Fast Beauty Sucks! What it is, why it is, and how you can be a better beauty consumer

We're bringing this back because fast beauty still sucks. If anything, it's getting worse.

Fast beauty may look pretty on the surface, but there is a massive catch; the real cost of keeping up with these ever-changing trends, to people and planet.

I'm having a chat about the not-so-pretty side of fast beauty – from the piles of plastic packaging to the pressure on our planet. I've got some stats that might just make you rethink that next 'must-have' beauty buy. But don't worry I do get it, and there are ways to buy beauty products you love, without so much impact. It's about finding that sweet spot between staying trendy and being a true kaitiaki.

Transcript

Kia ora kaitiaki and welcome back to Now That's What I Call Green.
I'm Breanne West. You may know me as the founder and former CEO of Ethique, or hopefully you've heard of my new startup Incrediballs, or maybe you've just found me on one of my mini rants on TikTok.

But today I want to talk about fast beauty.
What is fast beauty? Well, it's like fast fashion—but the beauty industry. It's a world where trends are coming and going at lightning speed, but at a huge cost to people and planet.

So we're gonna have a look at the environmental, ethical and social impacts of fast beauty—and how you can still be a beauty consumer, still look great, still feel great, but perhaps with less impact on the planet.

As always, join the conversation. Share your thoughts, share this podcast. Let me know your experience with fast beauty because this is a really complex topic. It's not gonna be something that changes overnight. I mean, fast fashion hasn't gone away—but it is something we really need to address.

But first—what is fast beauty?

It's a relatively new term. You might have seen it on the likes of TikTok or YouTube, but you might not really know what it means. So, fast beauty—like fast fashion—is all about speed and trends and speed to market.

Typically, a beauty company can take anywhere up to four years to release a new product. Now, that is no longer the case. Products are produced really quickly to meet trends that are often formed on social media. You're now getting drops every quarter. Some brands are even releasing products monthly because with the social media world—with makeup influencers, with beauty gurus—things are changing so much faster.

Do you remember the time we were all putting condoms on our beauty blenders for that smooth foundation application? But this has real impacts on quality, on ethics—like who makes these products, where all of that waste ends up, and not to mention the amount of waste it produces.

Now, I can point the finger pretty clearly at social media and marketing for this phenomenon. And I'm not saying it's influencers' fault, because at the end of the day, influencing is just a job. And sure, there are ethical influencers out there—there are influencers who are really cautious of what they sell and how much they sell—but at the end of the day, you've got to make an income, right?

I do believe that with a platform, you have a responsibility to consider things such as social and environmental responsibility, but not everyone thinks that way. So, influencers with their massive followings—they play a huge role in spreading fast beauty around, right? They showcase the latest products. They are paid to say they love things. A lot of them will only sell things they do genuinely love—that is not true of all of them.

They are sponsored by brands, and of course, brands are wanting to create this constant cycle of consumption.

I mean, we've just come out of Black Friday. Black Friday sales were starting—what—two, maybe three weeks before Black Friday? And it's now the Wednesday after Black Friday. I just saw an ad before. It's all about consumption.

And of course, we're about to enter the holiday period, so it's gonna be even more so. So now we all want the newest and greatest makeup product. We all want the new trendy thing, despite the fact that there really is only so much you can do with beauty products. Often, it's just the way it's marketed—so it's positioning, or it's new packaging, or it's a slightly new shade. At the end of the day, how many eyeshadow palettes do you really need?

Brands are releasing products faster and faster and faster.

So let's have a look at some numbers to actually understand what it is I'm talking about.

75% of consumers between 18 to 29 are influenced by what they see online. That will be a surprise to precisely no one who pays attention—because social proof is one of the greatest ways to convince people to buy your product.

This is slightly more alarming: TikTok trends can increase searches for that one product by 1500% overnight. That is what I mean about social media fueling fast beauty. If your favorite beauty influencer is using a new foundation and declares it's “literally life-changing”—which is an overstated and irritating comment that happens way too often—then of course, people go and search it. Often, something sells out. And all of that fuels the fast beauty cycle and encourages brands to produce more and more and more—faster and faster and faster—without considering sustainability or the social implications.

It's interesting because this trend has also shifted the way we as consumers behave, right?

