Blog / Health & Beauty

How to tell if your beauty products are really organic

When buying food that is labelled organic you can be fairly confident that it really is organic simply because the food industry is well regulated. However, the cosmetic industry is unregulated and companies can use the word organic, natural and botanical without the product needing to be certified organic.

Claims like “all natural", “organic”, “and botanical” are marketing ploys used to catch the eye of the buyer and are not true most of the time. These claims could simply mean that some of the ingredients are from a natural source, but not all. For example, a beauty product can contain 1% organic ingredients and the rest can be toxic chemicals and it can still have an organic claim on it. 

When shopping for organic and natural cosmetics start by reading the label carefully. Stay away from any products with ingredients that you do not recognise or can’t pronounce.

The next step should be to check for genuine organic certification logos or stickers on the product. If a product is certified organic it means that the product ingredients and manufacturing standards have been through a strict evaluation by an independent body.

For Australian products you want to look for logos of organic certifiers like Australian Certified Organic (ACO), Organic Food Chain (OFC) and The National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia (NASAA).

American products should have a USDA (US Department of Agriculture) Organic logo, and European cosmetics will carry the Natrue or Ecocert certification logo.

Sources

http://www.baobag.com.au/item/read/how_to_tell_if_your_organic_cosmetics_are_really_organic
http://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-looks/beauty/how-do-i-know-if-a-product-is-really-natural-or-organic