Organic & Natural -- The Best Measure of Safety

Recently a commercial came on the TV advertising a drugstore brand of shampoo as “natural”. My son asked, “Do you think it really is?” Smart kid. Even my 10 and 7 year olds are on to greenwashers.

My reply was “No, it’s not.” Why was I so sure this shampoo being touted as safe and natural contained ingredients from the list I won’t use? Experience. Then I started to ponder how I would have viewed this commercial back when I was getting started with safe cosmetics. Would I have believed it was natural and wanted to try it? Maybe. Which led me to a troubling thought…Do you have to be a green beauty expert, or at least very well versed in green beauty labels, to be able to spot a truly safe product without a ton of inspection?

My personal foray into going green in the beauty and personal care department is what led me to become a writer on the subject. But I fully understand that not everyone can, or even wants, to take this course. Some of us simply want to buy safe products for ourselves and our families, but the process needs to be simplified and trustworthy to make it a reasonable venture.

After a lot of consideration I have come up with a few ideas on how to do this. Putting myself in the position of someone who is getting started as a natural cosmetics purchaser (me 5 years ago) I tried to imagine how I would like to go about verifying the safety of products I may want to purchase. Well, first off, it would be quickly and easily. One universal label that we could trust would be the far and away best means of confirming a product’s safety, but since I am not going to set up my own certification body (for now, at least) it will have to be something else. A telephone line? Website directory? Both?

I guess my IDEAL (meaning the quickest, easiest, always accurate) means of identifying a safe product would be an online database of products/brands with a clearly, yet simply, defined safety rating system (for super quick id-ing on the fly), with complete ingredient listings and, the ever important, user reviews. Instant customer support for unanswered questions would also be a huge bonus. And all of this would be compiled and submitted by unbiased sources (green beauty experts, product users…) not the manufacturer of said product.

Now I would really love to hear from you all on this. You are the natural cosmetic and personal care product purchasers. It is your opinion I would love to hear. Let me know what you would like to see as a means of qualifying the safety of a product. I look forward to your ideas!