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The Ingredients The likely culprit of a product being considered a clean beauty product are the ingredients. This type of product is made without ingredients that have been shown to harmfully affect our health, so synthetic ingredients that are known endocrine disruptors (SLS) or carcinogens, are left out. Although it’s hard to believe that conventional products still use harmful ingredients, it’s a widely known practice and completely legal. To put things into perspective, the US FDA has only banned 11 ingredients, while the EU has banned upwards of 1,300. |
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Harmful Ingredients You May Find If you’re wanting to clean up your beauty products, reading labels is highly important. While there is no set standard of what can and can’t be in a product, it’s in your best interest to do a little research to better understand the chemicals you’ll encounter. A few offenders to steer clear of include parabens, fragrance, phthalates, PEGs, BHT, BHA, and ethanolamines. The more ingredients you recognize, along with a shorter ingredient list, the better. |
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Environmentally Friendly Generally, clean beauty products will also be more environmentally friendly. The more a product incorporates things found in nature — flowers, plants, etc. — the gentler it is on the planet and the soil and ocean it may absorb into. Synthetic ingredients, on the other hand, greatly damage the environment and disrupt fragile ecosystems.
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Transparency While all beauty products require an ingredient label, clean beauty companies are often more transparent about things like sourcing and country of origin. It’s important to not only look for organic labels, but fair trade, and sustainably sourced products. |
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