Cosmetics Fall Short on Natural Claims

Cosmetics Design-Europe’s reporter Simon Pitman recently wrote an article on the research findings regarding Natural and Organic Personal Care Products. http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Market-Trends/Research-finds-cosmetics-falling-short-on-natural-claims?nocount

One would presume Personal Care products to include a range of cosmetics, skin care and beauty products across the broad spectrum of what is known as Personal Care Products.

Pitmans article, backed up by research conducted by Organic Monitor, appears to be on the same page as recent comments in a recent Integrity Cosmetics Blog article. It appears that the formal research conducted concurs with; many cosmetics brands and companies evaluated falling very short on the “natural” and “organic” claims, and that Certified Organic products ranked the highest in actually being pure and natural and what they say they are.

It makes sense, that products which are certified organic, actually are what they say they are, given every certified organic ingredient has it’s own certificate of authenticity and that this is audited by an external body to the company producing and selling the product at the end of the day. Compare this process and audit trail to products which are not certified by any independent body or organization external to the company producing the products and or making natural and or organic claims.

The loop whole for producers of so called natural skin care and cosmetics products seems to be largely associated with; if you’re not calling it certified organic basically you don’t have anyone to answer to regarding your products’ organic or natural status.

Similar to the Integrity Cosmetics Blog, Pitmans’ article mentions two additional categories not previously mentioned including “naturally inspired” and “conventional” cosmetics. The Naturally inspired cosmetic products, which many brands claim to be, rank slightly higher on the scale than conventional cosmetics which are ranked last, with a score of 1 our of 10, even though they contain some form of natural or organic ingredients. It just goes to show how much variance there is on the scale of natural and organic cosmetics and skin care products.

With the rising demand for natural and organic beauty products and personal care products most traditional cosmetics companies are wanting to get a slice of the natural and organic cosmetics market, even if their products are so called “naturally inspired” or even “conventional”. Conventional cosmetics of course include your typical synthetic ingredients for example synthetic vitamin A, and petrochemical ingredients. Most consumers won’t be able to distinguish petrochemical ingredients over natural ingredients, except for perhaps being a little suspicious about some ingredients that sound a little scary or unfamiliar. This alone doesn’t mean that an ingredient actually is nasty, which is where a chemistry degree comes in very handy. It’s just a shame most of us can’t interpret the chemical names on labels and need to resort to a chemical dictionary, if you’re interested in knowing more. (link to The Chemical Maze in the shopping cart).

The ingredients which are synthetically produced, don’t have to be disclosed as such on the ingredients list. Vitamin A is a great example. I’ve heard statistics regarding the number of cosmetics producers who purchase synthetically produced vitamin A and it’s quite alarming. Unfortunately it seems most organizations would prefer to use the cheaper synthetic version due to the massive cost savings versus a natural or organic source of vitamin A.