If you’re looking to stock up on your favourite sheet masks, you might not want to head to Holland & Barrett as they’ve officially banned the retail of single-use beauty masks in all of their stores. But before you go to the nearest Sephora to stock up, you should probably reconsider using disposable face masks altogether.
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Pollution from beauty face mask
When you really think about the packaging of single-use beauty sheets, it won’t come as a surprise that it really does generate a lot of waste. From the plastic packaging it comes in, to the plastic wrapping that contains the mask and not to mention the product itself. While there is no available data on how many sheet masks get discarded every year, we can compare it to statistics from other beauty products. In 2019, Bustle reported that approximately 20 million makeup wipes are discarded on the daily, and the numbers of sheet masks are thrown away are certainly not far behind.
Making H&B eco-friendly
In a bid to make their brand clean and environmentally-conscious, UK’s leading health and wellness retailer, H&B, has announced that they are stopping the sale of single-use beauty masks from 6 September. They’re now encouraging their customers to turn to more sustainable beauty products. They stated in a press release:
Beauty sheet masks can only be used once, so following a review we feel they no longer fit our clean & conscious beauty ethos, which is why we’ve decided to act now and stop selling them.
We know our customers are eco-conscious and passionate about protecting the environment and we hope this move makes it a little bit easier for them to make their beauty regimes more sustainable.
H&B has been working towards making their brand eco-friendly since 2010, when they first banned the use of plastic bags. In 2012, the extended the ban to microplastics, and then in 2019 they became 'the first high-street retailer to announce a complete ban on wet-wipes.’
