Once it was difficult to find eco friendly beauty products and cosmetics. You’d walk into the store and find twenty versions of regular soap and only one type of organic soap. Thankfully, those days are long gone. Today, practically every type of beauty product is available in an eco friendly version.
However, the problem now is that since being eco friendly is the in-thing, many products that claim to be green aren’t really. There are plenty of ways companies twist words like “eco friendly” and “organic” even when their products don’t fully qualify for thes labels. This form of deceptive marketing is known as "greenwashing". Luckily, you don’t have to be hoodwinked by these greenwashed products; here are some suggestions on how to differentiate between truly eco friendly beauty products and their faux counterparts.
* Don’t take anything for granted when it comes to eco friendly beauty products. Just because something has a fancy-looking labe,l proclaiming that the product has been certified by some organization that you’ve never heard of, does not mean the product is actually eco friendly. Look up the name of the certifying company and see what their deal actually is. Is the manufacturing company actually committed to producing eco friendly products, or is their eco friendly line of cosmetics merely a marketing ploy? Visit the company’s website or call their customer service line to find out how deep the eco friendliness goes.
* Learn about the ingredients used in beauty products. If a product claims to be made with 90 percent organic ingredients, what about the other 10 percent? Frequently, some of the ingredients listed on the label aren’t telling the whole story. It may be difficult to figure out what all of the ingredients are, but if you are committed to living a healthy and eco friendly lifestyle, that’s what you need to do.
* Avoid fragrances. Federal law does not require that companies list every single chemical that goes into fragrances. Thus, companies can get away with putting who knows what in your beauty products without having to write anything more detailed than “artificial fragrance” on the ingredients list.
* Do your research. One way to find out if there’s something problematic with your beauty product of choice is to check out the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database, a database that rates beauty products for things like overall hazard, reproductive toxicity and allergies.
* Buy products that have nontoxic, recyclable packaging. Some eco friendly products may be packaged in decidedly un-eco friendly containers. Products that come in glass containers are a safe bet; glass is always recyclable, and it will never leach toxins into the product it contains. Three types of plastics that are safe and recyclable are polyethylene terephthalate, high-density polyethylene and polypropylene. Packages made out of polyethylene terephthalate will be marked with a little rounded triangle made of three arrows with the number “1” inside; the same symbol with the number "2" will show up on packages made out of high-density polyethylene, and polypropylene will have that symbol with the number "5".
Jenna Pacht writes for Village Laser Denver. Visit her site to learn more about laser hair removal.
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