Help! Make me eco beautiful…

If you can’t see the wood for trees, or waxy plant leaves wrapped around your head, when it comes to choosing ethical beauty products, do not fear. Darika Ahrens shows us the way.

Darika writes: Here at greenmystyle.com, beautiful is one of those things you can only really be if you’re looking after the world and its folk while you’re indulging in treaty products and treatments. If you feel the same, but don’t quite know how to be eco and beautiful, don’t fear because help is at hand. This guide includes some basic facts plus the best links for finding out more.

When it comes to green beauty there are two big things to consider:

• Environmental: the quality / toxicity of the ingredients in your beauty products, and how they are made and sold.
• Ethical: growing practices, fair trade, sustainability and animal-testing. The first three are good, the last one, very very bad.

There is a wide range of certification for both these areas (we’ll cover these in a separate article) but here we’re looking at what you put on your skin. After all, it’s your body’s largest organ and, apologies if we sound a bit Daily Mail, but studies show potentially large amounts of what we put on externally may be absorbed internally, and that’s not a good thing!

Moreover, did you know there’s nothing to stop manufacturers labelling a product “natural”? Most cosmetics and toiletries, even those with lots of bad stuff in, will have some naturally derived ingredients and hence get labelled natural. So, just like with food and clothing, you need to get label-savvy; and the most expensive brands don’t necessarily equal the highest quality ingredients.