How To Switch To Clean Beauty

I began to switch over my personal care products to clean beauty mid-2017 after a trusted doctor I grew up seeing told me that I needed to reduce my toxic burden. Our skin is our largest organ & has the potential to absorb everything we apply topically. The problem with this, is the fact that the beauty industry within the United States is extremely unregulated. This means companies are legally able to formulate our personal care products with known harmful or questionable ingredients.

There was a recent article published this past month on Yahoo! that shared the “ugly side of beauty”, specifically focusing on the threat conventional cosmetics impose to college-age women’s reproductive health. The lack of transparency & overall information surrounding the products we use every single day is so alarming, especially when many products contain ingredients linked to significant health concerns & hormone disruption.

This is why I’m so passionate about my job partnering with Beautycounter, who has pioneered the clean beauty movement since 2013. A huge part of what I do as a consultant is I educate women on the importance of choosing safe products. I’ve even advocated for cosmetic reform last April alongside Beautycounter representing my home state of New Hampshire. You can read about my first advocacy trip to DC here!

In 2019, I started to became an educated consumer & uncovered my passion for helping other women make the switch to clean. Once you know better, you do better & I had to share all that I was learning! It’s truly empowering to know that the products you apply on your skin are safe & won’t compromise your health.

If you are someone who hasn’t made the switch over to clean beauty yet but are already prioritizing other areas of non-toxic, healthy living, switching over your beauty products is going to feel like a natural next step for you. On the contrary, maybe you’re someone who is not yet familiar with the importance of clean beauty or are set within your current routine. If that’s you, I hope this post can serve as a guide to help you learn about the benefits of using clean beauty products. As well as, give you some practical ways to begin swapping out your current conventional products for safer alternatives!

How To Switch To Clean Beauty

What products do you use the most?

The average woman uses no less than 16 personal care products every day. That amount of products is equivalent to around 200 potentially harmful or questionable ingredients applied daily. My first tip for how to switch to clean beauty is to look at what products you’re using the most! Think mascara, lip balm/gloss, shampoo, conditioner, & deodorant! Also consider which products cover the largest surface area of skin. Think moisturizers, self tanning products, SPF, & foundation!

Make a cleaner swap one product at a time

Look through your current skincare & makeup products to see what you might be running low on. Making the switch to clean beauty is an investment. So don’t think you have to switch over all of your products at once. As you run out of your current conventional beauty products, instead of re-purchasing, choose a safer alternative to replace it with!

Become familiar with ingredient lists

While product labels can be helpful, they can also be misleading, especially if you don’t know what to look for. Since the United States beauty industry is so unregulated, companies don’t have to be transparent when it comes to ingredients & product labels. When I began my own personal switch to clean, I found that it was helpful to become familiar with a few key ingredients that I wanted to avoid. While there are many ingredients we should be on the lookout for, trying to learn them all can quickly become overwhelming, especially if you’re new to reading ingredients in general. To start, I’d recommend familiarizing yourself with a handful of harmful ingredients to start looking for when shopping for your personal care products!

• Fragrance or Parfum

  • An engineered scent that may contain any combination of 3,000-plus stock chemical ingredients, including endocrine disruptors & allergens. Fragrance formulas are protected under federal law’s classification of trade secrets & therefore can remain undisclosed. Found in: all types of cosmetics.

• Parabens (methyl-, isobutyl-, propyl- & others)

  • A class of preservatives commonly used to prevent the growth of bacteria & mold. Parabens are endocrine (or hormone) disruptors, which may alter important hormone mechanisms in our bodies. Found in: shampoo, face cleanser, body wash, body lotion, foundation.

• Phthalates (DBP, DEHP, DEP & others)

  • A class of plasticizing chemicals used to make products more pliable or to make fragrances stick to skin. Phthalates disrupt the endocrine system & may cause birth defects. Found in: synthetic fragrance, nail polish, hairspray, & plastic materials.

