Clean Beauty in Canada
So how clean do you want your clean beauty to be? Depends who you are.
Everyone (even the natural beauty ‘experts’) has different standards when it comes to clean beauty. If you ask ten top clean beauty experts what qualifies as a clean beauty product to them, you’ll likely get ten different answers.
Why is this so complicated?
Clean beauty is complicated because there is no exact definition of what it is.
As a niche, the whole movement started to emerge into the mainstream about 15 to 20 years ago – but at that time it was still very much ‘granola’ and really hard to find nice looking (and effective) products.
At that time, the term ‘clean beauty’ didn’t exist – it was called ‘non-toxic beauty’’ or sometimes ‘green beauty’, ‘chemical-free beauty’, or maybe ‘organic beauty’. It evolved into clean beauty because the focus shifted from things that were natural into things that were less harmful for you – for example, natural ingredients may or may not be good for you, and man-made ingredients may or may not be bad for you. So the emphasis over the past decade has moved from making sure the ingredients are all ‘completely natural’ to making sure the ingredients are ‘not harmful’ – there is a difference.
In today’s beauty world where clean and natural beauty is no longer a niche, most companies fall into one of these approaches to clean beauty:
1 ~ use only natural and organic ingredients
2 ~ use natural ingredients along with ‘clean’ man-made ingredients
3 ~ use token amounts of clean ingredients in their otherwise mainstream ingredients
4 ~ don’t pretend to use any natural or clean ingredients
So when you’re shopping with us and filter your Canadian beauty stores and brands by ‘natural / organic’, what does that mean exactly?
While we’re not the clean beauty police – we do take this seriously enough to ensure that the right natural beauty brands in Canada are landing in these spots. We list the first two types ….those clean beauty brands who focus on all or most of their ingredients being natural and clean. We don’t include those brands who use one or two natural ingredients amidst a sea of unpronounceable mainstream ingredients. For those, we’re happy to list them – just not in our ‘natural and organic’ section.
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Interested in Sustainable Fashion? Read More: Do you take your fashion fast or slow?
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We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see how many clean and natural beauty bands there are in Canada – for everything from clean skincare, to clean cosmetics, clean haircare, clean fragrance, and more!
Check out our Canadian brands and stores for ‘natural and organic’ and find a few new hidden gems for yourself.
We’d love to hear your thoughts! Please join the conversation below.
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