Beauty Products and Organic Ingredients

Ingredient Reality

Once you get past the so-called "natural" components of a body care product label (see Organic vs. Synthetic), there are ingredients that are simply not acceptable in a product that claims to be natural and organic. Check your bathroom shelves to see how many of these ingredients are listed, and decide if you really want to take a chance with something that isn't what it appears.

Core Ingredients

The core ingredients in these products often include one or more of the following:

Olefin Sultanate is a surfactant, derived entirely from petroleum, and has no place in an organic product.

Cocoamidopropyl Betaine uses a petroleum intermediate in building the surfactant.

Ethoxylated surfactants like Sodium Myreth Sulfate use petroleum-derived ethylene oxide to ethoxylate sulfates which can produce 1,4 dioxin, a toxic material, in trace amounts.

Paraben preservatives are also petroleum-derived.

We believe that body care ingredients and products should only be labeled organic if:

Certified organic agricultural feed stocks (raw materials) are used exclusively, rather than petroleum or conventional vegetable feed-stocks, in the manufacture of key ingredients.

The manufacture of these ingredients is reasonably simple and ecological.

The toxicity of each ingredient is minimal.

Non-agricultural water is not counted as contributing to organic content. (Agricultural water is the naturally occurring water in a plant.)

Return To Organic Information Index

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