TikTok is fuelling a record spend on beauty products that simply get thrown away, contributing to the ticking timebomb of monumental waste damaging the planet.
The rise of #BeautyTok and the ever-increasing popularity of once-niche aesthetic treatments via the social media platform’s influencer economy are leading to a massive increase in copycat purchases.
In 2024, beauty and personal care was not only the TikTok Shop’s bestselling category but is reported to have generated $1.8 billion. The implications of these numbers are staggering.
As new discoveries are made, there are products, treatments and procedures for every insecurity a person might have. These are only amplified by social media, increasing demand, supply and irrefutable damage to the planet and the animals who call it home.
Overall, the beauty and personal care market worldwide is projected to generate a revenue of $677.19bn in 2025, up from $646.2bn in 2024, which is a number most of us can’t really comprehend when we’re browsing Space NK on a budget.
Just like fast fashion, the beauty industry has a massive negative impact on the planet. It produces at least 120 billion pieces of packaging each year, 95% of which is thrown away. According to the British Beauty Council 14% is sent to recycling, but only 9% is actually recycled.
Disha Daswaney, COO of Kohl Kreatives and a beauty industry expert tells Eco Age: “TikTok has had a significant impact on the beauty industry especially when it comes to accelerating hyper consumption – purely because of how quickly trends move on there.”
A glance around any skincare or beauty section will tell you that eco-friendly packaging isn’t really catching on.
Hailey Bieber promotes Rhode Beauty on TikTok where the brand, popular on #BeautyTok, has earned 1.6 million followers and over 40 million likes.
The growth of the industry is in part down to social media, with influencers posting TikToks of their “hauls” of product that they have either been sent or have bought.
One of the most popular community niches on the platform, #BeautyTok has amassed over 50 billion views. More than just reach, however, 1 in 4 #BeautyTok users reported making a purchase after seeing it on the platform.
Viral posters such as glamzilla, playygirldom and haulsbypariis – to name only three, with a combined TikTok following of over 3.5 million – have directly contributed to a culture of excess and overconsumption.
As influencers with massive platforms, their enormous hauls, which consist of almost exclusively single-use plastic packaging and which fill not only drawers and cupboards but often entire rooms, certain never to be used, are not providing a harmless act of online voyeurism. Instead, this excessive behaviour trickles down into the masses, who buy identical products.
The TikTok hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, which is not specific to beauty but counts the industry as a major contributing factor, has so far accrued 58.4 billion views. This, along with the rise of copycat brands capitalising on the platform’s vast audience with seemingly no checks and balances on sustainability or ethics, are proof of the serious effect these videos have on consumers.
Even shoppers who try to be ethical will come up against the limits of an industry that wants people to buy more, more, more, at the expense of the planet.
Unfortunately, it isn’t only how products are packaged that make beauty and personal care an ethical minefield. Around 70% of beauty products contain palm oil or a derivative, 87% of best-selling beauty products contain microplastics, and 11 billion wet wipes are thrown away every year, many of which end up in the sea.
There has been an explosion of online interest in beauty trends from other countries, particularly Korea. Korean beauty is innovative and future-facing, but this often comes at the expense of animals.
For example, so-called miracle product Snail Mucin supposedly has properties that seem to reverse aging, leaving the wearer with baby smooth skin. Proponents claim that it is not only sustainable but that the mucin can be extracted in a way that is cruelty-free.
However, detractors say that there is no way to keep a snail in captivity and extract mucin without causing extreme stress. Other popular ingredients include salmon sperm and bovine and marine collagen.
Korea has banned animal testing recently, but not the use of animals in beauty products.
It isn’t only about the products on the shelves. Aesthetic treatments like Botox and fillers are increasingly popular, with the UK aesthetics industry growing by 8.4% in 2024.
Again, social media is partly behind this boom, with influencers on both the aesthetician side and patient end of things – names like TikTok’s jenniferdilandro and natashacherixxxx, for example – openly sharing the details of their latest procedures with their fans and gaining TikTok likes in the multi-millions.
The #botox tag on TikTok alone boasts nearly 2 million individual posts with over 21 billion views, many of which are (overtly and covertly) created by influencer marketing.
Despite the huge volume of content and the prevailing idea that aesthetic treatments are a matter of choice, it’s important to note that Botox and fillers are considered medical treatments. They are exempt from laws that prevent cosmetics companies from testing on animals.
This means that injectables cannot truly be cruelty free, as many, many mice have had to receive a face full of Botox or fillers before the needle arrives at your face.
Speaking exclusively to Eco Age, Hilary Jones, Ethics Director at cruelty-free cosmetics retailer Lush , notes: “People have a really simplistic view of what non-animal testing means… It’s always been in the interests of those companies to not educate the public, but it’s also quite difficult.”
“There is a responsibility for influencers and platforms to champion transparency and ethics, where it is promoting sustainable products or encouraging mindful beauty habits,” Daswaney adds.
If every TikTok user behind the 750,000 #botox posts in the last 12 months were forced to consider this, would they still think it’s simply a matter of choice? The same question applies to BeautyTok’s captive audience of consumers and growing number of viral creators.
Marianne Eloise is a writer for outlets like The Cut, the Guardian and the New York Times. She is also the author of an essay collection Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking.