Discover The Difference Between Mineral Makeup Vs Regular – Which Is Better For The Planet?

For many women, and more and more men, makeup is part of their daily routine. But is conventional makeup good or bad for our environment?

If you are looking to live a more sustainable life, you might have asked yourself this question already. You might even have looked into it and found that, yes, traditional makeup is bad for our planet.

Did you then come across mineral makeup? Well, I did, and what I learned was very interesting.

So let’s pit mineral makeup vs regular and find out what the difference is and which one to choose for the environment.

Mineral And Regular Makeup – The Differences

There are several differences between traditional makeup and mineral makeup. These are based on:

• Source material – what it’s made from
• Manufacturing processes – how it’s made
• Inactive ingredients – what other substances it contains
• Behaviour on skin – how it works
• Environmental impact – how it impacts our environment

Let’s look at these in detail to figure out the difference between these two types of makeup.

Source Materials

The conventional makeup that you can find on the shelves of supermarkets, chemists, and health and beauty retailers is made from synthetic ingredients. This means they are based on chemical or organic ingredients that have been made in a lab. (Couceiro et al., 2024)

And what are these synthetic chemicals made of, I hear you ask? Many of them are made from petrochemicals, which means the raw source material is petroleum, i.e. fossil fuels. (Gyan Prakash, 2024)

While not all ingredients in conventional cosmetics are made of petrochemicals, many are, and if you look at the ingredients list of your, let’s say, foundation, at least one will be made from petroleum.

On the other hand, mineral cosmetics are made from inorganic materials: minerals. These are naturally-occurring substances that are made from rocks, lava, water, etc. They can therefore be classed as natural ingredients.

There aren’t that many minerals that are used in cosmetics, unlike the huge range of chemical ingredients you can find in various types of makeup.

Some of the natural minerals used include:

• Titanium dioxide
• Iron oxide
• Zinc oxide
• Kaolin
• Mica
• Silica

So, to summarise, the first difference is that regular makeup is made with synthetic chemicals, while mineral makeup is made of natural ingredients.

Manufacturing Processes

Due to the different source materials used, the manufacturing processes are also different.

As we have already said, synthetic ingredients are made in a lab, using chemical synthesis. This process describes the creating of complex chemical compounds from simpler ones. There are different ways to turn one compound into another.

The different manufacturing processes can include using heat, light, or electricity to create new chemical ingredients.

The same processes are used twice, first to make the petrochemicals and then to use them to make the synthetic ingredients.

In contrast, the ingredients used in mineral makeup are made using mechanical processes. Basically, the minerals are micronised by grinding and milling them into a powder.

There are different grades of finesse, which can impact on the coverage, for example, of a powder foundation.

However, it has to be said that the mineral ingredients, such as Zinc Oxide, first have to be made, which happens in a lab. Then they are ground down to make a powder.

So technically, the difference here isn’t that big, as both ingredients have to be made synthetically.

Inactive Ingredients

One difference between mineral makeup vs regular is that many regular products come in liquid or cream form. Think about primer, concealer, or foundation.

Whereas mineral makeup comes as powder, which is another difference between these two types of cosmetics. And this difference brings us to the topic of inactive ingredients.

These are substances that are added for other reasons than to achieve the aim of the product. For example, a foundation’s aim is, generally speaking, to cover up small imperfections and give the skin an even, uniform colour.

The inactive ingredients will make sure, for example, that the foundation is the right consistency and texture, that it’s easy to apply and feels good on the skin.

To this end, all sorts of ingredients are added, including thickening and bulking agents, emulsifiers and solvents, film-forming and texture-enhancing agents, etc.

Additionally, moisturisers might be added to cater for people with sensitive skin, synthetic fragrances to cover up the smell of some of the other ingredients, and preservatives to ensure the liquid makeup has a longer shelf life.

That’s why, when you look at the ingredient lists of conventional makeup, you see so many different ingredients.

Mineral makeup, as we have said, comes in the form of powders, which means all these extra ingredients aren’t necessary. Let’s take preservatives as an example.

Preservatives are needed to stop harmful bacteria and fungi from forming, which would spoil the product. These microorganisms need water, which is why preservatives are necessary in liquid, gel, cream or mousse products. (Qui et al., 2022)

This means they aren’t necessary in powder makeup, so mineral makeup won’t contain them.

Fragrances are also not needed. Synthetic fragrances are added to some conventional makeup products to cover up the chemical smell. As there isn’t a chemical smell with mineral powders, no fragrances need to be added.

And it’s the same with other inactive ingredients, such as solvents or emulsifiers, as they are just not needed.

One thing to remember is that many of these additional ingredients can cause health issues, such as irritation, allergies and worse, and are also bad for the environment. (Couceiro et al., 2024)

A true mineral makeup will only contain natural minerals, nothing else. If you see on a label the term “mineral enriched”, it means they have added minerals to all the other ingredients. But it’s not a true mineral makeup.

So the other ingredients the makeup might contain is another difference between these two makeup types. And it’s one of the benefits of mineral makeup.

