HEADS UP

The latest buzzword in beauty isn’t a seasonal phase; clean beauty is a crucial action for this trillion-dollar industry to work towards the sustainable future we all deserve. Simply by resisting your next impulsive beauty purchase is a step closer to what the world needs.

- BROOKE LE POER TRENCH, TANIA ZAINUDIN

So much of the way we live revolves around habits we barely even think about, which is why there’s often a chasm between hearing that our planet is headed to hell in a handbasket and changing our behavior. That gap closed for me, just a little, at the London zoo on a field trip with my eight-year-old son to learn about waste. An image flashed onto a screen that took my breath away: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the North Pacific that’s almost the size of Queensland where winds and current draw our debris onto a huge carousel that never (ever) stops. A worrying matter closer to our hearts: the 3,737 tons of waste dumped onto Malaysian ports by 13 countries over the last 5 years.

Now, I’ve been exposed to all the terrible images designed to shock us into action, such as penguins being suffocated by six-pack rings, and it’s made me genuinely sad. But it was something about the kids all staring at that picture of garbage that did it. In the words of someone half my age, I got woke.