Quality vegan cosmetics: Virgin or refined ingredients. Certification Categories

This is the third and last article of this year on “how to distinguish quality vegan cosmetics”. The first one detailed how-to choose vegan and natural cosmetics, since there are cosmetics with synthetic ingredients, which can be called vegan, and there are also certified natural cosmetics with animal ingredients that we should avoid.

In the second article in the series, the quality was differentiated, by identifying organic ingredients and active ingredients, also avoiding filler ingredients that are used to cut costs.

Let's now learn to differentiate organic and first-press ingredients, against those that come from conventional agriculture with pesticides and even refined ones.

There are three main categories of ingredients to identify the quality of natural cosmetics:

• Virgin Ecological Ingredients: they are grown without pesticides, and are obtained from the first cold pressing. They preserve natural antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc. that nourish and help maintain skin hydration.
• Virgin Natural Ingredients: cultivated with pesticides, obtained from first cold pressing. They come from conventional agriculture, so they can have traces of pesticides, and also damage the environment (aquifers, soils, fauna, etc.)
• Refined Natural Ingredients: cultivated with pesticides, and also refined. They are obtained through chemical or physical processes and high temperatures. They damage the environment and their properties are much lower than those of ecological ones.

For this reason, we must always choose organic ingredients from the first cold pressing, but how to distinguish them?

In food, there is legislation to certify BIO products, and the seal (European green leaf) is enough. Ecological or BIO cosmetics is not regulated so if we are not experts, the ideal would be to look for certified cosmetics. All the stamps are very similar and guarantee natural cosmetics, without ingredients that are harmful to health, but none of them requires that the ingredients come from organic farming or are first pressed.

In general terms, the 3 certification categories that exist are:

• Category 1 "organic cosmetics": between 90% and 100% organic ingredients.
• Category 2 "natural cosmetics with organic percentage": between 10% and 90% organic ingredients.
• Category 3 "natural cosmetics": between 0% and 10% organic ingredients.

Therefore, if we want to choose cosmetics with the best ingredients, we must read the label and look for:

The percentage of organic ingredients: it is usually detailed, but if it is not, we will look for:

Asterisks that identify organic ingredients, for example:

Ingredients: Prunus amygdalus Dulcis (sweet almond oil) *, Rosa canina fruit oil (rosehip oil)

*: Ingredient from organic farming

In this case, the Almond oil comes from organic farming and will be first pressed, while the Rosehip oil will not.

The differentiation of the ingredients with the asterisks is the key to choosing quality cosmetics

The certifying seals guarantee that it is natural cosmetics, but they do not guarantee that it is ecological cosmetics, so differentiating the ingredients with asterisks is the key to choosing quality cosmetics.