Be Organic Podcast Season 3, Episode 5 – Deciphering The Beauty Industry
Learn what clean beauty really is, how brands handle certifications, and all about the ingredients you avoid in beauty supplies. Kat hosts The Organic Girl (Lisa Fennessy) to dive into the world of beauty products to go beyond just ingredients – packaging and sourcing also plays into the “ethical beauty” world. Clean beauty also goes beyond just makeup! Have you ever heard the phrase “If you can’t understand every ingredient don’t use it”? Listen to learn why this might not be true.
Special guest Lisa Fennessy created This Organic Girl out of a passion to explore the latest and greatest in clean beauty and organic lifestyle as well as THE WHY.
She took her BA in journalism from Northeastern University and turned her knowledge into a platform that helps women to feel empowered as consumers, while also making a positive impact on their health and the planet.
TIME STAMPS
2:20 “Ethical Beauty” and How it Goes Beyond Clean Ingredients (jump to section)
4:30 Retinol (jump to section)
6:20 Similarities Between Clean Beauty and the Food Industry (jump to section)
9:45 Clean Beauty Goes Beyond Just Makeup (jump to section)
11:30 Difficulty Measuring Impact on Toxic Ingredients (jump to section)
13:07 Brands and Their “Clean” Marketing and What to Look For (jump to section)
16:00 Certification vs. Verification (jump to section)
21:25 Ingredients To Stay Away From (jump to section)
24:45 Top 5 Certifications (jump to section)
31:47 Sephora’s Clean Beauty Mark and If It Can Be Trusted (jump to section)
Transcription Below
Kat Eckles: Welcome back, Be Organic listeners. This is Kat Eckles. We are so excited to have you on another episode of the show today. Today you’ve got just me. Landon is occupied with other things, but I have an amazing guest to fill in the gap. I am so excited to talk about all things clean beauty with the Organic Girl, Lisa Fennessy.
A little bit about Lisa. She’s an Atlanta transplant by the way of Boston. She created Organic Girl out of a passion to explore the latest and greatest in clean beauty and organic lifestyle, as well as the why. She took her B.A. in Journalism from Northeastern University and turned her knowledge into a platform that helps women to feel empowered as consumers, while also making a positive impact on their health and the planet.
Through her website and social media, she helps women find these solutions for themselves and gives them the tools they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. This Organic Girl was recently featured in Southern Living and Better Homes and Gardens, and now Lisa is here to help us make sense of the clean beauty industry. Welcome, Lisa, or should I say the Organic Girl?
Lisa Fennessy: Thanks so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
Kat: I’m known around town as the Juice Lady, so the Organic Girl is a little cuter. I like that. I might steal it.
Lisa: Mostly people just stare at me because I have gray hair, so I don’t think we even get that far.
Kat: Oh, that’s funny. So, we’ve heard some other guest speakers talk about clean beauty and namedropped some names, but I don’t know that we’ve ever really talked about what clean beauty really is and how beauty brands choose certifications to be deemed clean. Of course, there’s a lot of greenwashing in the industry, and it’s just an industry that’s exploding.
I thought it was a really important topic to discuss so we could get this information to our Be Organic listeners and help them really decipher what’s clean, what’s not, and what’s acceptable. I’m really excited to have you on the show today.
Lisa: Thanks so much. That’s a super loaded question, but I’ll start chipping away and then we can take it from there. I think the first thing to really know about “clean beauty” – I’m going to actually reframe that and call it ethical beauty. There’s so much that goes into a beauty product in terms of ingredients, packaging, sourcing, and messaging that it really takes ethical decisions along every single step to make what would be an ideal ethical beauty product.
The other thing about that is oftentimes when people talk about clean, they’re only referring to the ingredients. They’re not referring sometimes to the packaging, for example, that may affect the planet in a good way or a bad way. That’s a word that I’ve been trying on the blog and I really like it.
“Ethical Beauty” and How it Goes Beyond Clean Ingredients
The other thing about clean beauty or ethical beauty is it’s a sliding scale. Sometimes what some people think is ethical beauty to them, other people might not think it’s ethical enough, right? There’s no hardcore outline saying this is ethical beauty, this is clean beauty, A, B, C, or D. It’s not like that. It’s really kind of a gray area. Of course, there are some hard lines that we can draw. I’d rather not have formaldehyde in my eye product. That obviously is not something that really would be up for a huge debate, but there’s a lot of gray area because really what comes into play is percentages of ingredients.
