Go Green Tips: easy way to avoid buying a beauty products with harmful chemicals
green tip: check the ingredients before you buy a product!
Do you want to know how toxic is your bathroom?
Spend half an hour to read the labels on your personal care products. My best guess is that less than 10% of people average pay attention to ingredients. I don’t mean just noticing the nice claims like “made out of natural ingredients” or “fruit concentrate added”. Read what is written in smaller letters – just to make sure you avoid the most detrimental to human and environmental health chemicals.
The good news is that you don’t need to give up washing your hair or smelling good and trash all your beauty products away or buy 100% organic products in order to protect your health and be nice to the environment. There are lots of safe, non-toxic alternatives to the chemical cocktails.
By just quick look at more than beauty 40 products at my cabinet, I found that only my Garnier Fructis shampoo with active fruit concentrate and Exact Herbal Garden conditioner with aloe, chamomile and jojoba contain Metylparaben – hormone-disrupting preservative. 2 out of 40 is not bad at all, but I was disappointed by a couple of products without ingredients showing at the labels – isn’t it a standard rules to put it on?
Every time at the store when I buy cosmetics, I have a hard time remembering all the chemicals to avoid. I check the ingredients and by the end of reading the label they all look highly suspicious to me.
Then I did a very simple things: I put all harmful chemicals on one list, did it as a small size text, printed and stored in my valet. This simple green tip helps me not to relay on my memory and panic each time I buy something in cosmetic department.
So, here is the list- read it, print it, use it, and put down any products that contain it!
Phthalates, toluene, coal tar, diethanolamine (DEA), 1,4-dioxane, formaldehyde,
lead, mercury, nanoparticles, any parabens (methyl-, ethyl-, propyl-, butyl-, isobutyl-), petroleum distillates, phenylenediamine, hydroquinone
Some research suggest to avoid fragrance as well, but I found it in nearly all beauty products we use…
The best solution would be to shop at the places that are dedicated to sell natural products, but even then nobody can guarantee that you can buy chemical free cosmetics. However, your chances will definitely increase. For these reasons I usually buy organic and high quality cosmetics at All Natural Products Online where many of their products are certified by the BDIH ‘Certified Natural Cosmetics’, Demeter, NaTrue, European Union (EU) Guidelines for Good Manufacturing Practices, Rainforest Alliance, and ECOCERT approved.
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Read more about Chemicals in cosmetics
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Cool, I thought it was only me who always forgets the list of chemicals to avoid while shopping for beauty products. Every time I’m in the store and I need new cosmetics, I promise myself to write down the list when I go home and always take it with me. Thanks for your green tips – now I finally did it!
Congrats! I had a similar problem – but with food chemicals. I followed your example, thanks.