Off With the Waste, On With the Wagon!

It’s finally time to quit the mindset of “all talk and no play” and get your wheels of being a vigilant citizen going. The India Union Environment Ministry announced the ban of single-use plastic items from July 1st, 2022. But the point to be noted here is that, the ban is on selected minimal use items and not on ALL single-use plastic, so ban or no ban, it is on us to be more mindful in our choices of product consumption, be it in any field. No matter how small the step is, it is a step in the right direction.?

The ban on single-use plastic items includes straws, cutlery, earbuds, packaging films, plastic sticks for balloons, candy and ice cream, and cigarette packets.

With this new order in motion, the talks of going clean and green will be clouding the air for a while and might dissolve like cotton candy does in water if we do not start making lifestyle changes any soon. So how do we begin with these changes?

Take Baby Steps

Start with the basics:

1. Carry your own bags while shopping
2. Re-use take-out containers
3. Skip straws or use a metal straw
4. Don’t buy plastic water bottles, instead carry your own
5. Using wood toothbrushes instead of plastic ones and composting them after use
6. Start segregating waste into recyclable and non-recyclable waste.

The list just goes on. Sustainable fashion is taking the industry by a storm, but adopting clean beauty practices is something that is often bypassed. According to the recycling company TerraCycle, the global cosmetics industry produces 120 billion units of packaging every year, and few are accepted by kerbside recycling programmes. “Many of the design technologies that make personal care and beauty products so squeezable, twistable, portable and generally easy to use render them difficult to recycle,” says its European head of communications, Stephen Clarke. “The more complex or costly the packaging, the harder it is to collect, separate and recycle. As a result, it makes it more economically viable to simply trash it than put forth the resources to recover it.” With that being out there, Vanity Wagon has always been, and will strongly continue to be a clean beauty platform in its entirety.

After researching the trends of the beauty industry worldwide, the initiatives taken in hand by Vanity Wagon since its inception have focused on standing strong with the title of “India’s largest Clean Beauty platform”. Starting from the top, anything and everything that is available on the site is made of ingredients that are safe to use and cruelty free. Brands that we deal with are majorly sustainable and are thoroughly checked for their authenticity. The platform as a brand itself, indulges in maintaining Plastic Neutrality which means funding recovery, i.e. the collection, separation, and recycling of plastic waste in an amount equal to your plastic consumption. For every gram of plastic consumed/purchased, 1 gram of the same type of plastic waste is recovered from municipal waste before it reaches landfills and recycled by government-approved projects. We have joined hands with The Disposal Company, which is the gold standard for plastic neutral brands. They have successfully recycled and/or repurposed 50 KGs of post-consumer plastic waste on behalf of of Vanity Wagon for the year 2022-23. Keeping all that aside, the next ladder we have our eyes set upon to climb would be to become Plastic Negative. Right now, we are recycling the amount of plastic we consume. When we become plastic negative, we will recycle double the amount of plastic we will consume.

We have been using plastic free packaging since the start because we believe in sustainability as our core value. All our packaging is plastic free, or at the most, made from recyclable plastic. We make use of shredded papers instead of plastic air pillows, honeycomb wrap packaging, and paper tapes.

Along with that, we also have a recycling program, Vanity Recycles, where our customers can send back empty product bottles, which we then send ahead to Eco wise, which is an industry-specific waste management company, focused on sustainability solutions for businesses and corporations. These bottles are segregated according to different types of plastic it is and is then processed into a brand new eco-conscious container which is ready to be back in the game. The Vanity Wagon office also tries to keep the workplace plastic-free by repurposing boxes to keep in the daily items, containers into planters and using reusable cutlery. Everything that goes on here is transparent and a major step in adopting safer measures to give back the Earth and the environment a cleaner breath of life. So when are you starting your due of being a vigilant citizen and getting on our Wagon??