We as consumers don’t really have privy to that information. If we pick up a bottle on the shelf, of course, there’s an exception to every rule. There’s actually one brand called Ingredients, and they actually forefront their ingredient list with all the percentages, but that’s the only time I’ve seen that. If we go into Target, for example, and pick up a bottle of shampoo, we’re not going to see, “Oh, guess what? This shampoo is actually 80% water, 10% oils, and 2% preservative.” We don’t get to see that. Because we don’t get to see that, it’s hard for us to really kind of make gross assumptions about specific ingredients.
Then that’s when debates startup, and it’s like, “This is considered clean. No, this is considered clean.” Also a lot of times, ingredients have nested ingredients in them. Retinol is a good example. You can get retinol made but it needs to be preserved as its own ingredient. Some of them come in liposomal encapsulation, which is a fancy word for saying it’s more self-preserved, or the way it’s created. It has an encapsulation system that keeps it from turning or oxidizing.
Another way that it’s preserved is with something called BHT and I personally don’t like to use that on my skin. It’s also, I believe, on California’s WHO List of restricted ingredients. The point is, what we’ll see on the ingredient label is retinol. We won’t see is retinol preserved with BHT and also X, Y, and Z. We don’t get privy to all the ingredients that are actually in that one ingredient.
It becomes really nuanced, is what I’m trying to say. Do you source your ingredients locally? Do you source your ingredients worldwide? Shea butter from Africa that you have to ship over to the United States – if you get that organic, is that more responsible than a non-organic local cactus oil or something? It really is brand dependent. It really is product dependent. We can make these broad strokes and cover a lot of bases with that, but of course, there’s nuance to it. That’s why these discussions are really important.
Retinol
Kat: Totally. It doesn’t seem like it’s that different. The food industry – I guess the food industry’s probably a little bit more regulated. I hear you saying that there are basically just a lot of regulation issues in the beauty industry, which it sounds like. Even with food, you can get an organic, pre-packaged cracker or something that has an ingredient list a mile long, or you can get a nonorganic, locally sourced sourdough something. It’s the same kind of thing. You’re really looking at what goes into something before you’re putting it in, on, or around your body, basically.
Lisa: Yeah, true. I think what adds to the nuance in this situation too are ingredient lists. What we value here at This Organic Girl is if they’re done to the INCI standard (“Inky” is what people call it in the business) which is an international labeling nomenclature. It’s a way to talk about your ingredients in a way that’s universal.
For example, if I picked up a product off the shelf and it says almond oil, I don’t actually know if that’s sweet almond oil, bitter almond oil, or what type it is. It’s not enough. So the INCI will give you the exact name for the exact ingredient. So, that’s really cool because you know exactly what it is. The problem is that INCI has all these very specific names that look very confusing. Then, people pick up an ingredient list and they’re like, “Oh, this looks awful. I don’t understand anything that’s on the back of this label.” I feel like it just sends the wrong message.
Similarities Between Clean Beauty and the Food Industry
Some of the messaging in ethical beauty or clean beauty has been like, “If you can’t read every single ingredient on the back of your lotion, don’t use it.” That’s not really true because we’re using scientific nomenclatures and international nomenclature that isn’t really accessible to laypeople. Also, science-forward ingredients that are not harmful to the body, but super effective on the skin, like retinol for example. Retinol, we obviously know that word, but there are other ingredients that we don’t know, and is a new ingredient to the market, like chebula. We’re like, “What is that? Oh my God, I don’t understand it. So it must be bad.” No, it’s actually just the fact that we’re progressing and creating new ingredients that are going to be on the label too.
I think with food, I know picking up a cracker label, if I see almond flour, salt, and dates, I’m like, “Okay, this is great. I know exactly what’s in it.” I think I just want to tease that out because I think with beauty it’s a little bit different.
Kat: That’s funny you say that because this morning or last night I was looking at one of my ingredient lists. There was a long name on there, and I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of weird.” I didn’t pick up on that. I looked it up and it was tea tree oil. I just want to back up real quick. When we talk about the beauty industry, I feel like people automatically go to makeup, but you at Organic Girl talk about anything that has to do with what you put on your body. You’re talking about makeup, skincare, lotions, and exfoliators. You go over all of that, right?
