Clean beauty, green beauty, sustainability, organic and natural products… All these concepts have become a global trend for a few decades. With each day, the number of consumers paying attention to those concepts is growing at an insane rate.
We are sure most of you have seen or heard about these concepts at least once in your life. It may have become very attractive and catchy for you. And most of you may have asked yourself - what is the difference between ordinary products of personal care that you can find anywhere in the stores and the clean beauty that has invaded the market?
Why choose products that are labeled as pure and organic if they give you nearly the same result as the basic usual ones? Is clean beauty always pure?
Here in this article, we want to sort out the information cloud that surrounds you and give answers to some of your questions regarding clean and green beauty and the story behind beautiful words.
Skincare industry: the general situation
You see, the beauty industry spreads and grows very fast. Every day more and more elements are included in personal care and household products. But the federal laws of most of the countries in the world are not being changed or updated with such frequency. This means that even if some studies show that this or that element or an ingredient used in personal care or household goods is toxic and harms your health and the environment, it will not be banned and will continue being sold on the market.
This is crucial, especially for producing countries, and as a result, they continue producing and exporting substances that may harm your health and nature. Moreover, some big companies play such a huge role in the world that their influence is a lot more serious than the impact of the law․ In fact, the US Food and Drug Administration agency (the FDA) doesn’t regulate the industry, as it doesn’t have the authority to approve skincare before they go on the market (not counting the cases when the products contain colorants - in this instance the company needs FDA approval). This is one of the reasons that only a few chemicals were banned by the US, compared to the number banned by the European Union, which is more than 1,300 chemicals. These are the elements that can cause cancer, genetic mutation, reproductive harm, or birth defects, and they are still included in products that are freely sold on the market in so many countries all over the world.
What does it mean? It means that the personal care that was produced by a US brand may be full of chemicals that were banned by the European Union because of the harm they cause. Another fact deserves attention as well: even this big number does not represent the whole picture. More than 80% of the chemicals used in skincare and cosmetics are never properly tested for safety. Furthermore - and this one fact hurts us the most - terms like “organic” and all possible versions of it are not regulated in the US as well. FDA doesn’t regulate what kind of products can be called organic, no regulations or particular laws on the ingredient list. It means that any company producing skincare can call its production “organic” even if they don’t have anything to do with organics. Here is where we would rather speak about greenwashing.
Greenwashing: a global trend
It is clear - it is not new as a marketing spin and a PR trick. It started to be used as a term in the late 1980s and this concept becomes more and more common every day. In short, the term greenwashing stands to describe how a company uses marketing to convince its audience that its brand is environmentally friendly while it is not. In other words, companies may have little or no proof at all to claim that their products can be considered clean. Sometimes such companies try to make a false impression on their customers that they have an endorsement from a third-party reliable institution, while they don’t have any. They can claim something about their production in such obscure and mysterious ways that their customers believe that the particular brand is an eco-friendly green company. Greenwashing has a lot of types and forms and we are sure we will be back to this subject in the future. So let’s go back to our topic.
You and your priorities
We didn’t want to make you afraid of everything that goes on in the world with all that disaster that surrounds the personal care products industry, particularly skincare. Moreover, being afraid will change nothing. So, in this case, there is only one thing left for us to do - choose wisely what we buy, what we put on our skin, and what we use in our daily life.
We should be guided by the idea that we are our daily routine, everything we consume every day - we are what we eat, drink, wear, and what we put on our biggest organ - our skin.
When doing the first steps toward clean living and non-toxic beauty, it may be very confusing at first sight to choose what to exclude and what to leave. Try to take one step at a time - start with a few changes and then continue improving your life every day. Why? Because changing all your habits at once and taking everything out of your house will be very stressful of course (which is totally normal) and you will most likely quit. So, slow down, take a deep breath, start prioritizing what you need to change first, make a long-term to-do list, and continue step by step.
About prioritizing: you can start living clean by filtering everything that surrounds you, and the first place must be for what is closest to you - your body and your skin. We did the same way - started from ourselves and then went further. And this is why we have created BBA organic: to help you on your long and beautiful journey to a pure and nontoxic lifestyle. This is why we write and show you our journey - to inspire and encourage you to choose the path that will feel comfortable and right just for you.
The WHY question
Almost every day - and it becomes very intense from time to time - we are being asked: what is the difference between usual personal care that you can find anywhere in the stores and the pure and nontoxic beauty products that have invaded the market? Why choose those labeled as organic if they give you nearly the same result as the basic usual products? And other ideas questioning the effectiveness of clean care.
The story is this: you see, no one tells you that usual products without organic certification cannot be effective at all. Some of them, even toxic, will even solve particular problems for you. No matter if it is a personal care or household good, it can seem very useful for you as it helps you solve a problem in your daily life. And you will not pay attention to the remaining aspects unless you don’t find a connection between a toxic product and a health issue.
For example, you find it reasonable to buy skincare products with a long shelf life so you choose such products. Many companies use parabens in their production to extend the shelf life of their products and you will continue buying those not paying attention to the fact that parabens are considered to be one of the most dangerous and toxic ingredients. Parabens disrupt hormone function, and this is related to an increased risk of cancer and reproductive harm. There is another very common example of the usage of a very toxic chemical - petrolatum (or petroleum jelly). It is an occlusive barrier. It is used as a barrier to lock moisture in the skin in a huge number of moisturizers, and balms, and also in hair care to make your hair shinier. Many people use pure petroleum jelly as a lip balm but they don’t pay proper attention to the fact that this chemical does not allow moisture to be absorbed from the atmosphere. Another example is here: talc. Talc is mainly added to cosmetics like mascara, foundation, eye shadow, face powder, etc. to create a silky feel and absorb moisture. It has very common use in baby care for its absorbing feature. But talc may contain asbestos, which is a highly carcinogenic chemical.
Many other ingredients may have a good effect separately but they have so many side effects that they cause serious health issues from seasonal allergies to reproductive harm and cancer.
A piece of us
The main reason for this is that most companies emphasize the positive sides of particular ingredients and don’t mention the side effects of the same elements, or the remaining part of the ingredient list. It is a well-known fact that making an essential change to production approaches and methods is of course a question of expense. This is why a huge number of companies choose to use cheap raw materials and get a bigger profit from their production. At BBA organic, we build on deep research, good knowledge, and experience in the skincare industry to create the most sustainable products for you. BBA organic starts from nature: all comes from living in harmony with nature. BBA organic never uses toxic ingredients such as parabens, colorants, petrolatum/mineral oil, PEGs, Formaldehydes, SLS/SLES, Silicones, Phenoxyethanol, Phthalates, and other ingredients that will harm your health and nature. Moreover, BBA organic products are made only in small batches. It allows keeping all benefits of natural ingredients by reducing the need to add extra harmful ingredients․
For your inner and outer well-being, to reduce your skincare challenges, to invest in your natural beauty - for all these reasons BBA organic was created from love, mindfulness, and consciousness.
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