{"id":49746,"date":"2025-01-07T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thegreenlist.nl\/?p=49746"},"modified":"2025-11-26T14:19:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T13:19:31","slug":"what-is-the-difference-between-vegan-and-cruelty-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegreenlist.nl\/en\/wat-is-het-verschil-tussen-vegan-en-cruelty-free\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the difference between vegan and cruelty-free?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On personal care products, make-up and cleaning products in particular, you regularly come across the claims \u2018vegan\u2019 and \u2018cruelty-free\u2019. But what does this mean? And what does this say about a more sustainable choice? We dove in and discovered that these claims can be quite confusing. And also, \u2018vegan\u2019 or \u2018cruelty-free\u2019 says nothing about sustainability, as some brands sometimes claim.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Vegan versus cruelty-free<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although there are good and reliable labels - we'll get to that in a moment - any manufacturer can put on their product packaging that a product is vegan and\/or cruelty-free. It is not a protected claim. Complicated, then. To understand this file, let's start by explaining the difference between \u2018vegan\u2019 and \u2018cruelty-free\u2019, because these terms are still sometimes used interchangeably, while they really mean something different. Vegan means that a product contains no animal ingredients and no animals are used in its production. Cruelty-free means that something has not been tested on animals. So a product can be vegan and cruelty-free, one of the two or neither. An example to clarify:<\/p>\n\n\n\n