Amber Beauty Shopz

Clean beauty product development principles
(Part 2)
Note: This is part of the mini post series.

Effective products and actives backed by published scientific data and clinical testing. Using synergistic combinations of known, proven actives to increase performance. The use of natural based ingredients to help provide assurance of performance.

Clean beauty product development principles
(Part 1)
Note: This is part of the mini post series.

Total product and marketing transparency- marketing data suggests that consumers trust transparent brands more than conventional ones and are willing to pay more for products from transparent brands (2). Honest labels can help assure the consumer that products and ingredients are safe, non-toxic, and effective. Product claims should be non-exaggerated and believable. The consumer over the years has been inundated with exaggerated claims and marketing stories. Additionally the internet has provided the consumer with the ability to do their own fact checking and research.

Why Clean Beauty Matters (Part 4)
Note: This is part of the mini post series.

SO WHERE DO I BEGIN WITH CLEAN BEAUTY?

Cleaning up your beauty routine and making the switch to nontoxic products is a step toward a healthier lifestyle. Think about it: You wouldn’t eat toxic chemicals, so why risk putting them on your body only to be absorbed into your bloodstream? Start small—we recommend swapping to a clean, aluminum-free deodorant first—and work your way up. (Check out our guide to swapping to clean beauty and take our skincare quiz to get personalized recommendations.) Your body will thank you for it.

Why Clean Beauty Matters (Part 3)

Note: This is part of the mini post series.

WHY CAN UNSAFE INGREDIENTS BE INCLUDED IN CONSUMER PRODUCTS?

The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act basically allows you to put whatever you want into any given formulation and the FDA doesn’t even have the power to recall products. Mind. Blown.

Luckily, truly nontoxic, clean beauty products are more readily accessible than ever. Brands like Ursa Major, Tata Harper, and RMS Beauty are setting standards for totally safe products that deliver maximum results and compete with popular toxic products. Not to mention, clean beauty retailers (like yours truly) are enforcing long lists of restricted ingredients for the products they’re willing and not willing to sell.

Why Clean Beauty Matters (Part 2)

Note: This is part of the mini post series.

CAN’T WE TRUST WHAT’S IN OUR PRODUCTS?

Don’t expect the government to regulate the ingredients that go into your beauty products. In the US, there is no governmental task force inspecting chemicals and ingredients used in personal care items. Seriously, no one is looking to make sure your moisturizers, serums and makeup are safe for use. So ingredients like aluminum, found in antiperspirants, have free reign to run through your body, even though they’ve been scientifically linked to certain cancers, endocrine disruption, and Alzheimer’s disease.

However, that’s not the case in other parts of the world. In Europe, 1,500 toxic substances are actually banned from personal care products as well as 500 in Canada. In the United States, that number is just 30 (as in 3-0).

Why Clean Beauty Matters (Part 1)

Note: This is part of the mini post series.

We’ve all been told to make healthy decisions in terms of what we put into our bodies. But have you ever thought about what you put on it? The shocking truth: Up to 60% of everything you apply to your skin makes its way into your bloodstream. Scary, right? Especially when you don’t know what could be lurking in your skincare products.

CLEAN BEAUTY RECAP: CAN YOU HAVE IT ALL?

So, you just found out that natural, organic, green beauty products aren’t necessarily clean right off the bat.

We know how you feel. We’ve been misled by the beauty industry, too. They have us believing that the products we smother on our faces are good for us because of what they say on the label.

If you’re questioning the products on your shelf—good. That’s what we want you to do. We want you to question labels like “natural” and “green” because the truth is in the ingredients list.

This doesn’t mean that ALL of your favorite products are toxic, though. You may have some clean beauty faves on your shelves without even realizing it.

What we want to do is empower you with the knowledge to decipher between clean and toxic products.

DOES CLEAN BEAUTY HAVE TO BE GREEN?

If you thought “clean beauty” had a murky definition, enter “green beauty.”