So we're now much more focused—I speak collectively, of course—many of you listening (and certainly I) don't really care about having fashionable eyebrows. I don't think I've ever changed my eyebrows. I didn't even know—really think—that eyebrows should have a fashion. But, you know, the '90s don't disagree with me.

Anyway, we have now collectively moved to a single-use culture in beauty, if you like. It's not about owning a product and using it—it's about constantly updating to the newest things, like clothing or bags. It's now about the trend of the product you're wearing—not necessarily what it does for your skin or your hair—it's actually about having it. Which is peculiar, because nobody knows what mascara or foundation you're wearing. But actually, the behavior is still a huge change—and that has really big implications, not just for the environment, but for your wallets.

Typically, the average woman uses 12 to 15 products across the day. And you might think, “Oh, I don't use that many,” but you'd be surprised when it’s all added up. But—we buy double that. So half of what we buy, we do not use. And the vast majority of skin and cosmetic products—we never finish.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I have quite literally never finished a lip balm.
And that's on me. That's terrible, because I lose them all the time, which is why I try not to buy them anymore.

But we need to shift that thinking again—to really valuing what it is we buy.
And why? Because the environmental cost is huge.

Everybody thinks about waste—and sure, plastic waste is a huge issue.
The packaging involved in cosmetics is complicated. As you'll know, obviously packaging for Ethique was always home-compostable cardboard, and that is one of our defining characteristics.

Unfortunately, that's obviously not the case for most of your cosmetic products, and that's because it's much harder to do.
You can't put a mascara in a cardboard package because the product contains water, right?

The beauty industry produces about 120 billion units of packaging every year—and that's horrendous in itself. The worst part is beauty packaging is all about image, right? It’s got to look good.

So often you have a bottle in a box, or you will have the cardboard liner to make the box stand out. You have the bottle much smaller than the box, so there's cardboard padding. There is a lot to beauty packaging. And often, it's made of mixed materials. So you've got cardboard and plastic—but there are obviously varieties of the plastic—so the pump and the bottle are often different materials.

All of this means it’s not recycled. And we probably all know the statistic by now: less than 9% of all plastic we've ever made has ever been recycled.

It's lower, on average, with beauty packaging for a couple of reasons.
One: only one in five people actually recycle their beauty products, because they typically don't have recycling bins in their bathroom. So that's a behavior issue.

But the second bit is that it's a design issue—products are simply not designed to be recyclable, because that is not a consideration for most beauty companies.

This is why I'm always telling people to go and talk to their beauty brands—their favorite beauty brand—and say,
"Hey, have you considered doing this?"
"Hey, why aren't you doing better for the environment?"

Because fast beauty—with its massive turnover, this massive obsession with consumption and buying the newest thing—exacerbates that issue.

Something most people don't really think about, though, is actually what goes into those products. The production of beauty products uses so much resource that you never really consider.

Water—yeah. It is, you know, between 70 to 95% of your average beauty product. None of Ethique, of course.

So, the beauty industry's water footprint is enormous.

And it's not just the product itself, but also the plastic packaging. So on average—and it's a rough average—if you're looking at HDPE, it is double the volume of the bottle required to make the plastic. So a 350ml plastic bottle requires 700ml of water to make it.

And then you've got the water that the manufacturing process uses to clean the machinery.

Let's not forget about the energy used in production and transportation—and production of the plastic bottle—and production of the product itself. The transportation—because of course you don't tend to use products close to where they're made—they're shipped all over the world. Massive greenhouse gas emissions.

And then there's the other ingredients within.
So a lot of people think that natural equals sustainable.
And I've talked about this—I think on my very first episode of this podcast—where I said that is absolutely not the case. In fact, it's usually the opposite.

If you want to look at rose oil, for example—so, rose essential oil—hideously expensive.
The reason is because it takes about 5,000 roses to make a millilitre of the oil.
It is enormously resource-intensive.

We simply do not have enough land on Earth to make cosmetics “naturally.”
I read a statistic not too long ago that said we would need 8.7 Earths for all of the cosmetics we use, just to produce the crops needed.

For those who are proponents of the natural cosmetics idea—there’s a big reason why it’s not.

But also, that goes to show you the level of resources used in your cosmetics—which are then typically sitting in your bathroom and are never used.

Another aspect is the chemical footprint.
Now look—yes—some cosmetic ingredients are bioaccumulative.
I have made concerns about silicones, for example, which is why I take products that don't contain them. Not health concerns—bioaccumulative concerns in the environment—because we're not really sure. They hang around. Do we know what they do? Not all of them—but some of them.

