How clean is your beauty routine?

Natural! Green! Non-toxic! Organic! If you’re confused about what “clean beauty” actually means, it’s not just you. Here’s how to decode labels, understand ingredient lists and find products that are truly healthier for your body and the planet

One of the biggest trends in beauty today is the rise of conscious consumption: pushing for more transparency in products and questioning all the ingredients inside. Are they healthy, safe and free of anything sketchy? We now have an abundance of beauty options marketed as “clean,” but navigating the cosmetics counter—and sometimes conflicting claims—remains as tricky as ever.

WHY CLEAN IS THE NEW GREEN For years, “natural” and “green” were the buzzwords of choice to give beauty products a halo of purity and wellness, conjuring the wholesome goodness of, say, organic rosehips freshly plucked for your face oil. But both are also fuzzy terms, subject to marketing spin: Neither the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nor Health Canada defines them in the context of cosmetic labelling. That

means the claim “natural” on a product could mean it’s 100 percent free of synthetic ingredients, but it could just as easily mean that the formula includes a smidgen of plant extracts, says Dr. Shannon Humphrey, clinical assistant professor in the department of dermatology and skin science at the University of British Columbia.

Putting natural ingredients on a pedestal also implies that they’re inherently better and safer than the synthetic stuff, but that’s not always true, says Humphrey.

“Natural, or being derived from nature, is not synonymous with safety,” she explains. “There are tons of natural things that are harmful to you, from poison ivy to mercury to arsenic.” It’s also possible for ingredients to be natural but contaminated (such as minerals laced with heavy metals).

“Let’s not focus on natural versus synthetic,” Humphrey says. “Let’s focus on the science behind safety and the science behind efficacy.”

The shift toward talking about what’s safe—and not merely natural or unnatural—has made “clean beauty” the catchphrase of the moment. “Clean” often means that the products are free of certain questionable ingredients, such as parabens, although what’s deemed dodgy and worth avoiding varies from brand to brand and country to country.

HOW ARE BEAUTY PRODUCTS REGULATED?

While companies aren’t allowed to pour dangerous toxins into your beauty products—Health Canada has a Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist of what’s prohibited or restricted—governments vary in their degree of regulatory toughness. While the European Union has banned or restricted about 1,400 ingredients in cosmetics, Canada has done the same for just over 600. The equivalent number in the United States is just 30.

It’s also true that cosmetics are not controlled as strictly as drugs in North America. In the U.S., cosmetics manufacturers aren’t even required to submit safety data to the FDA. Surprisingly, the burden is on the FDA to prove that a product or ingredient is harmful when used as intended. That’s why clean-beauty activists are demanding tighter standards and more protective laws. One such advocate is Beautycounter, a sixyear-old direct sales company that was