Green beauty has several associations:

Plant-derived
Vegan
Cruelty-free
Eco-friendly
Sustainably sourced
Phew, that’s a lot!

While these criteria all sound great, a beauty product can exhibit all of these characteristics and not be clean if it contains toxic ingredients.

Vice versa, a beauty product can have purely safe ingredients, but they may be conventionally sourced or contain animal products (i.e. honey, beeswax, silk, etc.). In this case, the product is still clean since it’s non-toxic, but it’s not considered green.

So no, clean beauty doesn’t have to be green.

DOES CLEAN BEAUTY HAVE TO BE ORGANIC?

Similar to natural beauty, organic beauty is often confused with clean beauty. Like organic food, there are many benefits of organic ingredients in cosmetics, but non-organic ingredients can be just as safe.

The bottom line: No, clean beauty doesn’t HAVE to be organic.

Yes, clean beauty CAN be organic, but it’s not a requirement. What is a requirement, however, is that those ingredients are SAFE, regardless of whether or not they’re organic.

DOES CLEAN BEAUTY HAVE TO BE ALL-NATURAL?

Clean beauty has been around for a while, but the movement is rapidly growing. For a long time, products containing only natural ingredients were considered the all-stars of clean beauty. “Preservative-free” is another buzz word surrounding natural beauty.

But, the answer to your question is no, clean beauty doesn’t have to be all-natural.

It’s the twenty-first century, and the science of beauty has evolved to include a plethora of safe synthetics, safe man-made ingredients, and even safe preservatives.

In fact, ALL cosmetics should contain some form of safe preservation to maintain the stability of the formulation.

As long as certain synthetic ingredients are non-toxic and proven to have no harmful effects, they can be incorporated into clean beauty products.

CLEAN BEAUTY IS SIMPLE

Clean beauty isn’t about being 100% perfect. This means that yes, man-made ingredients are clean as long as they’re safe and non-toxic. This also means that clean beauty doesn’t have to be all-natural, preservative-free, etc. Clean beauty is synonymous with non-toxic beauty.

Rather than focus on buzzwords like “natural” and “organic,” switching to clean beauty products focuses on eliminating as many toxins as possible from our daily products.

Clean beauty is also about making ourselves more aware. Since the beauty industry lacks regulation, it’s up to us to become familiar with the most common toxins in our skincare, beauty, body, and hygiene products.

Unfortunately, that means the consumer (talking about you!) has a lot of responsibility to pay attention to what’s in her cosmetics.

WHAT IS THE CLEAN BEAUTY MOVEMENT?

To us, a clean beauty product must satisfy these two main criteria:

1. Clean ingredients

At its core, clean beauty means that you can use a product without risking your own health. The ingredients list must contain only safe, clean ingredients.

What constitutes “clean” ingredients? At the Good Face Project, we analyze each and every cosmetic ingredient and give grades based purely on safety and toxicity.

To us, a clean beauty product is free of hormone disruptors and carcinogens. We developed the Good Face Index, which takes hundreds of thousands of scientific studies and research papers on cosmetic ingredients and turns them into easy-to-understand safety ratings. This makes it easy to see if a product is safe based on its ingredients. Essentially, a product is only as clean as its worst ingredient.

2. Transparent labels

When a beauty brand makes an effort to list all of its ingredients and label accordingly, it is on the right path to clean beauty. However, not all brands are transparent.

A good example of lack of transparency in the beauty industry is including fragrance in beauty products. Fragrance is not an ingredient, but since the industry is highly unregulated, companies can hide ingredients under the umbrella term “fragrance.”

Another example of non-transparent labels is misleading the consumer based on packaging. Brands can falsely label their products with buzzwords like “natural” and “eco” in order to capture the conscious consumer’s attention. This is called “greenwashing” and we’ll elaborate in a moment.

Clean beauty simply doesn’t contain mystery ingredients, and clean beauty certainly doesn’t claim to be something that it’s not.