Surrey Homes | SH55 | May 2019 | Extensions & Outdoor Living supplement inside

Pure &
Simple
Josephine Fairley explains how
to ditch those environmentally
damaging face wipes and why
your skin will love you for it
Moselle face
cloths, £5 each,
designersguild.com
On the very rare occasions now when I get a wipe
out of my handbag – usually on a train from
Hastings to London Charing Cross on which the
water isn’t working on the loo (please take note anyone from
Southeastern who happens to be reading this), I feel like I have
to make a public announcement. “It’s biodegradeable, you
know,” I whisper to myself while swabbing off train grime with
a gorgeously fragrant L’Occitane Verbena Refreshing Towelette.
With a great record of eco-consciousness, L’Occitane were
among the first to introduce biodegradeable wipes. But the
point about a wipe, even in a germy hand emergency on a
train, is that it’s always going to be a single-use
product – even if it’s compostable. But the
fact is, most still aren’t – featuring polyester
or plastic that can take years, decades or even
centuries to break down in the environment.
Many of us are moving away from
‘throwaway’ products of all kinds. But
happily, there are now many alternatives
to wipes and non eco-friendly cleansing options – starting
with the good old muslin cloth. It was Eve Lom who
originally pioneered these for use with her first-of-its-kind
balm cleanser – a concept embraced some years later by
Liz Earle with good old Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish, £17
for 100ml (with two muslins). Since then, that creamy,
eucalyptus-scented cleanser has definitely been elevated to
the Beauty Hall of Fame and you can walk into countless
bathrooms nowadays and spot one or more of these
“the point about
a wipe is that it’s
always going to be a
single-use product”
distinctive squares of cloth drying on the towel rail.
If you’ve never tried a muslin cloth for removing your
make-up, you’re missing a trick – because not only are these
great for accessing every nook and cranny to remove make-up
(the fold of the chin, the area around the nose), but the very
slightly rough texture of the cloth also exfoliates skin perfectly.
Not too aggressive, not too wimpy – just enough to buff away
dead skin cells on a daily (or more likely nightly) basis, so that
skin is optimally glowing. These cloths can be washed and
reused time and time again – up to 1000 times, in some cases
– and therefore hugely cut down on waste. I like the original
Liz Earle Pure Muslin Cloths, £4.50 for two
(bought separately from the cleanser), and
also the Temple Spa Take It Off Muslin Soft
Cotton Cleansing Cloths, £8.75 for two.
Personally, I now use a muslin-style cloth
with pretty much any kind of cleanser –
certainly, creams and face washes, as well as
balms. But recently, I happened upon the
really beautiful Cocorosa Egyptian Neroli Cleansing Oil, £18 for
30ml cocorosa.co.uk, which is best removed using Cocorosa’s The
Double Cleanse Cloth, £5 – on one side a nicely skin-buffing
muslin, but on the other side, a gorgeously velvety texture
that’s as soothingly soft as a comfort blanket. I happen to love
facial cleansing oils – they’re brilliant for melting away makeup
and I find them especially useful after a day in ‘the smoke’
(which literally is ‘the smoke’, in terms of the pollutants
deposited on the complexion). Infused with orange blossom
109 surrey-homes.co.uk