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Let’s face it — beauty products often come with a not-so-beautiful impact on the planet. So we made a simple guide to help you sort through the icky-sounding ingredients and dubious promises. Here’s what to look for, what to avoid, and more than 20 products that we love!
“Clean” beauty can be confusing. All we want is the perfect red lipstick (thanks, Taylor Swift, for reigniting that particular passion) without giving ourselves cancer, eating lead, or generating ever more plastic waste. Given how difficult it has been for us to find beauty products we can feel good about, we decided to create that which we sought — a buying guide to help all of us navigate the tricky, greenwashing-filled world of so-called “clean” cosmetics. The tools below should provide you with some guidelines. To really learn about a company, we recommend visiting its website to see what it has to say about ingredients, packaging, and sustainability. While we wish every company would eliminate practices that contribute to the climate disaster, we recognize that most brands still have a long way to go — even the ones that are doing pretty well. If a company has a list of goals on its website, or says that it is in the process of identifying and removing virgin plastics from its supply chain, or that they are transitioning from one material to another, we are inclined to give them grace — we want to reward companies that are working to make things better, as well as the very few who really do everything right.
The ins and outs of beauty products:
The beauty industry is a big contributor to the 1.8 trillion pieces of single-use plastic waste polluting our oceans, producing an estimated 120 billion units of packaging per year. Other studies show that the average woman exposes herself to approximately 168 chemical ingredients daily. Not all chemicals are harmful, and we are exposed to them through many aspects of our lifestyles, including diet, however, the chemicals in cosmetics are largely unreviewed and unchecked for long-term safety. Choosing to shop sustainably at the cosmetics checkout counter is one of the best ways that you can vote with your dollars and protect yourself and the environment.
More brands and retailers are offering alternatives to single-use plastic packaging. Recently, there’s also been a stronger push by legislators to ban toxic chemicals from our personal care products in the United States and internationally. Unfortunately, as with most trends, the push towards sustainable beauty products also means that many brands exaggerate their sustainability measures in an attempt to appease conscious consumers, a deceiving fad dubbed ‘greenwashing.’
As a consumer, knowing what to look for and what to avoid in your beauty products will give you the power to choose good brands, but the world of clean beauty can be dense and confusing. Bluedot’s Marketplace editor Elizabeth Weinstein knows this all too well as she sifts through it to find brands and products Bluedot can stand behind.
“At the end of the day, it really comes down to different people’s values, and I cannot decide what people’s values are for them,” Elizabeth told me as we discussed what makes a good product. Educating yourself is a great way to form a solid opinion. So, Bluedot’s Guide to Sustainable Beauty will help demystify the murky aspects of clean beauty, providing you the insight to decide what matters most while you shop for your next great lipstick.
What is a “sustainable” beauty product?
Sustainable beauty brands aim for a positive — or at least a less negative — environmental and health impact from the ingredients, packaging materials, and practices used for their products. How?
- Avoiding chemicals, synthetics, or toxins that have been proven to be or have the potential to be harmful to our health or our planet.
- Choosing organic ingredients that have a small environmental footprint.
- Sourcing ingredients in a manner that does not cause harm to the environment or exploit laborers.
- Not testing their products on animals.
- Using recyclable packaging materials like aluminum, glass, bamboo or paper.
- Using post-consumer packaging materials.
- Providing product refills.
- Partnering with recycling companies to ensure packaging doesn’t become landfill waste or accepting back empty containers and packaging via mail-in services to be recycled.
- Obtaining third-party certifications that verify their claims and actions.
By visiting a brand’s website, you may be able to find out how many of these practices they follow and what their sustainability goals are.
What’s greenwashing? And how can I avoid it?
Greenwashing refers to unsubstantiated claims that a product is more environmentally friendly than it actually is. The high demand for clean cosmetics has inspired lots of brands hoping to ride the green coattails of sustainable beauty by dishonest or misleading marketing rather than improving their products and practices.
In 2021, the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network found that “40% of green claims made online could be misleading consumers.” In 2022, a resident of New York filed a class action lawsuit against Sephora for its ‘Clean at Sephora’ label that still includes cosmetic products featuring ingredients that are known skin allergens. Sephora responded with a motion to dismiss the case in March of 2023 and a year later, Judge David Hurd followed through with dismissing the case citing a lack of substantial evidence. But the case reveals just how vague and fuzzy the notion of “clean” beauty is and how little regulation or policy exists to protect consumers.
