Huh, isn't natural care always the most sustainable choice? So what should you pay attention to to make sure your spreads are an eco-friendly choice? Together with Paulien van der Geest of Milieu Centraal, we dive into the world of cosmetics to find out how you can also make an eco-friendly choice in the shower and in front of the mirror. This is what you need to know about sustainable care!
‘I only use natural personal care products’
‘Vegan is sustainable!’ or ‘Too bad about that plastic packaging’. If you share anything on Instagram about sustainability, you regularly get questions and comments. So too about personal care products. And you guessed it: all the above comments don't have to say anything at all about sustainability of your ointment. Together with Paulien van der Geest from Milieu Centraal, I try to unravel this tricky subject, so you can make a more sustainable choice here too from now on.
Natural care unsustainable?
100% natural care simply says: all ingredients have a natural origin: from plants, animals or minerals. If a care product is not (entirely) natural, it means that synthetic, i.e. man-made substances, have been added. Often this is petroleum. Paulien of Milieu Centraal: ‘Many people like the idea of putting a natural product on their skin. They also often think this is sustainable. But that doesn't have to be the case at all. Growing natural ingredients often requires farmland, and farmland is scarce. Perhaps forests and jungles were cut down or a lot of fertilisers and pesticides were used in growing that raw material. These are all things that are not environmentally friendly. So choosing natural care can, but need not be, a sustainable choice.’
Natural care not necessarily better for skin?
Many followers also like to choose natural skincare products because they believe it reduces the risk of skin irritation. But a dermatologist in Wed off the table: ‘There are plenty of natural products that can cause irritation’. This dermatologist responds to the argument that some people want to avoid aluminium salt in deodorant. He thinks this is exaggerated and on alternatives he says: ‘You can get irritation from aloe vera just as well as the much-discussed aluminium salt found in deodorants.’ In short, the world of cosmetics is not so black and white. Not all synthetic ingredients are bad and not all natural ingredients are good for the skin. Paulien: ‘I understand that this can be hugely confusing for consumers.’
The free apps I have on my phone by default: Beat the Microbead, Clean Beauty, Think Dirty. These apps help me find sustainable care.
So how do you find sustainable(er) grooming and cosmetics?
And yet, you can choose shampoo, day cream, make up and other spreads more sustainably without graduating to the ingredient list. Paulien from Milieu Centraal and I pool our tips:
- From now on, buy all your personal care products and cosmetics microplastic-free. A good guide is the free app from Plastic Soup Foundation: Beat the Microbead. You scan the ingredient list of a product and the app does the research work for you. Within seconds, you can see if there are microplastics in the product. It's really worth starting this right away. Microplastics are a big environmental problem and they may also affect our health, since they recently discovered that we humans have microplastics in our blood. And unfortunately, microplastics are still found in a lot of products.
- Buy beauty products with a label. Some great labels to look out for are EU Ecolabel, Cosmos, Demeter, Nordic Swan Ecolabel, Natural Cosmetics Standard and NaTrue. The advantage of these labels is that they also indirectly exclude microplastics as they stand for sustainable, natural personal care products. Come across a label you don't immediately recognise? An overview of all useful labels can be found in Milieu Centraal's Keurmerkenwijzer.
- If you do want to dive deeper into the ingredient list, the free apps Clean Beauty and Think Dirty are handy to download. These also work similarly to the microplastics app Beat the Microbead. You scan the ingredient list and then get a list of warnings if questionable substances are found.
- Many beauty products contain palm oil. Opinions on palm oil are sharply divided. There are many abuses in the palm oil industry, but boycotting the ingredient is not a sustainable choice. Alternatives like soya, sunflower, coconut oil or shea butter often require much more farmland (sometimes as much as five to 10 times more land). And everything can be wrong in other vegetable oil farms too, only you don't always hear about it. It is best to choose sustainable(er) palm oil with an RSPO label. You can recognise this by a logo on the packaging. Besides, if the logo is missing, that doesn't always tell you anything either. Nowadays, better palm oil is widely used in European products.
- Do not use products with propellants such as hairspray, dry shampoo and deodorant sprays. Propellants from cosmetics contribute 5 to 10% of all volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These are substances that cause smog formation. Check out this expansive article with tips on what to look out for when choosing deodorant more sustainably.
- If you see a product with a vegan seal, then you know that it contains no animal ingredients, that the product and its ingredients have not been tested on animals and that no animals were used in the manufacture or distribution of the product. A vegan label says nothing about whether a product has been produced in an environmentally friendly way. Paulien of Milieu Centraal said: ‘Animal testing on cosmetics has been banned in the Netherlands since 1995 and in Europe since 2004. Moreover, from 2013 there is a trade ban on (ingredients of) cosmetics for which animal tests have recently been carried out - even if this happened elsewhere in the world. This has put an end to almost all animal testing for cosmetics in Europe. Therefore, the term cruelty-free doesn't mean much anymore.’
- Be sparing with products that contain many solvents, such as: nail polish, nail polish remover, perfume and aftershave. These products also contribute to smog formation.
- Choose your sunscreen more consciously, too. Sunscreen contains substances that can affect aquatic life and too often, unfortunately, they also contain microplastics. Check out this comprehensive article with tips on what to look out for when it comes to sunburn.
- Perhaps the most important tip comes from Paulien: don't use more than necessary. Could you use some storage tips? Then check out this list of handy tips.
- Don't stare blindly at the packaging when looking for an eco-friendly choice. Babette Porcelijn, in her book The hidden impact calculated that packaging is a relatively low impact maker: only 10% of a product's total impact. In addition, packaging often has a number of positive properties, as it protects products and prevents disposal. Nor is it the case that glass and paper are necessarily more sustainable packaging materials than plastic. Recycled plastic that recycles well is an excellent sustainable choice.
Sustainable care goes beyond natural care
In summary, sustainable care goes beyond natural care. It is true that sustainable care products, which are produced in an environmentally conscious way, are often natural care products. But not all natural skincare products are sustainable. In the beauty industry, unfortunately, much greenwashing by companies eager to hitch a ride on sustainable claims. By choosing care products with sustainable labels, without microplastics (check that app) and by using your products sparingly, you have already taken a very good step.
More sustainable tips from thegreenlist.nl
- Looking for eco-friendly beauty products? Then take a quick look at the list of good brands.
- Sustainable oral care? It's different than you think!
- We regularly come across the claims ‘vegan’ and ‘cruelty-free’. But what does this mean and what is the difference between vegan and cruelty-free?
Photo credits main image: Monstera (Pexels).
