Smooth your skin, protect the environment

I am quite fond of skin exfoliation. When working on someone's face, I can see if they don't exfoliate, and also if they exfoliate too often. Exfoliating gets rid of dead skin cells and leaves skin feeling smooth and looking radiant. This will help with moisturiser absorption and also mean that your makeup will look smoother and last longer. 
But those little micro-beads found in many exfoliators are synthetic beads. That's right, plastic beads. Last year it was brought to my attention that these tiny plastic beads get through the water filtration systems, polluting our oceans and getting into the food chain. You can read about it here or watch a video here. I had to stop using the exfoliator I had immediately and disposed of it in the bin. But what can you do if you love to exfoliate, but also don't want to use harsh scrubs that contain ground up walnut shell or apricot kernels?

I went a few months without exfoliating, but over the last year I have found a couple of great facial exfoliators that don't contain the offending plastics (which are labelled in ingredients lists as polyethylene or polypropylene). Smitten and Trilogy are the two exfoliators I have been trialling, and I have to say I do like them both. They both contain jojoba beads to exfoliate, rather than plastic. The Trilogy Exfoliator is a little thicker in consistency, due to the Kaolin in it, which is a white clay. Kaolin helps to cleanse and exfoliate the skin. The Smitten exfoliator has a slightly softer texture, and contains salicylic acid which helps to encourage skin cell renewal.

Both companies are transparent about the ingredients that go into in their products (all natural) and they don't test on animals. Smitten is Australian and Trilogy is from New Zealand, so they don't need to be transported from the other side of the world either. Bonus!

Alternatively, you can also use exfoliators containing salicylic acid or alpha-hydroxy acids which don't use physical exfoliation. 

www.smittencosmetics.com.au
www.trilogyproducts.com

*Please note: I purchased these products with my own money and don't receive anything for writing about them. 

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