What Is Ethical Beauty?

Are you making moves to be more eco-friendly in your day to day routine? Some of us may recycle every bit of cardboard, foil and paper we come into contact with, we might use smart meters to monitor our energy usage within the home, and we may embark on a mission to equip all of our lighting with energy-saving lightbulbs.

What About Your Beauty Routine?

BeautyIsCrueltyFree is a cruelty-free beauty & subscription box blog covering all the best ethical, cruelty-free, vegan and eco-conscious subscription boxes, brands & products. This post may contain affiliate links which is at no cost to you. For more information, see my disclosures.

Ethical Is Beautiful

There is an emerging eco-friendly string to add to your sustainable bow – ethical beauty. Ethical beauty is cosmetics, skincare and hair products that are free of animal-derived ingredients, from brands that do not test on animals and do not sell in China.

Animal Testing

Perhaps the most obvious way in which make-up and beauty products have been hugely unethical in the past has been the cosmetics industry’s willingness to test products on animals.

Although becoming less common in the twenty-first century, many top brands such as Maybelline and Avon, still carry out cruel tests on animals in the Far East. While they don’t shout about it, they won’t have that all-important reassurance on their labels stating that their products are cruelty-free.

Ensure that you check the small print of the products you are purchasing. While your favorite eyeliner may give your eyes the lift they need, if it was tested on another mammal, you might wish to swap to a more ethical brand.

Here is a list of beauty brands to avoid, as they test on animals: The Bad List

Going Vegan

As an ethical person, you are likely already a vegetarian or vegan when it comes to your meals. And you probably already have stopped buying leather (I am an advocate for brands like GUNAS New York who offer 100% vegan leather handbags!) But did you know that some red lipstick is made using the carmine residue of crushed red beetles? Yuck!

Beauty products may not, at first glance, be full of animal products. However, look closer, and you will see the beeswax within mascara and squalane derived from the livers of sharks in your eyeshadow.

Check out beauty brands that are renowned for their vegan-credentials – I keep a Directory Of Cruelty-Free Brands here.

You could also subscribe to a vegan beauty subscription box like Vegan Cuts, so you can discover and try different vegan beauty products every month, for a fraction of the retail cost.

How To Make The Change

You may swear by your beauty regime. You may know the perfect foundation to cover up your flaws, the blush that accentuates your cheekbones and the bronzer that gives you the ideal glow. However, swapping to a more ethical beauty routine is not as tricky as it first appears.

Start by emptying the contents of your make-up bag, drawers and compartments and checking every single label. Look for the logos that tell you quite clearly that your product is free from animal testing. If it doesn’t have it, throw it away.

Look for ingredients such as carmine, squalane, lanolin and gelatin. These are all derived from animals and need discarding. If you have many products that need swapping for more environmentally friendly alternatives, start with the everyday essentials such as cleanser, moisturizing cream and body lotion.

Switching To Ethical, Cruelty-Free Beauty Products

Switching to ethical, cruelty-free beauty products is a simple and rewarding experience, one that doesn’t have to be expensive either!

For help with this:

• Check out my Complete Directory Of Cruelty-Free Beauty Brands
• As well as The Bad List: Companies That Test On Animals for a list of brands to avoid
• My Complete Head To Toe Cruelty-Free Beauty Guide to help you find awesome cruelty-free products
• Plus an easy guide to Swapping Out Your Old Brands For CF Brands

You can slowly begin to build up your new range of beauty products and cosmetics as you become more enamored with what you’re looking for.

Becoming an advocate of ethical beauty will not happen overnight. However, if you’re motivated, you can give up the cosmetics tested on animals and acquire a new more ethical range of beauty products to add to your daily routine.