DOSSIER

It’s hard to believe my first post on this subject was published almost 6 years ago to the day. I thought it was time for an update on how to make the transition to clean beauty. At first it seems like a daunting task, but it is an important move towards eliminating unnecessary toxins being absorbed into your skin.

Your skin is your largest organ, so if you eat organic foods to keep your body healthy, why wouldn’t you do the same for your skin? On average women apply about 12 products to their skin and hair daily. If each of those products contains only 1 carcinogen, imagine the build up over years and years of use. Scary!

GETTING STARTED | INVENTORY

First things first, pull all of your makeup, body lotions, hair care products, soaps, shampoos etc. out of their cupboards and shelves to really assess what you have. Now determine what products you actually use on a daily basis, weekly basis, or for special occasions only. Eliminate any products that you no longer use or products that you are unhappy with their performance. Also take this time to make a list of products you are missing, i.e. the perfect under eye concealer, or leave-in conditioner, etc.

NEXT STEP | ASSESS

The next step is to find out how clean or dirty your current products actually are. The easiest way to do so is by downloading the Think Dirty app on your phone. This app makes it easy to determine if your products have potentially harmful ingredients. Simply download the app and type the product name into the search bar, or scan the barcode and it will give you a rating from 0-10 on how clean your product is. 0 being the cleanest, to 10 being the most harmful. It also gives you a breakdown of which ingredients in your product are harmful and why. This is a great tool for you to learn what ingredients to watch out for when buying new products. It is also comes in handy when you are at a store, it’s an easy and fast way to get the right information about the ingredients in a product. Another great feature of this app is that it offers you cleaner versions of similar products in their “Our Picks” tab. This can help you navigate the cleaner versions of the products you love. Although, I must be honest, the hardest part of making the transition to clean beauty is finding the right products that work for you.

Another great source is EWG’s Skin Deep website where they have catalogued over 70,000 products.

FINALLY | EDIT

After you have assessed your products by putting them through the Think Dirty app, keep anything that is rated 0-3 and begin to phase out or discard any products rating 4 or higher. At this point, make a list of products that need to be replaced and start your research. This is a good time to determine which products are really necessary and worth your money.

CLEAN BEAUTY RESOURCES

I’ve gathered some of my favorite clean beauty resources to get you started, but feel free to comment below with any further questions. I will be sharing my favorite clean beauty products in the coming weeks.

Mind Body Green is a great resource for clean beauty and all around wellness.

ABC Home has a great selection of non-toxic beauty products and offers educational wellness seminars bi-annually.

Credo carries 150+ brands and you can shop by “concern” or product. They’ve banned over 2700 toxic ingredients and they explain it all on their Dirty List.

GOOP is a great resource for information and shopping clean beauty products. Some of the best articles are Clean Beauty and Why It’s Important and this interview with Stacy Malkan, a cofounder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics explaining what the labels Organic, Natural and Non-toxic really mean.