There are other ingredients like that.

“Reef safe” of course is just a scam and a marketing term, but there are concerns with some ingredients.

There is some commentary around fast beauty meaning that there's less testing and therefore products are less safe. That's not true.

At the end of the day, products sold in New Zealand and Australia—they have to use certain ingredients.
There are rules to abide by.
It's not the Wild Wild West.

I think it's fair to associate with the beauty industry—perhaps in the context of child labour and mica people have thought about it—but it's often overshadowed by the glitz and the glamour and the glittery eyeshadows that people are so excited about.

And again, I totally get it. I don't think you can beat glitter.
But there are ways of doing that a little bit more ethically.

So, a lot of fast beauty products are produced in factories where workers don't have rights, safety is not considered.
And according to a report by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, the beauty industry is rife with labour rights issues, including inadequate wages, poor working conditions—and we all know there is child labour and indentured labour in these supply chains.

If you want to look at something like palm oil—there is indentured labour, which simply means that farmers are effectively forced to work in god-awful conditions for terrible pay.

We all know what child labour is.

It's not just your mica.
It's things like cocoa butter, it's potentially coconut oil.
There are a lot of ingredients.

And I actually encourage you to go and read a report by World Vision on child labour in cosmetics.
I will link it in the show notes.

Here’s a hot-button issue: cruelty free.

So there is argument—you know, cruelty free and vegan are not the same thing.
A product is not necessarily cruelty free if it's vegan—although you could argue, very much so, that it shouldn't be considered vegan if it's been tested on animals.
But technically, they don't mean the same thing.

A product can of course be cruelty free and not vegan.
So just remember those terms can be mutually exclusive.

But a lot of fast beauty products—because they are typically produced by brands that don't have these ethics in place—they will have a cruelty element involved.
Because yes, animal testing does still go on.

One of my least favourite brands on planet Earth, of course, is Shein.
And they have a fast beauty brand that I'm beginning to see rearing its head on TikTok more and more.

Fast beauty also has interesting connotations for cultural appropriation and also has a total lack of representation.

Now, this is more aimed at brands that are specifically designed to churn out products as much as possible—but let's not forget that most big brands still have an element of fast beauty about them.

The industry has always borrowed from various cultures without acknowledgement or compensation—profiting from cultures around the world.

And of course, it's well known for its complete lack of diversity in marketing and product ranges.
Fast beauty simply exacerbates that.

A study by the Ethical Consumer Research Association found that just a fraction—under 10%—of beauty brands actually comply and score well on their ethical index.
That considers things like environmental reporting, the way they treat staff, structure their company, and so on. A little bit like B Corp.

Another aspect is the chemical footprint. Now look, yes, some cosmetics ingredients are bioaccumulative. I have concerns about silicones, for example, which is why I choose products that don’t contain them—not for health reasons, but because they accumulate in the environment. And we’re not really sure what they do. They hang around; do we know what they do? Not all of them, but some of them.

There are other ingredients like that. “Reef safe,” of course, is just a scam—it’s a marketing term. But there are concerns with some ingredients. There is some commentary around fast beauty meaning there's less testing and therefore products are less safe. That’s not true. At the end of the day, products sold in New Zealand and Australia have to use certain ingredients. There are rules to abide by. It’s not the wild, wild west.

I think it’s fair to associate those issues with the beauty industry—perhaps in the context of child labour and mica, people have thought about it—but it's often overshadowed by the glitz and the glamour and the glittery eyeshadows that people are so excited about. And again, I totally get it. I don't think you can beat glitter. But there are ways of doing that a little bit more ethically.

A lot of fast beauty products are produced in factories where workers don’t have rights, and safety is not considered. According to a report by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, the beauty industry is rife with labour rights issues, including inadequate wages and poor working conditions. We all know there is child labour and indentured labour in these supply chains.

If you want to look at something like palm oil—there is indentured labour, which simply means that farmers are effectively forced to work in god-awful conditions for terrible pay. We all know what child labour is. It’s not just your mica; it’s things like cocoa butter, it’s potentially coconut oil. There are a lot of ingredients, and I actually encourage you to go and read a report by World Vision on child labour in cosmetics. I’ll link it in the show notes.

