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Should organic personal care products be held to the same organic standards we use for food? Or should personal care products have different standards, since they're not meant for eating?
That's the question at the bottom of the fight over what exactly constitutes "green," "safe," "healthy," or "organic" personal care products. Groups like Organic Consumers Association and eco companies like Dr. Bronner's are for using the same organic standards for everything, but other eco-minded companies disagree.
This conflict is one that Stacy Malkan, cofounder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, discusses in her book “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.” What she reports is that companies seriously committed to safe, healthy personal care products can be found on both sides of the fence.
And activist organizations concerned about the safety of personal care products are similarly split. While the OCA certainly is in the "safe products are USDA-organic certified products" camp, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics takes a more moderate approach. That campaign encourages companies to sign "The Compact for Safe Cosmetics." The requirement for signatory companies: Their products meet or exceed current EU formulation standards. But while those standards are much better than the standards we have here in the U.S., they still allow many synthetic ingredients -- including parabens.
Of course, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics can't singlehandedly force the EU to change its standards -- which perhaps explains why the Campaign encourages people to use the Skin Deep database -- which ranks products on safety -- when making purchasing decisions instead of trusting all products made by the compact signatories.
But while most eco and health-minded people might take care to avoid parabens and 1,4-Dioxane, and may be wary of other industry-driven "green" certification schemes -- most aren't so vigilant as to demand food grade USDA-organic certification from its products. After all, not all products that lack the organic seal are necessarily harmful. As I've written about before, some of the ingredients that the OCA warns about actually aren’t really dangerous, according to the Skin Deep database. The fact that an ingredient isn’t (or can’t be) certified organic doesn’t automatically mean that the stuff is poison!
More to the point, organic certified products aren't all that easy to find. To make things easier, the OCA's compiled a list of companies making organic certified products. Guess what: There are only 9 of them! And of those, most either make only a very few products total, or only have a few organic certified products among other, not organic certified products.
That said, these organic certified products really are like the safest ones out there. Do they work? I know Dr. Bronner's soap works great! Other gals think so too: stitchywitch at Green Apples uses the liquid Dr. Bronner's soap and says "I love the smell and it can be used for so many purposes." And ceiliejordan at Struggle and Emerge even used Dr. Bronner's soap to make shampoo!
I also know some other products don't work so great.... So my current mission is to try out these products, one by one, to see which work and which don't -- thereby seeing how much of my personal care products I can feasibly switch over to organic certified products.
One item I have my eye on is this Dr. Bronner's Magic "All One" Organic Fair Trade Hair Creme: Lavender Coconut, which Julie at Less Toxic Beauty says "add really great texture to my funky style, without it looking sticky or crunchy." I have long hair and rarely use product, but maybe it'll work for me on special occasions?
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BlogHer Contributing Editor Siel also blogs at greenLAgirl.com.
