In the UK upcycled beauty ingredients are on the rise and offer an easy, eco-friendly way to make your skin care routine more sustainable. Do you love beauty but hate waste? Explore our upcycled ingredients and discover a more sustainable way to enjoy skin care.
What does upcycled ingredients mean?
A favourite amongst sustainable skin care shoppers, upcycled skin care ingredients are by-product (waste) ingredients, such as the shell of a coconut used for its milk, repurposed for use in beauty formulations.
These nuggets of natural goodness are a valuable resource for the sustainable skin care industry and play an essential role in closing the loop on unnecessary waste. If you love beauty but hate waste, the upcycled ingredients trend will be right up your skin care street!
Upcycled beauty ingredients that we love
As proud pioneers of organic beauty, Green People love upcycled ingredients and use these natural resources whenever possible. Here are some examples of upcycled ingredients that we love to use in our sustainable skin care products.
Upcycled Cranberry
A gentle way to exfoliate the skin, our Cranberry Seed Powder is upcycled from pomice, the seeds, pulp and peel left behind after the fruit is juiced for its antioxidant-rich benefits.
Used to help our Fruit Scrub Exfoliator and Green People for Men No.1 Exfoliating Face Scrub polish your skin to perfection, this natural, physical exfoliator smooths without scratching so that you can reveal radiantly soft skin.
Upcycled Bilberry
And Cranberry isn’t the only fruit we upcycle. The Bilberry seeds used in our AHA Face Mask blend have also been upcycled. We couldn’t let these beauties go to waste after juicing! Naturally rich in Lactic Acid, they’re bursting with skin-brightening benefits.
Upcycled Coconut
Coconut is another beauty ingredient that we can’t get enough of. Its oil gives us the gentle sodium coco sulphate that we use to help our shampoos, face washes, and hand washes foam, and we found a great use for its husk, too! Our activated Charcoal is made from upcycled Coconut Shells. Incredibly porous, it’s ideal for our deep-cleansing Purifying Face Mask.
Upcycled Apple Juice
Have you ever eaten a dried apple chip and wondered what happened to the juice? It makes its way into Apple skin care. A powerhouse of hydration, vitamin-rich apple cellular water is a key ingredient in our Nordic Roots Apple Moisturiser and helps to boost elasticity so that your skin stays soft and springy.
For intense skin hydration, pair it with Nordic Roots Hyaluronic Booster Serum, made using upcycled Betaine.
Upcycled Rice
Our natural well-being products use upcycled ingredients, too! Relax knowing your products are as good for the skin as they are for the planet with Time to Restore Magnesium Body Lotion. A non-drying magnesium for all skin types, this luxury lotion gets its skin-hydrating power from a moisturising matrix of sustainably harvested Red Algae and upcycled Amylopectin starch derived from rice.
Upcycled packaging
It goes without saying that we upcycle our packaging! As part of our commitment to green beauty, we use Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) plastic to package organic roll-on deodorants and hand washes. Our biodegradable ONE Balm pot uses upcycled ingredients as well, and is made using sawdust produced in a sustainable forest that may have otherwise gone to waste.
We hope you have found this guide to Green People’s upcycled ingredients helpful. For more information about our ingredients, see our ingredients glossary or contact our UK customer care team at 01403 740350.
This blog post has been reviewed by Charlotte Vøhtz, founder of Green People, who has 25+ years of experience in the natural and organic beauty industry. A recognised leader in the field of organic beauty, Charlotte helped inform the UK's first organic beauty standards and was voted the People’s Choice in the 2023 and 2024 list of Who’s Who in Natural Beauty. A published author, she wrote the organic beauty bible ‘Naturally Gorgeous’. Previously, she qualified as a nurse and spent over 10 years working in pharmaceuticals.
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