Clean Beauty Goes Beyond Just Makeup
Lisa: All of that. We like to talk about what goes in your body, what goes on your body, and just making good decisions around all of those things in general. I’m not opposed, and I’ve been known to talk about mattresses and probiotics. The goal here is really to not get on my soapbox and tell people what to do, but I really want to address the questions that people should be considering when they’re making their own decisions.
What I always say is if you go through the process and you’re like, “Okay, I’ve considered X, Y, and Z. Now I know. I also just want to go back to the store and buy my favorite Colgate toothpaste that I’ve always bought, because that’s what works for me and it’s what I like the best.” It’s like, do you, that’s great. If you’re making an informed decision, then my job is done. I just don’t want people to be bamboozled into making decisions because of marketing lingo or just because of the rote habit that “my mom bought this laundry detergent, so I’m going to buy it too.”
Kat: Right. I think with the beauty and body industry, think about it, we’re putting lotion on our body that’s staying all day. The makeup’s on our face all day. We’re sleeping on the mattress eight hours a night. The laundry detergent’s on our clothes, which is on our bodies 24/7.
We don’t really think about how impactful it is and how much it’s impacting us. I feel like everybody, when they get into wellness, goes straight to food. Which of course is great, but this whole body/beauty industry is so important because it’s around us, literally 24/7.
Difficulty Measuring Impact on Toxic Ingredients
Lisa: Yeah. And the other thing is too because it’s such a barrier, there are so many X factors in our lives, right? Like the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air quality around us. It’s impossible to measure the impact that 1% paraben in your deodorant is going to have on your body. You just can’t.
That’s why it’s just always kind of a heated debate. There are two ways people look at it: these ingredients are innocent until proven guilty or these ingredients are skeptical and they’re skeptical until proven innocent. When you get two people at opposite ends of the spectrums coming together to debate about the impact that these products have on your body, you’re going to get two really different points of view that I think both have valid points. The thing is we can’t isolate these situations, but we do know from science that’s continuing to build out information about these ingredients, that there are better options that pose less of a risk.
Kat: Right. I think you can’t become orthorexic about your life. It’s like you said, if that Colgate or toothpaste brings you happiness, you sometimes have to do it. I haven’t found a super clean foundation that I love so I use a dirty one, but I just don’t wear it every single day.
Lisa: Do you like a liquid foundation or a powder foundation?
Kat: Liquid.
Lisa: Do you like a dewy finish or a matte finish?
Kat: Dewy.
Lisa: Okay. Yeah, you have to try the Ilia Supra Skin Serum Foundation. Try that. It’s so good. It’s my favorite.
Brands and Their “Clean” Marketing and What to Look For
Kat: Writing it down. To that point, let’s talk about brands. A lot of them make claims to be clean and drop buzzwords or certifications. How do you really distinguish between the good, the bad, what’s really clean, and what’s not when you’re looking at a brand or a product?
Lisa: Yeah. I’m so glad you asked this because we actually just did this huge research study at This Organic Girl. We spent the last four months working with a consultant, her name is Krupa Koestline. She owns KKT Consultants and she is a clean cosmetic formulator. She’s also worked with brands in the past like L’Oreal and Neutrogena, but she’s pivoted and works now with more ethical brands. Anyways, she’s been around the business and she helped us create an infographic with the pros and cons of the most popular beauty certifications. I feel like I learned so much.
I have a couple of weight points that I want to make about beauty certifications. When we say that we’re talking about things like USDA Organic body oil or face oil, we’re talking about MADE SAFE products. EWG, which is the Environmental Working Group, have their own verification program called EWG Verified, which you’ll see. It’s a green circle with an E in the middle. We’re talking about NSF, we’re talking about Cosmos. All of these are seals of approval or certifications that you’ll see on a brand’s logo in packaging that’s supposed to indicate to the consumer that this is an ethical product, this is a clean product.
I feel rest assured by buying this product because it’s been third-party vetted. The main takeaway here is that any product that has one of those seals on it that we just talked about, I want to recommend. That is a better option than just walking into a CVS and a Target and grabbing anything.
This also applies to Clean at Sephora or buying anything from Credo, which is a clean beauty retailer online. Those products have all been vetted and are going to be better options than just the standard “walk into your corner store bodega and grab the first thing off the shelf.” I want people to find comfort in that, and I want them to feel empowered that they’re making a better decision by looking for those tools and using them. I’ll pause there if you have any questions.
Kat: No, I love that. I think that it’s a great place to direct people. It’s almost like Whole Foods, they do their meat a little bit differently. Maybe it’s not organic, grass-fed, and everything, but there are a couple of things that they take off of their meat before they even allow it in the store. It’s just a good place to start. I appreciate that.