• Oxybenzone

  • Sunscreen agent and ultraviolet light absorber linked to irritation, sensitization & allergies, & possible hormone disruption. Found in: sunscreen, moisturizer.

• Ethanolamines (MEA/DEA/TEA) 

  • Surfactants & pH adjuster linked to allergies, skin toxicity, hormone disruption, & inhibited fetal brain development. Found in: hair dyes, mascara, foundation, fragrances, sunscreens, dry cleaning solvents, paint, pharmaceuticals.

• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate & Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLS & SLES)

  • SLS & SLES are surfactants that can cause skin irritation or trigger allergies. SLES is often contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, a byproduct of a petrochemical process called ethoxylation, which is used to process other chemicals in order to make them less harsh. Found in: shampoo, body wash, bubble bath.

• Formaldehyde

  • Used as a preservative in cosmetics. A known carcinogen that is also linked to asthma, neurotoxicity, & developmental toxicity. Present where quaternium-15, DMDM hydantoin, imidazolidinyl urea, diazolidinyl urea, sodium hydroxymethylglycinate, 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3 diol (Bronopol), & several other preservatives are listed. Found in: shampoo, body wash, bubble bath.

• Polyethylene glycol (PEGs compounds)

  • PEGs are widely used in cosmetics as thickeners, solvents, softeners, & moisture-carriers. Depending on manufacturing processes, PEGs may be contaminated with measurable amounts of ethylene oxide & 1,4-dioxane, which are both carcinogens. Found in: creams, sunscreen, shampoo.

Look out for greenwashing

Unfortunately greenwashing is very common within the beauty industry. Companies utilize greenwashing tactics to make their product seem cleaner than it actually is. Hence why I recommend familiarizing yourself with reading ingredient labels so you don’t fall victim to pretty packaging with trendy buzzwords like clean, vegan, all natural, eco-friendly, fragrance-free, & pure! All of those words are undefined by the beauty industry & essentially don’t mean anything!

Any company can make claims that they’re clean, or that they use natural ingredients, or that they don’t test on animals, but what are they doing to back that up? This brings me to my next point, shopping with a trusted brand can help eliminate the chances of becoming greenwashed by misleading marketing!

Shop with a trusted brand

My personal favorite for clean makeup & skincare is Beautycounter. Beautycounter takes the guess work out of searching for clean personal care products. Beautycounter bans over 2,800+ harmful or questionable ingredients from all of their products & packaging. Yes, I said packaging! Packaging is just as important because if you have a clean formula & the packaging itself is leaching harmful chemicals like phthalates into the clean formula, the product is no longer clean!

In addition to banning thousands of ingredients, Beautycounter also has 12 additional safety standards that all of their products, packaging, & manufacturing partners must adhere to. This includes 3rd party safety testing, batch testing cosmetics for heavy metals, responsible sourcing, & more! You can read more about Beautycounter’s safety initiatives here!

Although Beautycounter makes up the vast majority of the products I now use, I have also shared a few other clean makeup brands here on the blog. You can read my Ilia Beauty review & Lawless Beauty review for my thoughts on the products I’ve tried from both brands. Especially for makeup, Beautycounter doesn’t have everything, so I fill in the gaps with those two brands!

A few other clean personal care brands I love are Innersense for hair care, Beauty by Earth for clean self tanning products, Alaffia for body wash, Vegamour for Dry Shampoo, & DIME Beauty for clean perfume! You can find my discount codes on this page of my blog!

Utilize me as your clean beauty resource

Thanks to my job as a Beautycounter consultant, I’ve been able to become extremely educated when it comes to clean beauty, ingredients, & the product selection Beautycounter offers. Over the past almost 4 years, I’ve been able to help hundreds of women make the switch to clean beauty & fall in love with their skin. I would love to offer you the same assistance as my current clients. Please send an email to rowanmadi@gmail.com for personalized product recommendations based on your specific skin needs & budget! Also, go ahead & follow along on Instagram because I share clean beauty tips & tricks weekly!

