We’ve had an email from Charley:

I’ve read your pages about reducing toilet paper and sanitary towels. I’m not sure I want to go that far yet but I do want to find an alternative for makeup sponges like for applying liquid foundation. Do you know if there are any recycled sponges on the market or what else can I use?

I’m hoping we’ve got some make-up experts in the Recycle This community — I’ve only worn foundation twice in my entire life so I don’t know much about that sort of thing. It’s an evasive answer but that is one way to reduce using synthetic sponges/foam pads – and other make-up consumables such as packaging: wear less make-up and less regularly. I realise it’s not an answer for everyone but it is something to consider. I think I used to wear make-up out of habit but once I got over the shock of going cosmetically nude, I quickly normalised to not wearing make-up.

Now to Charley’s actual question: with Google, I can find sponge scourers make from recycled but not finer make-up sponges. Anyone got better Google skills or with more cosmetics knowledge, know where/what to look for? You can get natural sponges for applying make-up (which could be composted at the end of the life) but they usually have their own environmental impact. Anyone got any advice on those?

Alternatives: again, possibly not for everyone but switch to a powder foundation that can be applied with a brush – a good quality brush washed regularly will last a long, long time. (On a similar point, I can’t believe I stuck with sponge eye shadow applicators for so long — trained into them by the “free” ones with some shadows I guess — when a shaped brush does a far better job and lasts a lot longer too.)

I know a lot of people make their own make-up removal pads to use instead of cotton wool but has anyone made their own reusable application pads?

Any other suggestions or ideas for Charley to try?

We featured make-up itself a while ago and have also looked at mascara wands and nail varnish, but Annie G has come up with a clever idea for old pressed powder compacts:

As I was coming to the end of my blusher I wondered what I could do with the plastic container afterwards and had a great idea. I travel by train regularly and found the empty blusher container makes a compact and secure travel case for flattish earrings.

That is a great idea – I always need a little baggie or something to keep my earrings in when we’re going away, but that’s a better idea because it’s solid and I’d be less likely to squash them by mistake.

Any other clever ideas for them though?

(Photo by esrasu”)

After the post on nail varnish last week – and after going through my old make-up collection to find supplies to accompany a friend’s (absolutely terrifying) Halloween costume for a party next week, I realised I’ve got quite a lot of make-up left over from back in the day when I wore it regularly and extensively.

Despite knowing that you should throw eye make-up away after a few months to prevent contamination, I didn’t ever actually do it so now have a number of old, but mostly full, tubes of mascara; a heap of pots of powder eye-shadow (singles and multiples); a pick-up-sticks worthy amount of eye and lip liner pencils; lipsticks of every hue (except the bright red we needed for the aforementioned Halloween costume); some bronzer balls from when I thought, incorrectly, I should rock the “bronze look”; and, some random cream things that I think were supposed to be used as eye make-up or blusher, or possibly both (an impulse buy for sure).

So any suggestions on what I can do with this stash? They’ve all been used in part so couldn’t go to a charity shop or the like – so any ideas for new uses?

(Original photo by val-j)