Lisa: Yeah, totally. Now, when you get into the nitty-gritty, there are definitely some certifications that are more strict and provide a, I want to say, more vetted, more elevated, and more of a bigger look at the product before they certify it.
Certification vs. Verification
When you get into it, there are actually two different types of programs that we’re talking about here. There’s a certification and there’s a verification program. The certification is actually when you have the people certifying your product, and the standard that they’re certifying it to is two different things.
For example, USDA Organic is the standard. If you go in and see Zoe Organics in Nordstrom, they have some baby products that are USDA-certified Organic. They’re certifying to the USDA Organic guidelines, and then a third party is coming in looking at those guidelines, looking at the product, and saying, “Yes, these criteria match up.”
You earn certification. Now those programs are Cosmos, USDA certification, USDA Organic, and also another program called NSF. All of those programs are third-party standards, and the party is separate. To contrast, you see programs like MADE SAFE, EWG verified, or Clean at Sephora. All of those programs are one in themselves.
The program makes up the standard, and then they certify to their standard. You can see just by making that one delineation, that the certification is going to be a little bit less of a biased process. Then, certifications get audited annually too. So if you have your product certified, your product gets audited annually, but also the standard itself gets audited as well. You just have stricter, kind of more eyeballs in the mix, and less wiggle room. I’ll pause there for any questions.
Kat: No, that’s good. So if a brand doesn’t have any certification, do you completely write that off, or what do you look for? I know sometimes, like you said, locally made products are obviously not going to go out and get certain certifications. What are some standards that you look for, even if it’s a product outside of those certifications?
Lisa: Yeah, it’s kind of situational. If you’re going into your corner store and just grabbing a face lotion that’s not certified or doesn’t have any sort of tools like that on the label, I would probably say maybe not. I wouldn’t recommend that but if you’re in the beauty space, maybe you’re shopping at Credo, and you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, I see this one line that looks great but I don’t see any certifications on it, but it could be a beautiful brand.”
The other thing is, our founder formulator runs so the founder of the brand is also the formulator. She’s working in her own lab testing, developing, and formulating. Some of these founder formulators are even growing their own ingredients. They’re working with local farmers, creating their own tinctures, and creating their own infusions. To them, that becomes the base of their face lotion, which they then add in locally procured extracts and botanicals. Some of this is really art and crafted in beautiful skincare, like artisanal skincare. Those oftentimes are not certified in any way.
Does that mean that we shouldn’t patronize those people? Hell no. That’s honestly probably some of the best skincare. One of the founder formulators that I love is Pablo Skin. Once a year, she makes a Jasmine hydrosol. People usually say Jasmine Hydrosol is impossible to create because it’s such a delicate flower that you can’t actually retain the scent. She’s contracted and found this man in Hawaii who built his own machine that can extract the Jasmine Hydrosol without ruining it. She packages it in limited editions and sells it one time a year annually. How beautiful is that?
Kat: Yeah, right. That’s so cool.
Lisa: That’s insane. She’s not certified, but I would recommend that till the day I die. Again, it’s situational, but I would say if you are specifically shopping for something that’s artisanal, handcrafted, and small batch, just go on the website, start reading around, and see what they do and what they value. Then I would say it’s okay if it’s not certified. Use it as a tool, but if a brand isn’t certified in that space don’t chalk it up to having a ding like, “Oh, well they don’t have that. That’s just not really how it should be.”
A lot of these brands are small brands and they choose to allocate their resources to something else other than certification. If you’re heading into Target and you’re just like, “Oh, this brand’s probably good, even though it’s not certified,” I would say mainstream, I would probably still recommend leaning on the certifications.
Ingredients To Stay Away From
Kat: What are some of the ingredients in the beauty industry that you would avoid at all costs or most costs?
Lisa: I would say fragrance is a good one. That’s pretty much ubiquitous across all products that we use. It’s in diapers, trash bags, lotion, candles, and air fresheners. It’s in everything, including makeup. The problem with that is it’s a category ingredient. We don’t know exactly what the ingredients are. Fragrance, yeah, great, but what’s actually in the fragrance? Is it essential oils? Is it synthetic fragrance oils? Is it phthalates? We don’t know what’s in there.
