Can Beautiful Things Be Sustainable?

We look onto forest and we feel grateful for what we see. Outdoor has been a longstanding source of inspiration for human, and now in quarantine, we’re robbed of it. Simone Beauvoir wrote in Second Sex, that nature has special position relative to woman. She wrote, ardently:

“Life is not only immanence and repetition: it is also a dazzling face of light; in flowering meadows, it is revealed as Beauty..... ; she finds it intoxicating to be alone, sovereign on the hillside; she is no longer spouse, mother, housewife, but a human being; she contemplates the passive world: and she recalls that she is a whole consciousness, an irreducible freedom. In front of the mystery of water and the mountain summit’s thrust, male supremacy is abolished; walking through the heather, dipping her hand in the river, she lives not for others but for herself.” 

We appreciate beauty and crave for it.

In our life, we adorned our living space with not only essential things but also a touch of beauty. Starting from our own home, our desk, our garden, our dress, and our face. We appreciate it so much that it become an option of preference for us. Now, in the age of industrial revolutions, our options expand numerously because the unprecendented accumulation of wealth. The choice of beauty becomes abundant, and somehow exploitative.

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To enjoy our lavish lifestyle we have now but also minding the environment is not easy way to do. Fortunately, there are a lot of companies who are trying their best to adjust their business model and being sustainable.

Photowall is one of the most unique company out there. First of all, because what they’re selling is home decor, such as wallpaper and poster. Yet, their approach to balance the beauty of your personal space and environment is astonishing. In upcoming collaboration, I will be reviewing their product in accordance to their environmental policy.

• Their unique supply chain commitment: All production is to order, which means we only produce the quantity of products required, none are held in stock or discarded un-necessarily.
•  Their sustainable canvas material (100% cotton), adhesive (biodegradability), and wrapping. So look forward for it

Why this kind of thing important?

It is because that is the reality of our life. We love beautiful things as well as we like to be compassionate to the world God’s given to us. In another sector, we might as well rethink our choices, such as in beauty industry and our marketplace. In beauty industry, many products are arranged  and advertised in such a way, with each own benefit, which if are clustered as routine and religiously followed, will ‘grace’ women with beauty she desired.

However, it is utterly important for us, as consumer who interacts daily with this choice of purchase to practice “sustainable purchasing”. The problem with beauty industry is how it aims for profit so much that they’re dumping a lot of product, with no essential benefit to skin and create a lot of waste by manufacturing both the ingredients and the packaging. The single usage type beauty treatment such as sheet mask is one controversial products, there currently packaged in less sustainable way. What is more regrettable is there are a lot of consumers who are not “use up” beauty product and left it into expiration date because they are buying more than their skin needs.

Let’s be real, no one has skin with facial surface area, more than 1 m²  so why put a gigantic volume of products on it?

However still, we still like to use those products. Even more as creature who admires beauty, human has created a lot of art on the surface on earth and onto itself with beauty product and make up. The boom of beauty industry trend makes personal beauty a more affordable and optional thing that reach more people than in the past.

The beauty does not only stop on ourselves, but stuff around us. Several years ago, I went on a trip to promote rain forest sustainability with AEON. This Japanese brand malls have also been working on making their supply chain become more sustainable and also incorporate nature in the architecture of their mall. If you come to visit Indonesia, you can find that this company has open space type architecture.

Definitely, to obtain living as sustainable as possible needs a lot of commitment. After all, we need to be reprimanded so that we’re not indulging ourselves so much in greed, that cause damaging effect for life around us, at present and in the future. Beauty can be more simple and modest. There are a long ways to go to make sustainability as common lifestyle, but it doesn’t mean we need to let go of beauty.