dollar saved is a dollar that can go back into classrooms. And here’s where it gets interesting from a family finance perspective, too. If you’re a parent setting aside money for post-secondary savings, every bit of school efficiency helps. Fewer energy costs might mean more programming, better STEM facilities, or even bursaries. That raises a broader point: when families save for their children’s future, they often look into RESPs (Registered Education Savings Plans). And many wonder—is a RESP deduction available on my taxes? While contributions themselves aren’t deductible, the gains grow tax-free, and students often pay little to no tax when they withdraw the funds during school. A Movement Worth Replicating These audits aren’t just an exercise in environmentalism. They’re leadership labs. Students learn how to spot inefficiencies, speak up in board meetings, and make a business case for change. They don’t just flip switches—they shift mindsets. And they carry these habits into adulthood. The result? A generation growing up not only with climate anxiety, but also with tools to tackle it.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.