Really, the issue is non-disclosure because we want to make decisions about what we put in our bodies. We don’t want somebody else to make decisions about what we put in our bodies. We definitely don’t want somebody to make decisions about what we put in our bodies without even telling us.
The reason why people can do that is from an antiquated law called the Fair Trade and Patching Act that was established back in the 1960s, and it still hasn’t been changed. What happens is sometimes people can just hide ingredients in there, like, “We don’t want to disclose this, we’ll just file it under fragrance.”
That being said, there are fragrance brands that I would recommend, like Abbott NYC, for example. You go on their perfume company, and they list actually every single ingredient in their fragrances. That way you can look it up and you can just see what I am actually using. They’ve already done the research on it. They talk about how they choose ingredients and what they do so you can see the difference there. I would absolutely use that fragrance from a company that’s being transparent, forthcoming, and ethical in their decision-making about what they’re using for fragrance ingredients.
I remember when I first had a baby and I was like, “Oh my God, obviously I’m going to get Dreft, or whatever that laundry detergent is that every mom gets.” It’s the only one with the baby on it. Clearly, I have to get that. I went to the store, and the ingredients at that time weren’t even listed on the packaging. What’s up with that? There are just two different standards. I try not to make blanket statements because there’s always an exception.
I want people to think critically about the decisions that they’re making, not just be like, “Okay, so fragrance is a no always.” I’m telling you right now, fragrance is a no probably 90% of the time. If you can take that out, and if you can work to just remove that. Look at your laundry detergent, look at your candles. Is it in this? Then you see it is, and you’ll just be like, “Oh my God, it’s in everything.” The thing is with fragrance, what can be in there are phthalates, which is what people are calling now “the forever chemicals”. They never break down and they’ve been tied to endocrine disruption, which has been directly linked to cancer. Things like formaldehyde. There can be things in there that you just really don’t want to use.
Top 5 Certifications
Kat: Right. That makes total sense. Let’s go back to the certifications real quick. There are just five major ones I want to go over and get your opinion on that are probably on more of the mainstream products. I thought you could speak to each of them just for people that are going in and seeing those so they can understand what they mean. The first one is MADE SAFE. I see that on a lot of things. What does that mean?
Lisa: Yes. So MADE SAFE is America’s first non-toxic seal of approval. They have so many different categories: baby, home, body care, and sheets. They do so many different things. The EPA, which is the Environmental Protection Agency, has 85,000 different chemical components listed in the registry, and EWG bans 6,500 of them. They have a robust program. If you see anything that’s MADE SAFE certified, I would feel good about buying that. They have some great standards, and I use their resources online all the time to sometimes look up ingredients or see who’s newly certified.
Consumers brands have to go through a robust program to get certified. The one caveat there though is that it is a verification. MADE SAFE itself is creating MADE SAFE’s rules and then certifying brands to their own rules. If I’m a brand and I’m taking my product to get MADE SAFE certified, that’s having my product third-party vetted, but MADE SAFE isn’t then annually audited by somebody else.
For example, one time I emailed them and I had asked, “Do you guys allow Phenoxy ethanol?” because it wasn’t listed on their restricted list. They were like, “Yeah, we do.” Then a couple of months later, they emailed me back and they said, “No, we don’t.” Then a couple of months later, they emailed me back and said, “Oh yeah, we do, in less than 1%.” It’s one of those things where obviously people are allowed to recreate their standards and things change over time. That’s 100% valid. If that wasn’t valid, then we would still be burning hotdogs over a campfire like cavemen. Obviously, things change. It just has the potential to be more of a biased system.
I’m only highlighting that because if you are one of those consumers that’s just like, “I want the best of the best no matter what”, I think that’s something cool to know. You would probably want to look for something that has a certification versus a verification. Certifications are going to be USDA Organic, Cosmos, NSF, and NATRUE. I think there was one more that we talked about the other day that was just a little bit less popular, so you probably won’t see it anyways. There are not that many of them, but that’s the biggest difference. Again, like I said, anything that has these third-party certifications like MADE SAFE and EWG, I say 100% grab that over anything else.
Kat: That’s so good. USDA-certified Organic I obviously know a lot about because our juice bars are all Certified Organic, but I guess in the beauty industry that might be a little bit different. Can you speak on if they are allowed to use certain chemicals? I know in our stores we aren’t even allowed to use certain soaps, bleach, or cleaning supplies. They’re really regulated about what chemicals we can use. I assume that would be the same for the beauty industry.
