Body & beauty

Jo Fairley: Refillable Beauty

The Beauty Bible guru reveals the greatest refillable beauty buys for planet-friendly care

How ahead of her time was my friend and mentor Anita Roddick, refilling bottles of Peppermint Foot Lotion and Banana Shampoo back in the 70s? It has taken the world a surprisingly long time to catch up with the idea that throwing away packaging is incredibly wasteful, when we could easily just top up the container and use it all over again.

If it was only that simple though. Councils’Environmental Health and Trading Standards departments sometimes enforce rules that you can only refill a bottle that holds the exact same product, with the exact same fragrance, for instance and it needs to be spotlessly clean. Here are some shining examples of what beauty names are doing on the refill front.

1) Neal’s Yard Remedies.

The pioneering British naturals brand is offering refills in some of their stores for two of their bestloved products, Geranium & Orange Handwash and Bee Lovely Bath & Shower Gel. When you refill, you’ll save £2 on each product – but your bottles must be clean, empty, dry and have the original label intact.

2) Faith in Nature.

There are now dozens of stores up and down the country offering refill stations for many products in the range created by this naturals brand, which launched in 1974 – and now the world has caught up to its eco-ethos! On their faithinnature.co.uk website, you can find an entire list of Refill Stations. (I’ll definitely be going back for more of the fab Lavender & Geranium body and haircare.)

3) Beauty Kitchen.

There are a couple of ways to refill any Beauty Kitchen products which have the ‘Return • Refill • Repeat’ logo on them. Drop them off at Holland & Barrett at any store, or send the aluminium bottles back to the address on their website with a downloadable free shipping label from the website. In my house, we’re currently getting through a LOT of the Citrus Burst Organic Vegan Hand Wash.

4) Kjaer Weis.

This Danish-born make-up artist’s range offers refills for many of their products, including foundations, cream blushers, eyeshadow, lipsticks and more, to be slipped afresh into their sleek and shiny packaging. With eye and lip pencils, for instance, you receive a new pencil, reusing the existing cap. I’m a fan of the slide-y compacts, with my all-time favourite being the Kjaer Weis Cream Blush, in Blossoming.

Jo Fairley is the co-founder of Green & Blacks and author of The Beauty Bible. Head online to see her latest projects at josephinefairley.com