My favourite cosmetic brands

Hi.

I was going to write this post before I got completely stressed out by consumerism and plastic and all that unnecessary waste that just ends up in landfills. But because it's almost Christmas and cosmetics have been my favourite thing for 2 years now, I thought I'd write this post anyway.

When I was really lonely and depressed I cheered up my life by going shopping for some cosmetics. I bought so many cream, lotions and make-up products. Trying them out really made me a lot happier and boosted my self-confidence!

Earlier this year, Brand Spark International listed the most trusted cosmetic brands in Canada, USA, China, Turkey and Mexico that were ranked by consumers. You can check all of them by following the link. I originally got the idea for this post from a Finnish cosmetics blog Ostolakossa where the blog's author Virve Vee compared the popularity of different brands in different countries and also told her own favourites. 

So today I'm going to tell me what my favourite cosmetic brands have been past these 2 years! With some thoughts on how I'm feeling about the future with them. If this isn't something you're interested in, feel free to skip this post.

For example, these are the winning brands in China:

Face cream:  Olay

Eye cream: Estée Lauder

Make-up foundation: Maybelline

Facial wash: L'oreal and Nivea

Shaving products: Gillette

Nail varnish: OPI

Body wash: Dove

Shampoo & Conditioner: Pantene

Hair styling: Vidal Sassoon

Toothpaste: Darlie

And these are the winners in Turkey:

Facial skincare: L'oreal and Nivea

Make-up foundation: L'oreal and Max Factor (Covergirl)

Facial wash: Neutrogena and Nivea

Lipstick: Avon

Mascara: L'oreal and Max Factor (Covergirl)

Deodorant/Antiperspirant: Nivea

Shaving products: Gillette

Body lotion: Nivea

Body wash: Palmoline

Shampoo & Conditioner: Elidor and Head&Shoulders

Hair styling: Hobby

Toothpaste: Ipana ja Colgate

Feel free to check out the other ones too, I'm sure they are all well known and popular brands.

I actually recently realised that many of the popular brands are owned by gigantic companies.

Have you ever heard of Unilever?

Maybe I'm just naïve but I was really shocked when I realised that so many brands are owned by this massive company. Unilever owns more than 400 brands!

Out of the brands listed earlier more are owned by them by not.

They own Lynx (Axe), Dove, Flora (Becel), Knorr, Lipton, Omo, Sure (Rexona), Surf and Sunsilk (Elidor), Ben & Jerry's, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Pot Noodle, Turun Sinappi, Simple, Pepsodent (Signal), TIGI, TRESemmé and many others!

And of course such a big company has a lot of money to put on marketing and buying self-space in order to make sure that the naïve consumers can easily see these products when they go shopping.

But anyway, back to the point of this post and my own list! Because of course you all really want to know what cosmetics I use (almost) daily.

Face cream:  Boots Botanics. Especially the 81% organic hydrating cream.

Eye cream: Lumene.

Make-up foundation: Skin79. I have now discovered Asian BB creams and don't want to mess with Western foundations anymore.

Facial wash: Lush.

Lipstick: Lush.

Mascara: Physician's Formula Organic Wear.

Deodorant/Antiperspirant: Lumene. But then I experienced an aluminium crisis and started making my own.

Shaving products: Gillette. Although I'm not sure how to feel about this ecologically or socially.

Body lotion: Soap & Glory.

Nail varnish: Lumene Natural Code.

Body wash: Lumene Angry Birds. I got obsessed with this one after I tried it at my friend's house.

Shampoo & Conditioner: Lush. I'm increasingly more and more obsessed with Lush, have you noticed?

Hair styling: Batiste. Dry shampoo is all I use at the moment. I've considered replacing it with just talcum powder though.

Toothpaste: Sarakan. I've had enough of fluoride.

I actually used to use a different toothpaste, but then I read about the dangers of fluoride and felt that I have been poisoning myself enough with it, and decided to switch to a more natural alternative and hope for the best. Then last week I bought a bamboo toothbrush and it works really well! I actually feel that my teeth are cleaner than they were when I used a plastic toothbrush.

I am a bit sad that many of these products contain so much unrecyclable plastic. I always use a Gilette razor where you only have to change the blade bit instead of needing to get a whole new razor! I wish everyone would do the same. Yes, they are a little bit more expensive, but they are also so much better than those awful ones you can buy in bulk. So much plastic ends up in landfill from them and you only use them a couple of times! If you need to shave, please buy a proper razor.

Lush is a fantastic company that makes bath and beauty products with environmental values in their mind. Their products are amazing and I am considering trying more of their products in the future. For instance, they have a mascara that comes in a glass bottle and it probably would be better for the environment if I used that one instead of ordering the one I currently use from America.

Also, in the field of soap and body lotion, I'm considering challenging myself and trying to make some of my own next year. It can't be that difficult, can it?

So, what are your favourite cosmetics? What sort of aspects do you think about when choosing these products?

You don't have to have a favourite to all categories but you can just copy-paste this template to comments and let me know! I'm a bit weird, but I'd love to hear what products you guys use! Oh, and this is a completely unisex questionnaire. Everyone is allowed to answer.

Face cream: 
Eye cream: 
Make-up foundation:
Facial wash: 
Lipstick:
Mascara: 
Deodorant/Antiperspirant:
Shaving products: 
Body lotion: 
Nail varnish:
Body wash: 
Shampoo & Conditioner: 
Hair styling: 
Toothpaste: 

Disgusting plastic

Wow,

I don't know what's happened to me but this Lyra is becoming an eco-Lyra. 

