BEING a beauty enthusiast, I am guilty of accumulating more makeup and skin-care products than I should. For instance, owning 10 lipsticks is too much for the average person but when I am down to just 10 lipsticks, I panic. I am also guilty of not reusing many bottles, jars and other containers of beauty products.
In the last two years, however, I have reassessed my material girl tendencies after finally convincing myself that I only have one face. This means I don’t need 20 foundations. Owning two bottles is more than enough. I don’t even need five lipsticks, much less 10.
I attended Watsons Philippines’ recent sustainability event, dubbed “Do Good for the Planet,” and the topic was how you could reduce your carbon footprint, which is essentially the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere because of your energy needs.
The food you eat, the car you drive, the power used to light up your home, the airplane you ride when you travel, even the clothes you wear all contribute to your carbon footprint.
“To reach the state called carbon neutrality, each person should not emit more carbon dioxide than what they can offset,” said Jack Warren of ClimatePartner, a company that offers climate action solutions.
During the event, Warren encouraged guests to measure their carbon footprint by logging on to ClimatePartner’s web site (bit.ly/3bi1mV6). The average global carbon footprint is 4 – 9. I got 12.41, which is way higher than the average largely because of purchases for the home that I made in the last year.
Anna Oposa of Save Philippine Seas, who hosted the event, acknowledged that the pandemic brought up many challenges for those who are trying not to avoid single-use plastics and other things. “We saw that to avoid contamination, we had to throw away masks, face shields and other related stuff after only one use and that was a challenge. It continues to be a challenge. But it does not have to be that way. For example, Filipino moms have always been sustainability advocates. Everybody has that cupboard with the plastics.”
Social and mindful entrepreneur Rizza Lana Sebastian and Cat Trivino of Communities for Organized Resource Allocation, who were panelists during the Watsons event, also offered tips on how we can reduce our carbon footprint. Trivino said that looking at our trash bins at home and doing an edit would be a good first step.
“Looking at what we throw away and deciding which ones we or others can still use is important. It’s also important that we understand what carbon footprint is and how we can minimize ours,” she said.
Other tips the panelists shared to reduce one’s carbon footprint, aside from the obvious, include eating less meat and going for vegetables instead, recycling and reusing containers, using less paper products such as tissue and wet wipes and making smart choices when traveling.
This was Watsons’ first sustainability event held offline after a series of Do Good webinars as part of the retailer’s mission to encourage customers to do good for the planet by choosing products with better ingredients, going for product refills whenever possible, opting for clean beauty products, and picking products that come in better packaging so they can be reused.
“We want people to know that we’re here not just to make people healthy and pretty. ‘Do Good’ is now part of our tagline. It used to be ‘Look Good, Feel Great.’ Now, it’s ‘Look Good, Do Good, Feel Great.’ We’re also here to help the planet. Do Good for us means doing good for the planet and the communities we are in,” said Watsons public relations and sustainability director Viki Encarnacion.
Watsons has over 1,200 Sustainable Choices products in its 900+ stores nationwide and online channels. Actually, there are Sustainable Choices areas in stores, as I discovered recently. I usually shop online or via Watsons’ Express Delivery service on the app. My favorite sustainable product from Watsons is the Green Tea Extract Bamboo Ultra Soft Toothbrush.
As someone who loves beauty, I try to avoid samples and sachets. Plastics find their way in waterways and end up in the ocean, threatening coastal and marine biodiversity. Sachets, including those beauty samples that we love to get, comprise more than half of the world’s plastic waste.
For more information about Watsons’ sustainability program, go to interactive.watsons.com.ph/sustainablechoices.