Transitioning to clean beauty products has a significant impact on your skin and general well-being. However, making the steps towards holistic skincare practices can be daunting and even unclear.
In this post, discover the benefits of transitioning to clean beauty and how to be well on your way to healthier living. Find out how small changes can have a profound effect towards a more natural and healthy lifestyle.
What is Clean Beauty?
Clean beauty refers to products carefully created to prioritize skin health while maintaining sustainability standards. Clean beauty products avoid all harmful chemicals while relying on more sustainable alternatives. However, clean beauty is more than just nature-friendly products but about transparency and accountability.
Clean beauty is built on three key principles:
-
Ingredient safety
Clean beauty includes products that do not contain parabens, sulfates, and other harmful products. These substances can disrupt hormones, irritate the skin and have long-term impacts on health. Clean beauty prioritizes safe products that work in harmony with your body.
-
Transparency
Clean beauty products always provide clear and full labelling of ingredients as well as sourcing practices. They explain the purpose of each ingredient. Conventional brands tend to omit key information using complex jargon, making it harder to understand what you're using on your skin.
-
Minimalist formulas
Those products focus on fewer but effective natural ingredients. They take environmental impact seriously and use biodegradable ingredients and sustainable packaging. Conventional packaging results in pollution and waste due to synthetic chemicals and excessive plastic.
Benefits of Clean Beauty
Here are some of the benefits of clean beauty
Healthier skin
By avoiding toxic chemicals, your skin is less likely to get irritated and reach these chemical compounds. This allows your skin to flourish naturally, leading to brighter and healthier skin. Clean beauty products are formulated with natural and healthy ingredients that balance the skin’s pH without the effects of harsh chemicals.
Environmental sustainability
Clean beauty prioritizes skin health as well as environmental sustainability. These brands often do so by using eco-friendly packaging, supporting ethical practices and responsibly sourced ingredients. All these factors contribute to a greener planet.
Effective results
Against popular belief, clean beauty products deliver effective results. With the power of natural ingredients and advanced formulations, these brands come up with high-performing skincare and beauty solutions that provide numerous benefits like improved general well-being.
How to Transition to Clean Beauty
Switching to clean beauty is like changing your diet to healthier options that are equally effective. To make the switch to clean beauty less daunting, here are some tips to help ease the process:
Understand the movement
First, get to know what clean beauty means. The Clean Beauty Movement wants to help consumers make healthier bodily choices regarding cosmetics. In a perfect world, it would be illegal to use products that contain toxic ingredients so every product would be non-toxic by default. The goal of clean beauty is to make the distinction between harmful and non-toxic clearer.
Get familiar with clean beauty ingredients
While you may know what products to avoid due to labellings like paraben-free, preservative-free and more, you still need to look for labels like all-natural, organic or green. However, these labels can still be misleading because the cosmetic industry is highly unregulated and companies can label their products however they want to. It is best to trust your knowledge before trusting labels.
Some of the top 10 toxic ingredients to avoid are:
-
Fragrance
-
Chemical UV filters like octinoxate and oxybenzone
-
Diethanolamine (DEA)
-
Triclosan
-
Phthalates like Dibutyl phthalate
-
Sodium laureth sulfate (SLS)
-
Formaldehyde
-
Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)
-
Parabens like propylparaben and Isobutylparaben
-
Polyethylene (PEGS) like PEG-10 laureate
You can take a screenshot of this list for reference. Whenever you buy a new product, run through this list and see if you can recognize any of these names.
Follow clean beauty brands
Many clean beauty brands like Rebel SKincare make it easy to completely switch to more sustainable products for your skin. You can explore a wide range of clean products that cater to different skin concerns from acne to premature aging, etc. With a conscious effort to promote clean alternatives to skincare, brands like Rebel Skincare makes it easy to make the change.
Make the most important swaps first
Prioritize replacing products you use every day like moisturizer, foundation, mascara and sunscreen. You can also replace products that most likely contain toxic ingredients like deodorants, sunscreen and shampoo. We recommend you swap these products first with clean alternatives:
-
Sunscreen
-
Mascara
-
Deodorant
-
Shampoo and conditioner
-
Moisturizer
-
Foundation
How to Know if a Beauty Product is Clean
Check it on an app
Many apps like EWG can help you check if the product you want to use is clean. EWG is a great starting point as it has a deeper database and an automated rating generator to give a rate range showing a product’s toxic levels.
Check the label for red-flag ingredients
Learn the major red flag ingredients listed earlier and watch out for them. Always scan the container of any product you’re choosing for products that are absolutes no’s for clean beauty.
Check for expert recommendations
Another way to determine if a product is clean is by checking what experts are saying about it. Keep up with industry experts who do research for a living and are passionate about promoting clean beauty and seek their take on products you’re considering.
FAQs
What is the difference between clean beauty and natural beauty?
Natural beauty focuses on what is the beauty product’s formula but clean beauty focuses on what is not in the products as well as the product’s impact on the environment.
Why is clean beauty more expensive?
Clean beauty products can be more expensive because of the extra costs associated with sourcing natural ingredients and the screening processes. Eco-friendly packaging also contributes to the extra cost as well as the commitment to not testing them on animals.
Wrapping Up
Deciding to swap conventional products with clean beauty products is the first step, but learning to make the switch is the hard part. While the beauty industry still has a long way to go in creating and maintaining sustainable products, the future holds a positive outlook.
One way to make the switch to a clean beauty routine is by doing thorough research on what works best for your skin and what can fit into your budget. By also understanding the risks associated with conventional products, you will embrace the small changes and clean alternatives, leading to overall well-being.