Lisa: Yeah, totally. The thing is, you will see some beauty products that are USDA-certified Organic, but the problem is getting a beauty product USDA-certified Organic is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That certification was actually developed for food and agriculture. It wasn’t developed for beauty products that are not 100% agriculture. They use a standard that if something’s USDA-certified Organic, there are actually three different categories that it can be. It could be made with 95% plus organic ingredients. Then there’s another one that’s made with organic ingredients, and then it’s 70%. It’s detailed in the blog post if you guys want to go to thisorganicgirl.com Beauty Certifications. It details what you will see there.
That’s why we don’t see that one a lot in beauty because it’s not really made for beauty. If you have a body butter that’s all oils, waxes, almond oil, jojooba oil, shea butter, and cacao butter all mixed together, all of those can be Certified Organic. Then you could get that product USDA-certified Organic. It’s just really hard to use in the space, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not used in this space. Because it’s a certification, it does look at all things. It looks at things in the manufacturing process too. We’re looking at cleaning products used. For example, I don’t know if you’ve heard about the benzene scare and sunscreens this past summer?
Kat: I don’t think so.
Lisa: Yeah. There was this independent lab called Valisure that tested a bunch of random sunscreens, and a large portion of them came out positive for benzene which again is another known carcinogen. Benzene can end up in a product for a couple of different reasons. It could be a reaction between two other ingredients. It could be cleaning materials used on lab equipment that could be benzene based. When you get a product that’s USDA-certified Organic, Cosmos Standard, or NSF certifications, those products have been restricted and you can only use certain cleaning agents on lab machines.
It’s kind of cool when you know that because then you can go in and when that scare happened and everybody’s like, “Oh my God, what?” The list of published sunscreens that did have benzene in them is still online. You can go to valisure.com and look it up. A lot of them were like Whole Foods 365 mineral sunscreen. Things that I would grab and be like, “Oh, well this is obviously the better option.” Meanwhile, lurking in the background…
When you buy a sunscreen that’s been USDA-certified Organic, for example, or Cosmos certified, there is one at this time that is Cosmos certified in the United States, it’s called Love Sun Body. It’s okay. They’re still in the beginning stages. Some years their formula is great, and then other years they tweak it and it’s not as good. I would say keep my eye on them. I don’t want you to go and buy it, and then be like, “Lisa said to buy this and it sucks.” It’s just kind of too thick sometimes. Anyways, the point is when you pick up a sunscreen with those certifications, off the bat, benzene is not even an issue. Isn’t that cool?
Sephora’s Clean Beauty Mark and If It Can Be Trusted
Kat: Right. I love that. Before we wrap up, I want to talk about Sephora really quick because that’s obviously the first place I think about when I buy or when talking about makeup, even though I probably don’t even really buy from there anymore.
I know they’ve started this whole clean beauty mark on their products, and they pass our test for clean ingredients. Is that a certification or a mark that we can trust? How do we decipher that the products that they’re pushing out there are clean?
Lisa: Yeah. I also want to just preface this conversation by saying stores like Sephora are evolving too as the industry evolves. The Clean at Sephora program right now isn’t the same as it was 18 months ago, and it won’t be the same in 18 months. Looking at it now, they’ve actually published their initiatives on their blog and on their website, saying “By 2022, our goal is to avoid all of these processes”, like ethoxylate, ingredients that go through ethoxylation, and stuff like that. It’s evolving and trending toward getting better and better and better.
I would say if you’re going to go in, I would say go into Sephora. Absolutely. Buy their products that are clean. At Sephora, they actually have two programs. They have one that’s called Clean at Sephora, which looks at the ingredients and lets you know that those ingredients are better than the conventional ingredients used in beauty products. Then they have another program called Clean and Planet Positive, I believe is what it is. That one takes into consideration the impact on the planet through packaging and biodegradable ingredients that give a bigger scope towards ethical beauty.
The Clean at Sephora program right now uses a couple of ingredients that I personally still tend to avoid. They’ll use synthetic fragrances without having brands fully disclose what’s in the fragrance. Things like that where I’m just like, “Well, I don’t really trust that yet, even though it’s been vetted by you.” I want to do that, I don’t want to take it at face value by somebody telling you that this is okay, but actually give you the ingredients.
So that’s still one issue, but again, it’s trending toward disclosure. For example, Credo Beauty is a store where you can shop online. I think they showcase 128 brands. They’ve asked all of those brands to fully disclose what’s in their fragrance ingredients and over 70 brands stepped up to the plate and did it.