Behaviour On Skin

Let’s move on to the next difference, and that’s how the two makeup types interact with your skin.

Both types form a film on your skin, after all, that’s their purpose. However, because conventional makeup also contains many other ingredients, as we have seen, some of the chemicals will get absorbed by the skin.

A study has looked at different chemicals used in cosmetics, including parabens, to see if they will get absorbed. And the result was that many were absorbed by the skin. (Hewitt et al., 2019)

When chemicals get absorbed into our skin, it can cause irritation, allergies, and inflammation. While our skin has several functions, one of its main purposes is to protect us from outside influences by forming a protective barrier.

But some of the chemicals used in regular makeup can bypass this barrier and enter our body. Whether this is good or bad will depend on the individual chemical. But we know that some of them can cause harm to our health.

With mineral makeup, this isn’t an issue, because the mineral particles used are too big to penetrate our skin. Because of this, mineral makeup is seen as better for people with sensitive skin, as it’s less likely to cause irritation.

It has to be said though, that this is only true for true mineral makeup that only contains minerals and nothing else.

Mineral Makeup Vs Regular – Environmental Impact

One of the biggest, and for me, most important difference lies in the impact these two makeup types have on our environment.

And several of the above-described differences play a part in the environmental impact.

Source Material – Fossil Fuels Vs Naturally Occurring

As we have seen, most of the ingredients in traditional makeup are made from petrochemicals, which means fossil fuels.

We know that the use of fossil fuels is driving climate change and that we need to stop extracting and burning them if we want to avert a climate catastrophe. (Rayner 2020)

Mining the minerals used to make the ingredients for mineral makeup also has quite an environmental impact, including deforestation, habitat loss, and biodiversity loss.

None of this is good. However, when we look at greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the mining industry produces far less than the petrochemicals industry.

The mining industry produces between 4% and 7% of GHG emissions. In contrast, extracting fossil fuels was responsible for 15% of GHG emissions in 2022.

But mining processes can be made more sustainable, while there is no way to make fossil fuels sustainable.

It’s really a question of choosing the lesser evil here, and for most this means keeping away from synthetic ingredients.

Manufacturing Processes

Because the ingredients for both are made in the lab, either by synthetically creating them or modifying naturally occurring substances, both will create a certain amount of CO2 emissions.

It’s very difficult to find out data about how energy intensive these processes are, but there is probably not too much between them. The only thing to say is that there are much fewer ingredients used in mineral makeup compared to regular makeup.

And many traditional cosmetics do also include minerals as well as a wide range of synthetic ingredients. So manufacturing mineral makeup ingredients is probably slightly better for the environment.

Direct Impact Of Ingredients On Environment

Ingredients that are washed off, such as in makeup, will end up in our waterways, because they can’t be filtered out completely by water treatment systems.

And once in marine ecosystems, they can cause harm to aquatic life. And the impact of synthetic ingredients here is much worse than mineral ingredients.

There are countless studies that have shown that various preservatives used in cosmetics are harmful or even toxic to aquatic life.

Parabens have been shown to be toxic to zebrafish. (Bereketoglu and Pradhan, 2019) Methylisothiazolinone has been found to be harmful to aquatic life. (Lee et al., 2020)

Many inactive ingredients often used in liquid makeup are also harmful to aquatic ecosystems. PEGS, used as moisturisers, emulsifiers, binding agents, etc., have been found to be toxic to marine life. (Zicarelli et al., 2024)

If you want to know more, read our article about which cosmetics ingredients to avoid.

On the other hand, minerals, as long as they aren’t present in nano form, have a much smaller impact on aquatic life. (Scheinder et al., 2018) And in mineral makeup they won’t be, because it they particles are too small, they won’t give good coverage.

Packaging

Most conventional makeup comes in single use packaging, much of it plastic. This means once you have used up the foundation or eyeshadow, you throw it away.

And even if the glass bottles some makeup comes in could be recycled, 95% of cosmetics packaging is thrown away in the general waste bin. This means it ends up in landfill.

Given how much cosmetics are used on a regular basis, this creates a huge amount of waste.

And while some mineral makeup might also come in disposable packaging, if you buy it from an eco-friendly company, it will come in refills, which are packaged in recyclable materials.

If a company decides to sell mineral makeup because it’s better for the environment, they will make sure that they have packaging that won’t impact on the planet.

And there are eco-friendly makeup brands out there that say no to plastic and yes to refills and reusable packaging.

Mineral Makeup Vs Regular: Which One Should You Choose?

No makeup is completely sustainable, as we have seen, as the mining of the minerals needed to make mineral cosmetics has an impact on our environment.

Then these raw minerals have to undergo chemical processes to create the ingredients that are used in the makeup.

So not using any makeup at all would be the most sustainable. However, when we compare mineral and regular makeup, the former is better for our environment.

Finding the right eco-friendly makeup for you should involve mineral makeup, for that reason.

If you are now keen on creating a sustainable beauty routine, get your mineral makeup today and get started.