However, there are things consumers can watch out for to avoid getting duped by greenwashing:
- Take note of vague words like natural, sustainable, clean, eco, and environmentally friendly that are essentially meaningless.
- Look for such clear terms as certified organic, sustainably harvested, or non-toxic.
- Look for third-party certifications, which mean that they’ve been independently scrutinized. (See below.)
- Read the ingredients and avoid those with known/documented harms (see “What to Avoid” below for specifics).
What are third-party certifications?
One of the most reputable way brands can communicate their eco bona fides is through third-party certifications — claims backed by a partner organization, verifying a brand’s authenticity.
Certifications are typically printed on product labels with easily identifiable symbols, making for a shorthand of a product’s trustworthiness. Knowing what each logo/certification stands for simplifies shopping for sustainable products.
Here are a few trusted certifications to look for:
- Leaping Bunny Certified: A certification verifying that all products are free of animal testing at all stages of product development.
- EWG Certified: The ingredient list meets the Environmental Working Group’s three standards for consumer health.
- Made Safe: A seal presented by a team of scientists that all ingredients and their byproducts are non-toxic.
- USDA Certified Organic: Assures customers that ingredients are grown and harvested without pesticides or preservatives and are non-GMO.
- Rainforest Alliance: A certification where brands can prove that their ingredients are grown and sourced in a way that protects biodiversity, wildlife and the local ecosystem.
- Beauty without Bunnies: Verifies products are not tested on animals and are made with no animal-derived ingredients.
- Fair Trade Certified: Ensures all ingredients are fair trade certified and the company obeys labor laws.
While buying products with third-party certifications that validate the practices you value is a great way to let trusted organizations do the legwork for you, many great products don’t have any certifications. Sustainability certifications for cosmetics can be costly — many require an annual fee for brands to maintain the certification and the rights to print the logo on their products, sometimes too costly for small businesses even if they meet all of the requirements to obtain it. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), for instance, charges brands $250/product to use the EWG Verified® mark. (The items must also comply with the EWG's protocols.) These fees can add up quickly.
Elizabeth looks beyond whether or not a product has certifications and advises a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the brands you choose. “There’s a product in our gift guide called Activist Skincare,” Elizabeth says. “It’s not certified organic, but they’ve told me that all of their ingredients are organic. It’s a small company and sometimes it makes sense to just trust [their ingredients].”
So … what should I look for?
There are two main areas to pay attention to — ingredients and packaging.
Ingredients
As mentioned before, sustainable beauty brands will eschew toxic chemicals and synthetics. Instead, these brands use plant-derived, non-toxic extracts, oils, and minerals, including:
- Jojoba Seed Oil/Simmondsia Chinensis
- Castor Seed Oil/Tin Oxide, Ricinus Communis
- Sunflower Seed Oil/Helianthus Annuus
- Carnauba Wax/Copernicia Cerifera Cera/Copernicia Cerifera
- Glycerin
- Fruit Extracts
- Essential Oils
- Iron Oxides
Packaging
The best packaging can be composted, recycled, reused, or refilled. Even brands moving towards better packaging materials will sometimes use single-use plastic for part of their packaging — such as a foundation in a recyclable glass bottle with a plastic applicator — so it is important to understand exactly what packaging materials are used to ensure they are disposed of efficiently.
- Glass & Aluminum: These two materials are endlessly recyclable, meaning that they can be remade into new materials without losing their quality.
- Post-Consumer Waste: Oftentimes this type of packaging is made from materials that have already been used, disposed of, or diverted from landfills.
- Paper: This is recyclable and depending on the ink used, it can also be composted.
- Refillable: Instead of buying a completely new product and container, you can refill your favorite eyeshadow or lipstick shade from that particular brand. Buying product refills helps reduce waste and is often cheaper than buying a new full-size version.
- Plastic-neutral: Brands that use plastic in their packaging but want to maintain sustainable practices often aim to be plastic-neutral. This means that for every piece of plastic created and used in their product, the brand offsets it by removing and recycling the equivalent amount of plastic from the environment.
Alright then … what should I avoid?