Here’s a hot-button issue: cruelty-free. So there is an argument—cruelty-free and vegan are not the same thing. A product is not necessarily cruelty-free if it’s vegan, although you could argue very much so that it shouldn’t be considered vegan if it’s been tested on animals. But technically, they don’t mean the same thing. A product can, of course, be cruelty-free and not vegan. So just remember, those terms can be mutually exclusive.

But a lot of fast beauty products—because they are typically produced by brands that don’t have these ethics in place—will have a cruelty element involved. Because yes, animal testing does still go on. One of my least favourite brands on planet Earth, of course, is Shein. And they have a fast beauty brand that I’m beginning to see rearing its head on TikTok more and more.

Fast beauty also has interesting connotations for cultural appropriation and a total lack of representation. Now, this is more aimed at brands that are specifically designed to churn out products as much as possible, but let’s not forget that most big brands still have an element of fast beauty about them.

The industry has always borrowed from various cultures without acknowledgement or compensation, profiting from cultures around the world. And of course, it’s well known for its complete lack of diversity in marketing and product ranges. Fast beauty simply exacerbates that.

A study by the Ethical Consumer Research Association found that just a fraction—under 10%—of beauty brands actually comply and score well on their ethical index. That index considers things like environmental reporting, how they treat staff, how they structure their company, and so on. A little bit like B Corp.

Cool. Well, you’ve had the doom and the gloom, so what can you do about it? Because action is the cure to apathy.

One: buy only what you need—and use it. And yes, you could say, “Well, what if I don’t like it?” If you don’t like something as a face moisturiser, it makes a good leg moisturiser. Or pass it on to a friend or family member. Often, if you’re not sure if you like something, try it in a hygienic way—so instead of sticking your finger into a jar, maybe pull some out with a spatula or a teaspoon first, just to make sure you don’t contaminate it in case you do pass it on.

That’s number one: only buy what you need. It is always number one for every sustainability question. Buying more stuff is never the solution.

Then you’ve got sustainable or regenerative beauty brands, obviously. Right? These are companies that prioritise eco-friendly production, ethical labour, cruelty-free. Brands like Lush, The Body Shop, Ethique, obviously.

There are plenty of brands, and they usually tend to be indie brands—so smaller brands started by founders like me back in the kitchen hundreds of years ago. They tend to have greater ethical standards. I say tend to, not always. It’s not carte blanche to go and support indie brands. Make sure you do research. Lush and The Body Shop are not perfect either, and look—Ethique isn’t perfect—but they do a lot of good.

You know what to look for: things like recyclable packaging, ideally home compostable packaging (although that’s very rare), fair trade ingredients—because I believe the number one way companies can make the world a better place is by paying their suppliers a fair price. Companies that give back and support various social and environmental causes. Living wage. It goes on. You know what you’re looking for.

Now, you could look at DIY beauty. I don’t massively advocate for it, because you’ll see a lot of recipes online and they’ll be like: “To make a foundation, mix cocoa powder with coconut oil”—and it’s just awful. It’s also actually a little unsafe because there are some ingredients, like cinnamon powder for example, which you shouldn’t use carte blanche on your skin. Not to mention that these things just suck. They’re not very effective.

Sure, there are a few examples where things are a good idea—but not many. If you do want to get into DIY beauty, I have a few recipes, so hit me up if you want something. There are lots of resources and online tutorials—just be really careful where you get your information from.

But going back to the idea of only buying what you need—I mean, why do we need the 12 to 15 products that we use in the morning, right? An eye cream is really not a lot different to a face cream. Sometimes they’re a bit thinner, but they’re a shitload more expensive.

I am all about embracing a minimalist beauty routine. Yes, if you want to have anti-aging skincare, you want things like vitamin C, retinol, niacinamide—right, there are some heavy-hitting ingredients that have absolute proof behind them that you may want to incorporate—but you don’t need to be chasing the greatest trend. You don’t have to buy everything that Glow Recipe puts out. They do smell nice, I will give you that.

At the end of the day, your skin will look best with fewer, better products. And the environment will look better. You’ll feel better. Your wallet will look better. It’s a win-win. It’s not just about saving money—it’s about reducing consumption and waste.

