What Does Clean Beauty
Really Mean?
What you want to see on your products.
The FDA doesn’t have to approve beauty products or skincare before they get shipped off to be sold to the world. A little scary, right?
This doesn’t necessarily mean that every product is harmful - but it does put a whole lot of responsibility in the hands of the consumer to do their own research. Especially in a world of tricky marketing, strategy, and yes, we’ll say it green washing - we have to start to understand the fine print of it all.
As a whole, clean beauty means freedom from common synthetic chemicals and ingredients, such as parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances, formaldehyde and oxybenzone among many others.
If you want to learn a little more about these fear-inducing “dirty” ingredients - Click here to read more. Now let's talk about what you should be seeing on your clean, green, and cruelty free beauty labels.
Green, Organic, Cruelty Free – Are They Just Buzz Words?
Well.. no. They really shouldn’t be but there are cases where product labels can be tiptoeing around certain standards. This is why its so important to educate ourselves and get to know not only the ingredients but the labels on your “clean” skin care and beauty products.
Here are a few examples of what these words mean and what you should be looking for to make sure they ARE staying up to true clean beauty standards.
ORGANIC
Let's start with one we’re all familiar with - Organic. What is organic beauty? Certified organic skin care contains certified organic ingredients such as plant oils and extracts. These ingredients are made without the use of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. Just like our foods, we want to stay away from ingesting these harsh chemicals and synthetics.
What to look for:
Check your labels for these terms to help better understand if your products are organic; free of GMOs, parabens, PEGs, phthalates and mineral oils. You can also check for the USDA approved organic label shown here:
NATURAL / BOTANICAL
Natural or “Botanical” skin care products are defined as using ingredients that are organic to nature (or not produced in a lab). Some examples would be, water, extracts, or a plant such as aloe vera - (found in our Moonbeam Night Cream, Simple Serum, and Complex Cleanser)
This is another term that gets used quite loosely as it has yet to be regulated. When a company claims to be natural, it could be fooling you while using 1 or 2 natural ingredients yet the rest are still produced in a lab.
With that being said, it's important to note that just because an ingredient is curated in a lab, doesn’t mean it's harmful! It’s all about finding what works best for your skin.
CRUELTY FREE
Seeing Cruelty Free on your skin care products ensures that there was no animal testing throughout the making of the final product. This also includes any raw materials or ingredients that were used in the making of this product. Cruelty Free testing has also been known to get mixed up with Vegan products. Vegan - meaning there are no animal by-products used to formulate the product. It’s important to differentiate these two terms as it can be a subtle greenwashing tactic to skip crucial steps in making a clean, cruelty free product.
What to look for:
The term Cruelty Free, unfortunately has many labels such as the “uncertified bunny”, but there has yet to be an official logo that represents any type of cruelty free testing.
A few ways to help stop this matter is by educating yourself on the matter along with the companies you purchase from, voting with your consumer $$$, and avoiding companies with skincare products that have been tested on animals.
In conclusion, clean beauty requires no compromise when it comes to quality.The founders behind true clean beauty brands believe this through and through and want to help educate the masses to see through sticky marketing schemes. As a consumer, we can do our due diligence by educating and spreading awareness so that someday (hopefully in the near future) we won’t be wondering what those foreign ingredients being snuck into our products mean for our health.