Maybe I've been working in a shop for too long and seen how much rubbish we produce and how many unnecessary things we try to sell to consumers. Or maybe I'm just getting increasingly disgusted with plastic. This plastic-disgust-thing has been going on for a few years now and I've tried to replace all of my plastic kitchen tools with silicone. It hasn't really happened yet apart from my spatula, stirring spoon and rolling pin though. I'm skint and always have been.

You maybe read in my last blog post that I was going to order a bamboo toothbrush. Well, I did order it and can't wait for it to arrive. Apparently toothbrushes are a really big waste problem and can't be recycled and last in landfills for about a 1,000 years. I haven't researched this info, but in my plastic-disgust I believe it to be true enough to invest in an beautiful wooden toothbrush.

The picture will take you to their online store.

It wasn't even a big investment, because many plastic toothbrushes are even more expensive than these ones, and hopefully my teeth will appreciate this. My student budget has normally encouraged me to buy a £1 pack of 5 toothbrushes, but I guess it's okay to feel like I'm saving the planet while brushing my teeth.

Scotland also recently passed a law where all the shops have to charge 5p for every plastic bag and give that money to charity. I can't believe how many people have moaned about that law. They say that the plastic bags are not worth the money and that it's ridiculous to make people to save the plastic bags and that it will just allow stores to charge more for things. I think they are missing the point. I feel that it will encourage the stores to give more money to charity and to make people think about the environment by bringing their own reusable bags. The shop where I work is actually exempt from this law, so we don't charge for the bags but I can see the difference in my customers. So many people say 'no, thanks' when I ask them if they need a bag and they happily pack their purchases in their backpack or reusable shopping bag. It makes me so happy! Most of the time those plastic bags are so unnecessary, you only use it for a number of minutes and then you throw it in the bin.

Picture from Zero Waste Europe -website. Click to visit!

I prefer to carry my shopping home in a canvas bag anyway, because they fit my body better and are easier to carry. Maybe stronger people haven't had this problem, but I really appreciate my own bags. Of course people with cars don't have to carry their shopping very far anyway, so for them it's maybe even better that there is that 5p encouragement fee. Have you guys noticed a change in your behaviour after this fee was introduced?



I'm basically still discovering how I could reduce my ecological footprint. All of this is very new to me. I'll try and keep you posted about my experiences. 
I tried to make my own deodorant today. I'll tell you know how this experiment went once I have evaluated my smelliness levels.

P.S. My birthday and Christmas are approaching and if you're one of those few people who tend to buy me presents, here's some ideas for you! Maybe try and avoid small plastic things or synthetic sponges and stuff like that. These days I'm more into homemade things and "natural products".

For instance, Life Without Plastic -Website has many cool things that I wish I had. I mean, I don't want anyone to order this stuff from America, but please feel free to be inspired by these things!

Maybe I'm making it too difficult

Hello world,

It's been difficult to write. Mostly because I feel that I have too many thoughts and opinions and I'm not confident enough about them to post them here for the world to criticise about. But maybe I could take it as a learning exercise and we could learn from each other? This is not an educational platform where I am supposed to say how something should be done. This is supposed to be a place where I learn to share my opinions and thoughts.

So, what sort of thoughts have I had recently then?

At the moment I'm feeling a bit distressed about the consumer society we live in. The fact that I currently work in an industry which is highly dependant on people buying stuff isn't helping. It got worse after I read this article about how a 23-year New Yorker, Lauren Singer, has been living a "trash-free" life for 2 years.

Lauren Singer. Picture takes you to her blog.

Blogging about this is very scary because I'm not supposed to say anything about my work and because it seems to be a cool trend in blogs to show of new items that people have bought. I was going to write some shopping related posts about my favourite brands, but now I'm so stressed out of all the stuff and trash. I still have a month before I need to make any New Years resolutions, so maybe I really need to think about this.

In the meantime, let me tell you a story.

I went swimming again. This appears to be a reoccuring theme in my blog, but I'm okay with it. I went there straight from work and I had to buy some wash stuff because I had only taken a towel and a swimming costume with me in the morning.

I bought this:

It's colour-free and perfume-free. I wish it was also paraben-free, but apparently you can't get everything. I spent half an hour choosing this, so in the end I decided to go for this one instead of this Sanex one. It had so few ingredients that I decided to choose the Simple one because it had cucumber extract and citric acid. Do you people ever read the ingredients lists of the products you buy?

This turned out to be a decent buy for the £2 I spent on it. I didn't only wash my body with it, I also washed my make-up off with it — including my mascara! I don't understand people who go swimming without washing their make-up off first. It will end up in the pool? Some people also apparently put conditioner on their hair before they get into the pool. Why do they think it's okay? But anyway, this shower gel was okay on my face and it got my make-up of so I used it for washing my hair also. My hair got clean and I no longer understand why someone would need to buy normal shampoos. I actually compared the INCI of this shower gel to some basic shampoos and it looked the same. It seems to be just advertising so that people would buy more products.

My scalp is dry though and can't really even tolerate normal shampoos so I sprayed it with my scalp moisturising mixture that I used after my last traumatising trip to a hairdressers when they washed my hair 3-times with some awful hair dresser shampoos that made my scalp very itchy. I'm not sure what I put in the mixture anymore but judging it by it's scent: apparently a lot of cider vinegar. It helped.

Normally I wash my hair with either a shampoo bar or a budget solution: olive soap!

It's good for my hair and there's no need for conditioner. It's also cheap and "trash-free".

Now please excuse me, while I go and buy myself a bamboo toothbrush.