Learning what to avoid is just as valuable as learning what to look for. Again, let’s consider ingredients and packaging:
Ingredients
Regulations around safe ingredients are antiquated. Before President Joe Biden signed the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) in late 2022, the last major cosmetics bill in the United States banning harmful ingredients nationwide was in 1938. The European Union bans or restricts more than 1,600 chemicals from cosmetics but, in the United States, the Food & Drug Administration bans eleven.
But that huge disparity may not be as frightening as it seems. “Many of [the EU’s] banned ingredients are not items that regularly work their way into beauty products,” Elizabeth explains. “The United States approaches this from a [different], very American, ‘innocent until proven guilty’ standpoint, and the threshold for proving ingredients guilty is extremely difficult.”
On a positive note, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law that adds 26 ingredients to the list of 24 banned ingredients introduced by the 2020 Toxic-free Cosmetics Act.
Among the ingredients to avoid are:
- Lilial or lily aldehyde: Used in cosmetics and personal care products to add a lily flower scent. This ingredient is an allergen and can potentially harm reproductive health.
- Paraformaldehyde and Methylene glycol: These types of formaldehyde are used in cosmetics as a preservative, however, they are also classified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
- Mercuric/Mercury: This ingredient is used in facial creams, serums, and masks as a lightening agent and preservative. However, it can damage the kidneys and nervous system, skin discoloration and rashes.
- Parabens: Various parabens are commonly used in cosmetics as a preservative to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria. This ingredient disrupts hormones and harms the reproductive system.
Packaging
With roughly 90% of plastic never actually getting recycled, avoiding plastic is a good practice to adopt. Glass, paper, or aluminum can be cleaned out and put into your local recycling bin. If you’re unsure about other materials, such as different types of plastic, check out Call2Recycle. The interactive page allows you to find what materials can be recycled in your area and offers drop-off locations for hard-to-recycle items.
Only twenty percent of bathroom items are recycled (think shampoo bottles, soap packaging, shaving items, and so on). Thankfully, several recycling services will do the heavy lifting for you. You can mail your empty containers or drop them off at their locations.
- Terra Cycle: This subscription-based service allows you to mail a variety of miscellaneous empty containers and waste items to them to be properly recycled. They have collaborated with a number of retailers, including Nordstrom and Saks, to accept all brands of beauty and skin care product packaging either dropped off or mailed in for recycling.
- Pact Bins: Pact partners with Sephora, Ulta Beauty, and other retailers to conveniently place collection bins in-store where you can drop off empty cosmetic packaging.
- Target: The mega-retailer’s recycling program offers recycling stations at their stores where glass, plastic, and aluminum containers can be dropped off to be properly recycled.
What products does Bluedot recommend?
These products were chosen because the brands clearly communicated the actions they take to move toward sustainability. That means that the ingredients are certified non-toxic, are organic, are from sustainably harvested farms, and/or are fair trade certified. When it comes to packaging, these brands use recyclable materials, partner with companies that will recycle them for you or are certified climate-neutral.
Face: Foundation, Powder, and Concealer
Face: Blush, Bronzer, and Highlighter
Eyes
Lips
Voting for Healthier Products:
Voting with your money is not the only way to make sure that your voice is heard on issues relating to self-care products and the environment. Who you vote for in government elections is who you choose to represent and advocate for you and the issues you care about. It is important to vote for representatives who value the environment and women’s issues since self-care products are largely marketed toward this demographic. Who you vote for impacts what Congress addresses and what changes are made.
In 2023, Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) advocated for the safety of black women through cosmetic regulation by urging the FDA to investigate the use of formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, in hair straighteners and relaxers — products largely marketed toward black women. Their unwavering advocacy and outspoken passion for this issue has recently pushed the FDA to take action. In April of this year, the FDA is tentatively scheduled to release a proposal to ban the chemical in hair straightening products. At this time, the FDA’s chief scientist, Namandjé Bumpus, has stated that she cannot provide a timeline on the ban.
In the next election, vote for a representative who will take action against the use of harmful ingredients in cosmetic products. For now, let your current Representative know that these issues matter to you. You can visit the United States House of Representatives website to find who represents your area and how to contact them. Further, the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners website offers an easy way to write a letter to your local representative in support of the Safer Beauty Bill Package, which includes four bills that address holes in cosmetic safety.
