What is Clean Beauty?

What Is Clean Beauty?

Clean beauty has long been a buzzword in the skincare, haircare, bodycare, and cosmetic industries. But as with other marketing terms, it can be used to mean many different things.

Simply put, clean beauty isn’t a regulated term—instead, it’s a movement that promotes the avoidance of harmful ingredients and practices. Within that, different clean beauty proponents might define the term differently, or have different priorities and standards, from green beauty, to “blue beauty” that considers the health of the oceans, to products that use only natural ingredients. So let’s get into some of the basics.

Nontoxic Ingredients

Probably the most universal aspect of clean beauty is that it advocates limiting ingredients considered harmful to our health or the health of our ecosystems. As a result, a clean beauty product will likely have “free-froms” listed somewhere on its marketing.

The most universal aspect of clean beauty is that it advocates limiting ingredients considered harmful to our health

That includes callouts like paraben-free, silicone-free, phthalate-free, reef-friendly, etc. A clean beauty claim might also include a formulation that’s free of dyes, fillers, fragrances, common allergens or irritants, or other offenders.

Cruelty-Free or Vegan Formulas

Products that are free of toxic ingredients (or made according to other clean beauty standards) may still contain ingredients that vegans avoid, such as snail mucin, honey, beef tallow, collagen, goat’s milk, and other animal-derived ingredients. If you’re vegan, still double check that your products fit your diet.

Feels like a French press kind of morning. Don’t let those grounds go to waste. Mix with a little coconut oil for a quick exfoliating scrub ☕️ Watch on Instagram

Other items, even vegan ones, may use ingredients that have been lab-tested on animals—and vice versa. It’s a good idea to ensure that the brands you use are always labeled as cruelty-free.

Natural Ingredients

As with vegan and cruelty-free callouts, not all clean beauty products are made of natural ingredients, and not all natural products are otherwise clean or responsibly sourced. The term “natural” itself can be misleading, but this usually refers to brands that avoid synthetic chemicals.

That can range from DIY products that you make at home using minimal ingredients from your pantry (like raw, virgin coconut oil or upcycled coffee grounds) to herbalist preparations from the farmer’s market, to scientist-formulated products with targeted ingredients.

Sustainable Packaging

It’s common to find brands that have a clean ingredients label, only to be packaged in single-use plastic. To us, clean beauty also has to mean clean for the planet—including packaging transparency to show the thought that’s gone into end-of-life, whether that’s reusability, compostability, or something similarly clever.

Not all clean beauty products are made of natural ingredients, and not all natural products are otherwise clean or responsibly sourced

Responsible Sourcing

Finally, even natural products can still be made using production systems that disenfranchise workers, or ancestral ingredients that can’t be ethically or sustainably sourced to scale. For that reason, some clean beauty brands might adhere to certain standards of sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution, with regular third-party checks at different points in the supply chain to ensure cleanliness, quality, potency, and/or ethicality.

Is Clean Beauty a Scam?

Given all the different ways of defining clean beauty, there’s a lot of debate around the term, what it should mean, and whether it’s a scam used to greenwash and charge a higher price point for products.

Our take? There are definitely marketing scams that take advantage of the term, but we think clean beauty is still useful as a general term to reference products that are less harmful than conventional cosmetics. Since clean beauty isn’t a certification, it’s still important to consider your individual priorities and find products that meet the standards that matter most to you.

So old it’s new 🧼 Who else is bar soap obsessed?

As with all our products, we’ve done that research to hand-select the brands we think are doing clean beauty right—with super high-performing, nontoxic, cruelty-free ingredients and sustainable packaging.

If you’re looking for a quick place to shop clean beauty products that we’ve vetted according to our ethos, you can find all our bath and body picks here. If you’re curious about what more of these terms means, check out our glossary for some handy terms to help you navigate your own preferences.

Since clean beauty isn’t a certification, it’s still important to consider your individual priorities

An Everyday Clean Beauty Routine

Looking to get started with a few simple products? Here’s a minimalist beauty routine we recommend for daily use:

1. Cleanse with the Willow Bark + Goldenseal Leaf Daily Face Wash from Botnia. Botnia makes handcrafted, small-batch skincare at their lab in Sausalito, CA using their own raw ingredients and GMP (Good Manufacturing Process) standards.
2. AM: Apply Sunscreen from Utu Outdoor Skincare, formulated with non-nano zinc oxide and packaged in endlessly recyclable and FSC-certified materials for those who love the outdoors.
3. PM: Finish with Jojoba Seed Oil + Rose Daily Face Cream from Botnia. All their botanicals are grown on local and organic farms including their micro-farm, and they’re always cruelty-free.
4. Add a cruelty-free, plastic-free Lip Balm made with natural ingredients from Poppy & Pout.

We love this everyday zero-waste skincare routine as a base to build off of as you add more steps.

For more easy routines, try our Hair Care Bundle, Dental Care Bundle, and Shave Bundle.

Clean beauty is more complicated than it sounds at first, but we hope this breakdown gives you all the information you need to feel empowered about choosing the right skincare, bodycare, and beauty products for you.