On Credo, you can see exactly what’s in the fragrance ingredient for these specific products where, guess what? Sometimes you can’t even find it on that own brand’s site. For example, if ABC brand has their website you can go on, it says, “Oh yeah, we use X, Y, and Z, and fragrance.” There’s no fragrance disclosure, but then you go to Credo and it says their fragrance is essential oils, or their fragrance is a mixture of synthetic fragrance and essential oils or whatever. They’re disclosing what’s in it. The needle is being moved, and we’re getting better and better. I would say you have to keep an eye on it, but also you can find that information that’s published on Sephora, like their initiatives over the next couple of years.
I also just want to say, if you’re somebody who loves to go to Sephora, just do it. Buy the clean beauty and feel good about it. It’s good. The thing is people always ask me, “What should I switch out first? How can I make a bigger impact?” I’m like, you can make a bigger impact by making sure your water is filtered. It’s not going to be the 1% synthetic fragrance component in the product that you use three times a week. You have to just maintain a big picture otherwise you’re going to drive yourself crazy, then stress is going to ensue, and then that’s arguably even worse than where you were to begin with.
Kat: I think that’s such good advice too. I’m guilty of this where I’m so quick to write something off, just be like, “Oh, I’m not going to Sephora, they use bad ingredients. They don’t get it,” and move on. I think we need to give more credit where credit is due to some of these companies that are trying to do the right thing.
Our company’s not huge. We have a hundred and some stores, but I know how hard it is even for us just to pivot on a dime. I think sometimes with these big companies, it takes a minute to be able to source things correctly and do the right thing. The world’s changing so fast, and the industry’s changing so fast. I think that’s really, really good advice. Just keep an open mind and keep checking back to see what they’re doing to change, because it might be better than you think.
Lisa: I always like to say too, instead of nitpicking, with Clean at Sephora brands, we’re talking still indie brands. These are indie beauty brands. When you start an Indie beauty brand, can you come out of the gate Cosmo certified and packaging all correctly? With every I dotted and every T crossed. Can you do that?
Kat: Maybe if you have VC backing.
Lisa: If you’re just one girl trying to make it happen, you’re going to have to take steps along the way. My first and foremost thing is I wanted to make sure we had refillable options available. That was my number one thing, and that’s what I focused on first, but give me time to take steps. If we come at it as consumers with this massively critical eye and just write people off, that just does our own self a detriment.
We need to be supporting the brands who have their moral compass aimed in the right direction so that they can continue to make strides, be innovative, and then make an impact in the market in a bigger way. If we really want to make an impact, it’s not nitpicking these little brands. Why don’t we call Proctor and Gamble and tell them that we want Old Spice Cosmos certified? That’s going to make a bigger impact than asking some tiny indie brand why they chose regular almond oil instead of organic almond oil, and how dare they.
Kat: Exactly. Lisa, it’s been so great to have you today. I just think this is great information and I’m sure we could talk for a day. I’d love to have you back on, and we could dig into even more topics more specifically. Where can our listeners find you if they want to learn more about you and all the information you have out there, like your Instagram, your socials, website, and all that?
Lisa: Across all channels @thisorganicgirl and on the web at thisorganicgirl.com. I just want to mention too, I have a couple reels out that I did recently of Top Ten at Target and Top Ten at Sephora. If you’re curious about what that looks like and my top picks from mainstream stores, check those out. They’re easy to consume and super actionable.
Kat: I love that. I always like to end the show by asking all of our guests what is their best tip for living life Organically.
Lisa: Yeah, I thought about this because I’m like, “Oh god, that’s kind of an impossible question.” I would say, just be committed to learning and don’t beat yourself up along the way because we’re all learning, and we make the best choices we can with the information that we have at this time.
We’re never going to be ideally organic, 100% mental health, and balance, all of it. It’s going to be impossible. It’s just making the best choices you can at this point in time and being open to learning.
Kat: I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you Organic Girl. I appreciate you, and I appreciate all you do. I know our listeners are going to have fun exploring all of your information and everything you have to offer. Thank you again for your time this morning, choosing to join us, and for just doing all the work that you do for this bite of just having healthier lifestyles, healthier options, and just more information out there for the educated consumer. We really appreciate it.
Lisa: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit.
Landon Eckles: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode.
Kat: We’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, and slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about.
Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to be organic.
Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.
In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice Franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.