Why Switch To Clean Beauty

1. Safe Ingredients

The #1 reason I’d recommend making the switch to clean is because of ingredient safety. The United States only bans 30 potentially harmful ingredients from personal care products. Compared to other countries like Canada, who ban around 600 & the European Union who bans around 1,400 ingredients, 30 is just mind blowing!

With decades of studies indicating serious health issues are on the rise & are due in some part to our ongoing exposure to toxic chemicals, it’s more important than ever to be mindful of what we are using on our largest organ every single day. By using products with clean ingredients, you are actively reducing your toxic burden! There are many toxins we come in contact with on a daily basis. Many of which, we have no control over. However, swapping conventional beauty products with toxic ingredients for safer alternatives is absolutely something we can control as consumers!

2. Sustainability

Especially if the brand is a certified B Corp, like Beautycounter is, they will have sustainability initiatives in place to assess their overall impact on the environment. Beautycounter has a really cool goal that by 2025, 100% of their packaging will be recycled, recyclable, refillable, reusable, or compostable!

Beautycounter’s sustainability efforts also include, transitioning products to glass, swapping virgin plastic for PCR, launching refillable products like blush, highlighter, & deodorant, & forgoing excess packaging waste. They have also partnered with How2Recycle to provide clear instructions on how to properly recycle/dispose of products & Pact Collective to recycle hard-to-recycle packaging!

3. Skin health

Believe it or not, the ingredients in many conventional beauty products are not only harmful but they make your skin look worse, which requires you to purchase more products. This becomes a constant overconsumption cycle but that’s exactly what large corporations want to happen!

Clean beauty products truly nourish & support the overall health of your skin. My skin was wrecked at the time I started to use Beautycounter’s skincare. My skin was dehydrated, irritated, covered in acne, & I NEVER had a glow. Once I established a good skincare routine featuring high quality, clean ingredients, I saw my skin transform before my eyes!

And guess what, once your skin is happy & healthy, your makeup will also look better! You can see what my skin looked like prior to Beautycounter below & then now!

4. Cruelty Free

Many clean beauty brands are committed to being cruelty free, which is great. This means they do not test their products on animals. It’s wonderful that we can choose what brands to support as consumers based on similar values. However, just because a brand is cruelty free, doesn’t mean they are clean. Unfortunately the two are not synonymous. This is why it’s still important to read ingredient lists & become familiar with the ingredients I mentioned above! With that said, many clean beauty brands are also cruelty free! Personally, I always prioritize ingredient safety but I know everyone has different values especially if you’re vegan!

5. Transparency

Unfortunately, there isn’t any legislation requiring companies to be 100% transparent when it comes to their ingredient lists, product sourcing, & manufacturing practices. This is something Beautycounter has advocated for since Day 1.

Anytime you are shopping for a product & the brand doesn’t disclose the full ingredient list, or they use fragrance/parfum, run the other way. These are easy things to look out for to let you know that the brand is not being transparent about what that product is formulated with. Especially fragrance, since it’s a known trade secret within the beauty industry & can be a loophole for hundreds to thousands of undisclosed harmful or questionable ingredients!

If a company prioritizes ingredient transparency, if you are looking at a product that has a scent, you should be able to check the ingredient list & see exactly what essential oils makes up that scent. For example, Beautycounter’s Clean Deo in Soft Lavender. Beautycounter doesn’t formulate any product with synthetic fragrance. So you can clearly see Lavandula Angustifolia Oil which is Lavender essential oil on the ingredient list.

I hope the information shared in this post inspires you to become an educated consumer by choosing safer options when it comes to your makeup, skincare, & body products. Making the switch to safer will not only improve your skin but it can also improve your health long term! I always tell people, every single safer swap matters! You deserve to use products that will not compromise your health in any way. And thanks to brands like Beautycounter, you don’t have to sacrifice safety for product performance!

If you have any questions about switching to clean beauty, please comment below!