Easier said than done. Look, I totally get it. I spend a lot of time on TikTok—which you’ll know because I’m forever making videos, right?—and I totally get the appeal to buy more stuff. Because you’ll see someone apply something, and you’re like, wow, they look like a different person. We’ll ignore the fact that there may be filters involved. We’ll ignore the fact that things look different on camera. But you do get persuaded. I get it.

So, my golden rules:

One: wait three days. If you still want it, then maybe look a little bit further into it.

But before you buy it, look into the ethics behind the company. Look into the owners of the company, what they have in terms of their sustainability policies, their ethical policies, their supply chain. If they don’t have anything available, ask them questions.

And then, if you’ve decided you definitely want it, it’s something you need, and you’ve vetted the company against your values—then don’t feel bad about buying it. I’m not saying don’t buy things. Just don’t buy things aren’t a win. It’s just about making informed choices.

And on that note—going back to the influencer conversation—there are plenty of ethical influencers out there too, who will promote sustainable beauty practices. I mean, Ethically Kate—obviously—who was on this podcast a couple of weeks ago, she would be the shining example in Aotearoa. She promotes brands, but she only promotes brands that she believes in, has used, loves, and has vetted. And she has standards, I tell you.

So, switching to a more sustainable beauty routine doesn’t mean you have to give everything up that you love. It doesn’t mean compromising on quality or the next eyeshadow trend. It just means using what you have. I think the best beauty influencers in the world are the ones who can create unique looks with stuff they already have in their beauty room. It’s easy to create something new with new stuff that’s forever rolling in the door. It’s much harder to do something amazing with what you already have.

As always, it’s about progress, not perfection.

I hope this has been illuminating, because fast beauty is something that’s been annoying me for a long time. And over my 10 years at Ethique, I noticed how much worse it got. And in the last couple of years with TikTok’s massive growth, it’s got even worse. And I worry it will continue—but I also have faith in Gen Z.

Let’s embrace slow beauty: choosing products that are good for our health, good for the people who make them, good for the planet, good for your skin.

And don’t forget: you, the consumer, are the single most powerful thing on earth, right? Your dollar is a vote for the world you want. You’ve heard that before. You’ve heard me say it before. But it’s absolutely true. And if you want a brand to change, you can make it change.

Our collective power as consumers is something that we shouldn’t underestimate. So every brand you support sends a message for the kind of world you want—the kind of industry you want.

Knowledge is power. Go and educate yourself. And then go and demand that beauty brands raise the bar.

On a personal note—when I started Ethique and I started exploring the idea of sustainable beauty, I was really overwhelmed because there was so much information out there. Which is why I approached things from kind of an old-fashioned standpoint—and instead of going to a manufacturer and getting them to formulate stuff for me, I taught myself cosmetic chemistry. Of course, I was studying biochemistry at university at the same time, so I would have had a massive advantage.

But I learned about the source of ingredients, the problems associated with each one—which, for example, is why I take such a strong stance on palm oil. Whilst a boycott is not the answer (I’m not getting into that—it’s complicated), I get that this is totally overwhelming. And you cannot possibly focus on everything. Because you have shit to do.

So my last piece of advice to you is to focus on one thing that matters the most. It could be living wage. It could be fairly traded ingredients. It could be plastic-free packaging. Whatever it is—buy products in line with that value. And then as you get more comfortable, you get to know more. Again—knowledge is power—then maybe add another value.

That’d be a minimum. But products should be cruelty-free. They should be vegan. I will absolutely die on that hill. But you can add more and more values as you learn. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Progress is not perfection.

And remember—talk to your brands.

Well, thank you again for joining me. That was Now That’s What I Call Green. Your engagement and willingness to learn on this podcast is what makes me do it. I really—it's quite a lot of work in scripting and researching—and whilst this is absolutely my passion, I love sustainability and I love sharing what’s going on and how to read past the greenwashing bullshit.

Your feedback and the potential we have to shape our planet is what keeps me here.

So, until next time—we’ve got one more episode before the end of the year—let’s keep working to make the world a better place.

COP28 is next week. That’s going to be interesting. I’m going to do an episode on it, because it will be a discussion point, I should imagine. But not necessarily for all the right reasons. We’ll see.

I hope that today’s episode has given you some food for thought and inspired you to look at your beauty drawer and think—do I need more of that? Because no. You probably don’t.

Until next time—stay green.

Stay green? How do we feel about that? Is this high enough? Don’t love it.

Just remember—it’s about progress, not perfection.

Ka kite.

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