It's time to face sustainability. Eco face wipes.

It's time to face sustainability. Eco face wipes.

Each and every year, millions of people use disposable face wipes to clean their faces to remove make-up at the end of the day. 

It's time to do my bit to raise awareness on one simple change everyone can make.  Right now.  TODAY. 
Let's explore an example of one person using one face wipe per evening to clean their face.  365 face wipes per year, for just one person.
Face wipes are generally sold in packets of 20-25 (I'm talking about those beauty branded packs).
So best case let's see, we've got packs of 25 and one person using 365 wipes per year.  That's 14.6 packs per year. 
If we look at just 1,000,000 people, I'm sure you can do the maths that this is 165 MILLION wipes EVERY YEAR piling up in our rubbish dumps, floating in our oceans (insert extremely sad face) just to clean make up off faces.
These packs are obviously sold in plastic, so that's a superfulous volume of 15 plastic packs in packaging piling up per person each year on top of the single-use face wipes.  
A pack of 25 Garnier face wipes currently cost $4.80 at Woolies, so each year if you stuck with this packet, you'd be set back $70.08 per year

As at 20/9/2019 a 30-pack of these wipes (sale price down from $19) will set you back $15.20 = $197.60 every year!  WOAHHHHHWWWW
I'll try one more random face wipe Google and let's see who comes up:
These Nivea wipes at Priceline are $7.99 for 20 wipes this equates to $151.81 per year. 
And here are the listed ingredients for them:
Aqua, Alcohol Denat. , PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract, Tocopheryl Acetate, Panthenol, Glycerin, Glyceryl Glucoside, Sorbitol, Poloxamer 124, Decyl Glucoside, Disodium Cocoyl Glutamate, Polyquaternium-10, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Acetate, Trisodium EDTA, Ethylhexylglycerin, 1, 2-Hexanediol, Citric Acid, Phenoxyethanol, Linalool, Butylphenyl Methylpropional, Citronellol, Geraniol, Benzyl Alcohol, Limonene, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, BHT, Parfum.
Nope, me either - NFI what most of that is!  I'm not picking on Nivea, I love some of their products but face wipes simply must go
If you need to add anything to water to help remove your make up, pick something eco and add a squirt to one of my eco reusable make up wipes.  These are 100% cotton and I use off cuts from other products to make them (it's how I stumbled across reusable make up pads in the first place, looking for small items I could make with the offcuts from larger products).

7 x Eco reusable make up remover pads for just $15.00

Made with 100% cotton and a toweling back

Designed and made by an Aussie, in Australia.

I had never used one before I made one to test and now I have 3 on rotation each week and will NEVER GO BACK.  The soft cotton is so smooth on my face and if I need a little extra scrubbing power I use the other side.  In fact I start with the washer cloth side first just with water to wipe away most of my make up and then I add cleanser to the cotton side, wipe over my face, rince the entire pad under water and then apply toner to the pad and smooth that over my face.  I give the eco reusable make up pad one last rinse then I set it aside to dry overnight.  
My face feels so nice and clean by this point, sometimes I leave it 'nude' and others I may put my night moisturiser on if I feel it needs a little um moisture!
Not convinced yet?  Here are some a few Google page 1 snipets I found after 10 seconds of searching:
  • Wet wipes accounts for 2 million tons of plastic packaging per year - 
  • 11 billion wet wipes used in the UK each year, many of which are causing an environmental catastrophe.
 
And I can't validate the truthfulness of this post, but it takes you on a visual journey on what could be going in with manufacturing those little wet wipes:
 
http://www.designlife-cycle.com/disposable-wipes-lifecycle 
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