That same business model could be covering up some ugly truths. In February 2020, The Guardian reviewed a BBC Three documentary about beauty bloggers and vloggers and the companies they love, ColourPop Cosmetics included. Two of the documentary's participants, known simply as Resh and Queenie, voiced their concerns over the brand and its platform.

After Resh noted that ColourPop is the "internet's most popular beauty brand," Queenie expressed her own concern: "I really hope it isn't tightly controlled by PR." As they quickly found out, the brand is, in fact, tightly controlled by PR. The two were allowed to ask ColourPop's Erin Lindsay, who works on the company's product development team, a few questions about the brand. What they uncovered was unsettling, and definitely raised more questions, about wages and the environment.

As The Guardian pointed out, ColourPop was ready with its spin, with Lindsay turning Queenie's question about "the disposable element" of cheap makeup around, by saying that the brand's affordability allows for consumers to be "experimental." The newspaper further noted that, while it's not fair to pin the industry's environmental issues on ColourPop and its business model alone, it is still "illuminating" that the company produces 1,000 liquid lipsticks in an hour (or close to 17 per minute) "in small plastic containers."