Hello, dewy dust bunnies, and welcome to another edition of the The Don’t Buy List! Today, I’m thrilled to report that anti-aging works. Per the Financial Times, “A study by academics at Yale found that people with a negative approach to aging deal with it worse mentally and physically and die seven and a half years younger.” I mean… Wow. Congratulations, beauty industry. By instilling consumers with constant age anxiety, you actually did it — you helped stop the aging process! Let’s hear it for eternal youth!!

Anyway.

Another “zero-waste” beauty brand is here to pollute the “sustainable” skincare space with products that didn’t previously exist! This one is called Uni, and its origin story is pretty much the same as that of every other “eco-friendly” cosmetic company: Person hears alarming fact about environment. Person wants to make a difference but also a profit. Person launches beauty brand. Person promotes what is essentially a vehicle for product consumption as being net-positive for the planet. In the case of Uni, founder Alexandra Keating learned that “when you visit the Great Barrier Reef, they ask you to wash off your sunscreen before entering the water; the reason being that it directly threatens the health of our coral reefs,” as she told Vogue. “I discovered it’s not just sun care, it’s all products, and that was the moment I actually realized how toxic products are.” She soon began “thinking about what an entirely ocean-conscious personal care line could look like,” when she could have been thinking about how to get involved in environmental policy, or how to organize a public health campaign about cosmetic safety, or how to help existing brands shift to reusable packaging, or how to advocate for mass divestment from potentially harmful cosmetic chemicals, or how to educate consumers on beauty product pollution. (Keating is the daughter of the former prime minister of Australia, so it’s likely she has the resources to pursue any of those non-product paths.)

The Unpublishable

The Don't Buy List: Facial Massage, Fragrance…

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