20 pledges for 2020: The natural alternatives to curb your Vaseline addiction

Buying and using exclusively sustainable beauty products has turned out to be much more of a challenge than I initially anticipated.

Since my beauty and personal care collection is vast I have tried to narrow it down and focus on improving one part of it at a time. This week I decided to tackle my endless addiction to lip balm - anyone who knows me can testify that I never go anywhere without one! I use these constantly in winter as my lips are always feeling chapped and dry.

Usually I try to remedy the problem by smothering layer after layer of Vaseline onto my lips 24/7. But Vaseline - or petroleum jelly - is not actually good for dry lips and it's definitely not good for the environment. This week I began my quest to find natural alternatives.

Petroleum jelly is a by-product of the process of the oil extraction process, which contributes to climate change, acid rain and oil spills to name but a few of its damaging effects. Perhaps most worrying is the fact that OPEC reports that over 70 million barrels of petroleum oil are produced daily worldwide - the equivalent of nearly 49,000 per minute. Petroleum is used constantly in modern daily life but it is a non-renewable resource, so it won’t be around forever. But how to live a life without Vaseline?

Initially I turned to beauty counters to find a sustainable product I could use as an alternative to a petroleum-based one. I found that Burt’s Bees was the most natural and ethical brand of lip balm. They claim they do not test on animals and that all their products are 99% natural, with over half being 100% natural. Their website even contains information on how all the ingredients are sourced. Having used their lip balms before, I already knew that they were good so I decided to jump ship and ditch my current Vaseline.

Vaseline works by forming a barrier between the skin and the atmosphere so moisture cannot escape from the skin. However, this means that moisture also cannot enter the skin either, which eventually results in drier skin than before. To keep in moisture whilst also allowing the skin to breathe, I tried using coconut oil but this alone didn’t feel enough to satisfy my lip balm cravings.

So, in addition to making a more environmentally friendly brand swap I thought I would experiment with an even more sustainable solution to the problem - making my own lip balm from ingredients I already had and recycling an old vaseline tin by storing it in there (no packaging waste!)

A lot of the recipes online included beeswax but I didn’t have this so I just mixed equal parts coconut oil and honey with 7-10 drops of lavender oil. Whilst this mixture did work it still didn’t compare to the naturally sourced shop bought lip balms. Perhaps leaving out the wax was a mistake.

After trying again, this time with 2 parts coconut oil, 1 part beeswax and 1 part honey, it made a balm that was much smoother to apply and more moisturising. After doing a bit more research I discovered that soy wax and carnauba wax are good vegan alternatives to beeswax. Natural colourings could also be added!

Trying to curb my Vaseline addiction was tricky at first because I have used it for so long but there are plenty of 100% natural and sustainable options out there to buy or make yourself.