Vegan Beauty: Quality Vegan Ingredients

In the previous article, we saw how to distinguish vegan cosmetics, to avoid both animal derivatives and petroleum derivatives, and other synthetic ingredients.

But this is not enough, because if we want quality vegan cosmetic products that take care of the environment, we must choose products with high percentages of organic ingredients, and active principles, free of filler ingredients. Let's see therefore how to identify the best products.

Search Organic vegan ingredients

Also called BIO, they are those vegetable ingredients in which pesticides, fertilizers, or other synthetic products have not been used during their cultivation. They are also usually first-extraction ingredients, unrefined.

Therefore, in addition to not damaging our health, they take care of the environment, respecting animal and plant species and aquifers, rivers, and oceans. However, products certified with any of the Natural Cosmetics labels can use both organic and non-organic ingredients, or even refined. To identify them we must:

• Check if the percentage of organic ingredients appears on the label, the closer to 100% the better.
• In case the percentage is not indicated, we can look in the list of ingredients, which one is identified as organic (usually by an asterisk) *.

High percentages of active principles

The active principles are the basis of quality vegan Eco natural cosmetics and are mainly vegetable and essential oils, macerates, butter, and vegetable extracts. The higher the quantity of these, the higher the quality. Ideally, 100% of the product are active ingredients, avoiding filler ingredients that hardly provide vitamins or antioxidant power to the skin. But how to identify them?

They can be identified by reading the ingredient list on the label, and see where they are:

• Latin names: the active ingredients will appear in the list of ingredients, in Latin.
• The order of the ingredients: according to European regulations, they always appear in order from highest to lowest, that is, the main ingredients of the product appear in the first places.

Natural cosmetics stamps do not guarantee that the ingredients used are organic or vegan

Avoid filler ingredients

They are usually in the first position to lower costs, as they are much cheaper than the active principles that we have seen. Some examples of filler ingredients are as follows.

• Water: the best cosmetics should use little water, since there are hydrolats or aloe vera juice, which provide, in addition to hydration, other beneficial properties for our skin.
• Capril / caprylate, Capril caprate triglyceride, Coco caprate, Palmitate, (or very similar names): they are natural, but they act as substitutes for the liquid paraffin derived from petroleum and that so many conventional products contain, due to their low cost. They come from coconut, soy, or palm oil, and the petrochemical industry transforms them by eliminating their smell, color, and flavor, so that they last longer, but in this process, they lose many vitamins and antioxidant power. They are not harmful, but they do not bring many benefits either.
• Parfum: it is an ingredient synthesized in the laboratory, to give odor, so it is accompanied by fixers such as phthalates so that its aroma lasts a long time, but this substance is an endocrine disruptor, therefore unless the manufacturer indicates on the label that this perfume * comes from essential oils, we should avoid it.